Hi Dave, I've just come across your video and am keen to have a go. However, I am concerned that wool loft insulation might have polyester fibres and or be treated with borax and / or pyrethrins to prevent insect attack. Raw wool from the local sheep might well have pour-on treatment for ticks and fly strike etc. Is this something I need to be concerned about? PS I live in Somerset

Thank you. I have asked my vet for alternatives to Fipronil

Absolutely fascinating, as are all insects, much thanks for sharing 🐝

thank you for sharing your wild and rewilded space!

Thank you for sharing. Your demonstration worked perfectly and the addition of the vanilla and orange zest really enhances the flavour.

Added to my massive list of wildlife projects. Now to go check on my hedgehog hibernation boxes…

WOW! That is a beautiful looking book!

If there was any justice in the world, this would be given to every child in the country by dear old Father Christmas, We must all what we can to increase children's wonder and awe of the natural world, and do all we can to foster this. Merry Christmas to one and all, and let's hope the New Year brings more insects than the last one.

It wasn't a Christmas present, but I've just bought a new moth trap to replace the old one that expired. Looking forward to some warm nights to use it!

I like that you got the bee front and centre on the cover.

Happy Christmas to Dave and all his followers.

Ooh. Might suit my great nephew. Thanks.

Lucky me, i already got the book as a Birthday present yesterday, so i don't have to wait until Christmas. It hast incredebly beautyful drawings and of course there is a lot for me to learn in it!!

Mary Christmas Dave, can't wait for spring to come buzzing around 🎁🤗🙏

Looks incredible. I will put in a purchase request for our libraries in Christchurch NZ.

My Buzz Club package arrived, great info pack. Hopefully, many others will help with this appeal and help out with this project work and keep this going 🤞

My father started studying insects in Sussex in the 1930s, until the 1990s. I started in the 1970s. I did my first quantitative study in the 1980s, and have continued with moth-trapping. The decline is slow, but always in one direction. This year was the first in which I didn't see worker wasp in my (Hampshire village) garden. I've been here for 10 years, and this year was by far the worst yet. This followed 2023, which was also the worst in my records up to that point. Unfortunately I've had to buy a new (and more powerful) moth trap this year - the old one expired after 30+ years - so next year's haul won't calibrate precisely with this year's, but I'm not expecting anything great. I have no one cause for the decline in my local area. We've been using pesticides in Hampshire since the 1940s, so I'm not blaming them entirely. We have less land fallow in rotation, but I have a large fallow field this year across the valley from my house, so I'm not blaming that entirely. There's a continuing trend of concrete car-parking in front gardens and astro-turf in others, but that's only a few percent, so I can't blame that entirely. All the ash trees in my village have gone now, but they didn't support much anyway ...

Merhaba bu ağaçtan bizde var fakat çok yaşlandılar ve artık kurudular fidanını bulamıyoruz

I have just signed up Dave, and will do my best to share this to as many groups, etc, that i can 😊 I have often directed people to thr Buzz Club site for info on creating Hoverfly lagoons, and more. I think its great, and willbe very sad if it has to close.

Thanks

They killed them in my area and told all bee keepers fo kill their hives.we used to get lots about the butterfly tree.not anymore,we hardly see one bee.this is in Australia.its happening worldwide

Did you ever wonder about methanol content of your cider? Pectin in apples boosts methanol production, and I heard a lot of findings about cider and methanol content. (But it seems irresistably tasty.)

dont you have 2 heat it up on the stove 1st?

Thanks Dave, just signed up. I’ll also try and get this circulated more widely. Have you been in touch with Sussex Wildlife Trust or the Wildlife Trusts more generally

Would you open up the Buzz club to Irish gardens? You might get more sponsors that way

Great work, Dave. Do you think this would make a suitable Christmas gift for children?

Signed up. Hope others do too and you have more than enough to keep the Buzz Club not just going but growing. Lots of us are concerned about the state of nature and want to do what we can. 2024 did seem to be low on pollinator numbers, but the borage l sowed on your advice did get a lot of bees in 👍

I have gardened for wildlife for years, but have been saddened by this year's huge decline in insects visiting my garden. The more research into our understanding of garden wildlife the better. Have, signed up as a sponsor. Good luck!

Good luck with your appeal. I can’t afford much but have signed up as a sponsor so hopefully more people will do likewise and keep your excellent project running. Insects need projects like this more than ever after this last year 🐝🐞🐛🦋🐜🦟🪳🦗🪲

Sadly the phrase ‘rewinding’ seems to confuse and irritate people - be it gardeners, farmers or local residents. Like you say they think it means doing nothing, being lazy or abandoning the land. Mostly though I think it means being more nature friendly, sustainable and organic - so using less chemicals, looking after the soil, gardening in harmony with nature, helping to restore nature, adding water, food and habitat and helping to increase biodiversity of both fauna and flora. Nothing to be scared of or disparaging about at all.

Went from 100m2 lawn too foodforest and native perennials, into 2nd year of transformation. Would never turn back now, the biodiversity within our culdy sack is growing year by year. If only the construction industry could leave gardens like this as they hand over homes, what a growth 🤔

🌿🍎🍏Thank you for sharing your amazing knowledge of apple trees and flavours 🌿🍎🍏. Your books look beautifully illustrated. I love Bees, Butterflies and Dragonflies. Did you know in the USA there is a Japanese Knotweed (Bamboo) HONEY 🍯 that won an award? Bees love Knotweed as it flowers when nothing else does. Overseas they are making Japanese Knotweed paper and saving trees.

I can't stress this enough but it is imperative that when rewilding that we use native plants that are native to your local area. Not all plants are created equal. Non-native invasive plants cripple ecosystems and greatly reduce biodiversity.

Enjoyed hearing your thoughts

Brilliant Dave, thank you, best clear and straightforward explanation of rewilding at small scale that I’ve come across. We will point our supporters (Heal Rewilding) this way when they ask about this! Cheers, Jan

Thank you. So much excellent information. I am interested in sugar beet, not as a crop to produce sugar for human consumption, but to produce bioethanol. Among other things, this could be added to petrol to offset fossil fuel C emissions.

I think much is in the balance between what you do and what you choose not to do. You mention various ways in which the gardener mimics the effect of (now missing) large herbivores and predators and I feel this, too, when I am cutting back brambles, that I am replacing some now lost large animal. But I am selective in important ways. For instance, I weed out grass and foreign invasives from my gravel and garden beds but I leave the native wild flowers that have naturally regenerated there: red and white clover, dog daisies, meadow vetchling, St Patrick's cabbage, yellow pimpernel, buttercups, cranesbill, herb robert, mouse ear, lesser trefoil, hog weed, willow herb, bird's foot trefoil, cat's ear, daisies, bugle, a variety of ferns and, in the earliest part of spring at least, dandelions. The aesthetic is different from the conventional garden and I think this is one of the problems with the notion of re-wilding - that people are now so used to having the means to completely control what grows that they see this profusion as 'messy' and a sign of failure. We have to learn to celebrate what we have NOT done!

Are ladybirds good?

The simple act of switching my 50m2 garden from crappy turf and boring camellias to annuals and perennials (bird-favoured shrubs to follow) has brought the space alive. Watching it buzzing with insects from spring through to now has brought me no end of joy and my neighbours stop to chat and comment on it. The next challenge is dealing with comments about how “untidy” it looks over the winter (I’ve left everything standing for overwintering inverts to use) but I’m planning a simple sign explaining why and also hoping the coming frosts make it look all sparkly in the winter sun. The hedgehogs enjoy it too.

The concept is great but the name is terrible! 'Rewilding' is a contradiction. If something is wild it is wild. If it is directed through the introduction of species then it is in essence gardening!

My gardening hero was and always will be Geof Hamilton, and he was always talking about helping nature and not using peat. I am turning my sisters garden into an insect oasis! Which, obviously will help all of the other creatures in the cycle of life.😊

I agree with all you say and your view of the natural world. I really enjoyed your interview with Aaron Bastani where you enlarged on some of what you say here. Frankly I detest people like Don and Titchmarsh, but of course they make a (very good) living by promulgating the views of the industrial gardening complex, that involves inter alia green-thumbing your lawn with herbicides and killing every invertebrate in the garden with lashings of lovely Round-Up. They are welcome to their garden deserts - honestly they may just as well have plastic plants so that they can keep everything OCD tidy. Keep up your amazing work and spreading the word, Dave - it gives me a glimmer of satsifaction when I leave the dandelions and daisies to flourish in my "lawn", to know I am supporting the miraculous webs of life that exist in my little chemical-free oasis🌈

Thanks for this video. I love your ramblings. I think the idea that rewilding a garden means stepping back and leaving it to nature is a misunderstanding. But I think it is different to the sort of wildlife gardening that has been around for ages. I am (re)wilding my garden having been a conventional gardener all my life (I`m the same age as Monty) and I intervene as much as I ever did but in different ways and at different times of the year. I recently went on a workshop at Knepp on how to maintain a rewilded garden. They teach that the gardener tries to affect the garden in the way the keystone species affect the habitat in the larger rewilding project. There`s too much to put in a comment, but it`s all in a video on my channel. I think Monty and Alan were invited to the garden at Knepp, but I don`t know if they ever went.

Love the video 🙂

As someone who lives next to a rail line I've been wondering if Network Rail could be convinced to rewild the 'rail estate' land (as it appears to be more 'abandoned' based on your definition). Has anyone studied how much biodiversity they do/could support?

Why could you not have wolves in Knepp ? It is for sure big enough. I think it would make Knepp even more interesting if they would introduce them again.

As a small gardener I try to think of Garden Rewilding in my own small way. Leading on from what you said near the end, we are the wind as we sow the seeds. We are the rain when we water the plants too.

I saw ‘Wilding’, the documentary of the Knepp Estate at Bergen international film festival. I liked it, with all the animals, beautifully photographed at sunrise and sunset. They don’t say much about it, but they use some of their animals in food production, if I understood it correctly. Since I read one of your books this summer, I was curious about your thoughts of this. Is this ‘green washing’ as one says in Norway or is this just necessary, since the are no big predators there. I guess it still is great for wildlife and people anyway. Any thoughts? Best regards Rune

Monty establishment man and Alan titarse are the same sort of people as George it's a business not a passion to them . I love the robins that follow me ... Violent little bastards 😊 have you noticed

Release the beavers and the lynx and the wolves ...I keep Am bees .. that's where it's begun and I try to impart some knowledge on my way .. Being a gardener with a holistic approach ... Helped that I lived in the woods for a few years and could see that there's too many deer , too much pine and rhododendron . It's a balance we'll have to think about and adapt as required . Thanks for the bee work I read one of your books .. I read George's book Feral but I don't trust him career journalist , elitist media green energy wally with no sense of humour ( yes we have met many years ago ) Anyway no your not bonkers ... But don't get suckered by their climate con ... Ok thanks ... You have a good nature and we can trust you ... Top man .