Page 10 - Dainfern Valley

Ecological living – Ecological gardening
ECOLOGICAL GARDENING BY DAINFERN VALLEY RESIDENT DR SARETTE ARNOLD (PHD ZOOLOGY)
ECOLOGICAL
GARDENING FOR BEES

GARDENING

f every household decides to plant proteas would adapt to our climate
just one nectar-bearing plant, it specifically.
Iwould make a marked difference
in food availability for birds and If you do decide to use a sugar water
pollinating insects that we depend feeder for sunbirds, never use food
on for pollinating our food plants, like dye as it harms the birds. Rather just
butterflies and bees. Look out for the use a mixture of 1-part white sugar
sunbirds on the flowering aloes this to 4-parts water. You can use the
time of year, they are sight to behold mesh from an onion bag to block the
with their beautiful colours and petite neck of the bottle so that bees don’t
bodies. drown. Some nurseries sell these
sunbird water feeders with food dye,
Indigenous plants that you could please discard the food dye. Also
consider to plant in order to attract do not add honey or Bovril. Nectar
and support these beautiful birds and water are all these birds need
are Tecomaria capensis (Cape when not breeding (when they have
honeysuckle), Halleria lucida (tree chicks, they feed the chicks insects
fuschia), all Aloe species, Leonotis too).
leonorus (wild dagga although
nothing to do with dagga at all), and I look forward to seeing more flowers
Schotia (boer bean species). Your local next autumn when all our new plants
nursery would surely also be able to go into flower – and the subsequent
provide you with much more info, response of our Estate birds,
for example which pin cushions or butterflies and bees.

Just looking at this picture of a white bellied sunbird, which is one of the
two sunbird species most common in Dainfern Valley (the other being
the almost black Amethyst sunbird), inspires me to plant more nectar Wild dagga
10 bearing plants in the near future.
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