Wildlife gardening has been very rewarding for me but it's not all shiny successes. When I first moved here the garden had been drenched in weedkiller and very little grew until the third summer. One of the first plants to recover was meadow cranesbill, aka Pig yr Aran y Weirgoldd (Geranium pratense), which is loved by pollinators but also by hungry sawfly larvae. For two years it flowered before it was eaten to skeletons by the sawfly larvae, which were then eaten in their turn by birds and predatory minibeasts. But in year three the cranesbill died back significantly and there were no flowers, partly because of the weather and partly because, following the wild plants, the plant-eater population recovers faster than the predator population. Finding a balance takes time and patience (and is ideal therapy for perfectionist tendencies, lol). Appreciating the beauty of leaves eaten into pretty lace requires adaptability, but it's worth doing.

#nature #gardening #cranesbills #sawflies