The Sign Maker

Spring: Birds, Bees and Butterflies

Spring is known for being a season of new life, renewal and growth. With the arrival of longer days and shorter nights, as well as welcoming in some warmer weather, we may also begin to see nature thrive again! 

We want to encourage you to join us in doing our bit for the wildlife in this season. We are aiming to maximise biodiversity and make this our greenest year yet! You may have caught our previous blog on how The Sign Maker currently cares for the countryside, but we also wanted to explore some simple ways that you can look out for the birds, bees and butterflies in this forthcoming season. 

Birds In Spring

You might be thinking, now that winter is over, that feeding the birds is less necessary. However, we know that feeding the birds is important all year round! In Spring, we know that the adult birds will be caring for their young, including bringing back food for them. Caring for the birds with food that is suitable for chicks would be a great way to adapt your current bird feeding routine to their needs. Live meal worms, for example, are popular with young birds. You can also ensure that there is a variety of food for the adult birds to enjoy. 

Feeding the birds can be done all year round and helps to boost their natural diet.

Onsite, we have a number of bird feeders which attract a wide variety of birds. We enjoy caring for them and watching the different birds that arrive! Bird watching can be a positive way of engaging with nature and benefiting from its calming effects. We’d love to see pictures of the birds that you are spotting. 

If you’re looking for a bird feeder, we stock a range of bird related products in our online shop too! 

Creating A Buzz and a Bee B&B

Spring is a busy season for many insects – including for Sign Maker favourite, the bees. You may know that we have a number of bee hives onsite, and an array of plants for the bees. From willow to lavender, buddleia and conteneaster, in addition to our wildflower field, we certainly know how to keep the bees buzzing! The easiest way to attract the bees is by planting flowers that are rich in pollen and nectar (The Devon Wildlife Trust provide a great list here on their website).   

You may want to consider how you will care for the bees once they arrive in your garden. Gardeners World have an excellent step by step guide for building a bee hotel (which you can find here). Of course you can look to buy one from your local garden centre, but it can be fun to make your own! 

Here at The Sign Maker we have planted a wide range of flowers and plants that are great for birds, bees and insects.

Furthermore, it is not uncommon to find tired bees out and about in the garden in the spring and summer months. To transform your hotel into the dream bee B&B, you could consider leaving a sugar solution out for them. To create this solution, you mix equal parts of sugar and water, and then leave it out in a small container (such as a bottle cap) by the bee hotel for them to enjoy. 

The Butterflies

You may have seen our post earlier this week about ‘National Learn About Butterflies Day’! Many people appear to love and appreciate butterflies but don’t always know how to care for them, or why they are an important part of the ecosystem.

Aside from anything else, butterflies are beautiful creatures that can have a calming effect! They can be interesting to observe and enjoyable to watch because of their different colours and markings. It can be fun to explore the butterfly life cycle as a way of learning about them too! 

Here at The Sign Maker we love to see the butterflies thrive amongts the widlife.

The main reason for needing butterflies is that they are great pollinators. In order for our plants to thrive and reproduce, this pollination process is vital. So in order to maintain it, we need to care for the butterflies by making some simple changes to our garden and our gardening habits. We have suggested some ways that you could do this below!

Attracting & Caring For The Butterflies

  • Plant plenty of native flowers (particularly those that are brightly coloured). Butterflies will be attracted to the colours and move from flower to flower increasing the pollination process. 
  • Avoid using pesticides where possible as they can prove fatal to butterflies. Leaving some weeds can be positive for the insects, so try not to exclude them all for your garden. If you are looking to remove some general weeds, then consider doing this in the most natural way possible. 
  • Make full use of the sunny patches in your garden as the butterflies are attracted to the warmth. Planting your flowers into pots can be an easy way to allow you to move the plants in accordance with where the sun falls in your garden. This will maximise the chances of a butterfly being attracted to stay a while in your space. 

Get In Touch 

We would love to know how you are caring for the birds, bees and butterflies this spring! Do get in touch with us, or share your photos and stories with us on social media using #TheSignMaker so that we can see what you are getting up to! 

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