This late flowering perennial is of great benefit to butterflies, bees and hoverflies in the late autumn – flowering at a time of year when many other sources of nectar have come to an end. In addition to being a good source of nectar for pollinating insects, the seeds offer winter food for birds, too. This means I’ll be leaving their seed-heads in situ over the winter and wont be “tidying them up” until late spring when the birds should have had a chance to eat most of them.
- My autumn flowering Asters attracted a steady stream of hoverlies to my balcony.
Whilst there are many garden varieties of Michaelmas Daisy which can benefit wildlife there are also some varieties which are less attractive to wildlife - mainly due to the lack of nectar in some of the overbred hybrids. With this is mind, I was careful to visit my local garden nursery on a sunny day and study the amount of “insect activity” on the various Michaelmas Daisy’s for sale. Needless to say, I chose the one which had a steady flow of visiting bees and hoverflies and which now has pride of place on my balcony!
It looks like that bee is enjoying itself, I would be too if I saw that!!! It seems amazing that you have lots of wildlife on a balcony!!! It shows how much you can do on a small scale. Well done
Thanks Anthony. Always amazed at the diversity of insects my balcony attracts. Seems like your wildlife garden does as well…..so well done to you too! By the way, the “bee” on the aster in the photo is a hoverfly impersonating a bee. It had me fooled, too , until someone pointed it out to me!
Need some help here. How do I get to “follow” your Blog? Where do I click to have that happen so I can have your blog like I do with my gardensatwaterseast.blogspot.com I can follow many through that blog. Jack
Hi Jack, if you look at the top of this page there is a “follow” option which you can click on. You can also subscribe in a feeder here:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheWildlifeGardenBalcony
Also, you can follow the blog by clicking on the “email subscription” header which is located on the menu to the very
right of this page. Thanks for taking such a keen interest!
Keith
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