"Bees, Butterflies and Blooms" BBC 2

[NickB]

First of three programs, with an excellent plea to the nation to look at the management of our public spaces and arable land in a new, more insect-friendly manner.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... untryside/

It does have great potential; it also gives a focus for local action.
Such a program on the BBC tends to carry more weight with the public and our public authorities, to change how they do things. than pressure from individuals and other charities.....there is no excuse for them not to listen, now, at least....
I look forward to the next programmes....
N
(And, No - they were not portrayed as eccentric, but normal well-balanced ordinary people, for a change!)

[Reverdin]

thought of you nick as they wandered through the graveyard

[David M]

I hope we'll see a few more butterflies in the next instalments. Two Meadow Browns, a Red Admiral and a Large Skipper (all very brief appearances) were much less than I was expecting.

[Michaeljf]

I thought the first programme was excellent (erm, it pretty much did what was stated on the tin) and there was plenty of interesting information (much I didn't take in properly) about best methods for sowing seed etc. I've recorded the series because my wife will be interested as well (she might remember the instructions better than me

I was a bit dismayed that the one village took so much work and persuading just to leave a small triangle of the village green unmown. I ended up wanting to strangle some of their committee for being so lame and inactive

David - you clearly missed the Large Blue in the credits..

Michael

[NickB]

I thought the first programme was excellent (erm, it pretty much did what was stated on the tin) and there was plenty of interesting information (much I didn't take in properly) about best methods for sowing seed etc. I've recorded the series because my wife will be interested as well (she might remember the instructions better than me

I was a bit dismayed that the one village took so much work and persuading just to leave a small triangle of the village green unmown. I ended up wanting to strangle some of their committee for being so lame and inactive

David - you clearly missed the Large Blue in the credits..

Michael

Sorry, It does not surprise me - I worked with my local Friends group and the council for over 3 years,explaining the things expressed by that programme which could be done in the Cemetery ... and I still had to stand in-front of the mower last year to stop them just trashing everything. When some of it was left, even after my intervention as Butterfly Conservation, the council got complaints that it was untidy, messy, etc! Since those people who complain in writing generally outnumber those who agree and don't express that in writing to their council or whatever, that is why we see such inappropriate mowing taking place all over.

My son is warden of a WLT reserve - and says: Those who keep complaining, to the WLT and other public bodies, are those who get things done - to stop them complaining, not necessarily because it is the right thing to do!

So, it is up to those of us who want less mowing to actually complain to those bodies and explain why.
N
PS and the Marbled White

[Roger Gibbons]

I thought it was over-long and really rather boring. To have butterflies prominently in the title and yet make up about ten seconds of footage in total in a programme lasting an hour, seemed a bit misleading. There wasn’t too much about bees, either. It was really about wild flowers, a commendable topic, but even here the coverage was fleeting. Strange, given the number of TV-hours dedicated to gardening programmes.

Most of the programme was focussed on the inhabitants of a Northants village and their tedious council meetings and their intransigent resistance to having a patch of wild flowers on the village green. No wonder we have problems of disappearing nature in this country, when even the village folk are so disinterested.

I understand that the BBC has to make programmes for the general population, but the balance was very skewed toward humans, especially ones as Michael has said, you could cheerfully strangle.

[NickB]

thought of you nick as they wandered through the graveyard

I bet you did - I know you understand my feelings well and have suffered hearing it at first hand

You can see why, when things like that graveyard are shown, it is so frustrating that the same areas elsewhere are treated so differently, with no rational explanations of,"Why not leave them to flower?" being expressed! The village council meetings were fairly typical of what actually happens in this country, unfortunately, when something that might actually make a difference is proposed.

They say, ignorance is no excuse....but it does explain a lot....Sadly, those in ignorance often show no desire to rise about their ignorance and learn.
N

[NickB]

Most of the programme was focussed on the inhabitants of a Northants village and their tedious council meetings and their intransigent resistance to having a patch of wild flowers on the village green. No wonder we have problems of disappearing nature in this country, when even the village folk are so disinterested.

I understand that the BBC has to make programmes for the general population, but the balance was very skewed toward humans, especially ones as Michael has said, you could cheerfully strangle.

I think it was spot-on, Roger, to expose the real problem with conservation in this country - the people in it!
Unless their attitudes change, those who actively participate and push the conservation agenda, will always be pushing against a closed door.
It is precisely those attitudes and the people that hold them, quite wrongly, as the programme tried to show, that need to be exposed for what they are - outdated and uninformed.
N

[Lee Hurrell]

I liked most of the programme apart from the council meetings (it seemed half a programme with a serious conservation message and half a rather dull 'fly on the wall' reality show ) and only hope it does make people think about leaving some space for wildlife.

PS - and the Small Tortoiseshell, the Peacock with a broken wing, the Painted Lady and the female Common Blue....

Lee

[Dave McCormick]

thought of you nick as they wandered through the graveyard

Same here

I think it was spot-on, Roger, to expose the real problem with conservation in this country - the people in it!
Unless their attitudes change, those who actively participate and push the conservation agenda, will always be pushing against a closed door.
It is precisely those attitudes and the people that hold them, quite wrongly, as the programme tried to show, that need to be exposed for what they are - outdated and uninformed

Totally right. I live around Strangford Lough here in NI, and I read something recently that more is going to be done to help the wildlife around the edges, hedgerow planting etc... Also want more wild flowers planted along roadsides, especially if work has been done on the side of the road and there is areas that could be planted in wild flowers. Think they are looking for volunteers to help in the future so I'll be helping out if I can.

On the show it showed how you can grow wild flowers yourself by taking small amounts of seeds from local wild plants. That is what I have been doing over the past year. I have a lunch box with lots of those small plastic cylinder pots, filled with seeds from a range of wild plants I have collected, with locations and dates on each to say where I got them. Have things like common ragwort, large flowering Hemp-Nettle, red dead nettle, winter cress, field pansy, vipers brugloss (a quite rare plant around here now with I think, only one left) etc... I have even too a large pot filled with compost, to my relatives bog and left it in the middle of a large open area, so if I come back in about 6 months or so, should find something starting to grow in it, useful to get some of the bog plants in it.

I was a bit curious about the grass seed and why more is sown with less wild flower seeds. The few flower meadow areas I have seen sown around my local areas, have more a variety of wild flowers and less grasses, but still have quite a few grasses.

[Susie]

I thought it was really rather good. Then again I would be quite happy to watch an hour of film of a wild flower meadow in summer with no voice over or anything, the sound of the insects and birds would be good enough for me.

I was surprised it was such a long programme as these things are generally squished into half an hour but I didn't mind it being longer.

I'm looking forward to next week's programme.

Oh, and I too thought of Nick when I saw the wild flowers at the cemetary!

[David M]

Most of the programme was focussed on the inhabitants of a Northants village and their tedious council meetings

I must admit, it did remind me of that spoof 'Stonybridge' council from the comedy show 'Absolutely' a few years back.

[Michaeljf]

I thought it was really rather good. Then again I would be quite happy to watch an hour of film of a wild flower meadow in summer with no voice over or anything, the sound of the insects and birds would be good enough for me.

Thank god I wasn't the only one to enjoy the programme! I wasn't expecting the programme to be on Butterflies. The emphasis on the reaction / interaction of the people is simply standard documentary fare - and while I wouldn't want to see footage of the council meetings again - it did follow the point of the programme. Although I perhaps would have picked another presenter, Sarah Raven obviously knows her stuff regarding the wildflowers and the research seems to have been good...there was plenty of information about the different wildflowers and the time-scale needed for them to grow properly etc.

Thankfully the young farmer had a better and more pro-active attitude than the village. Given the fact that 98% of our wildflowers have gone due to habitat loss, and the pollinators are not healthy as a result (OK, maybe the science of this might be challenged), and the loss of the pollinators will have an effect on the crops (84% estimated of our crops are pollinated by the insects), it seems strange to me that the Government hasn't introduced legislation whereby farmers have to re-introduced wildflower borders on all the field margins. Maybe this would go down like a lead balloon.

I also thought that the background music was often quite good: Kate Bush (Moments of pleasure) Norah Jones (Waiting for you to come home) and Goldfrapp (not sure which track, as my wife has the CD...) Anyway, I prepare to be shot down now on several fronts: perhaps I was just pleased to see something that was neither a garden programme or a Countryfile five-minuter with John Craven (not related to Sarah Raven)

Michael

[Michaeljf]

Mind you, having watched it again there is a bit too much footage of trying to get the Cretin village residents to sign a petition which only really amounted to only getting a very small triangle of wildflowers on the green (pathetic really) and maybe if the 'filler' sequences had introduced more about butterfly information loss (with footage that they were obviously lacking) it would have been more useful...

[Lynn]

The bit of film at the start of Sarah Raven sitting in flowers and talking was filmed at Butterfly Conservation's Magdalen Hill Down reserve at Winchester. I was disappointed that Sarah did not credit Butterfly Conservation with creating such a fantastic area for butterflies and bees on what was an arable field. Quite a few other pieces of film from Magdalen Hill Down were included too. Those of us who know the place well easily recognised the shots particularly the sainfoin and Viper's Bugloss.

It is a programme well worth watching & can be picked up on BBC iplayer. Lets hope it inspires a lot more wild flower planting and a bit less grass cutting! Another programme next week too.

[Susie]

The bit of film at the start of Sarah Raven sitting in flowers and talking was filmed at Butterfly Conservation's Magdalen Hill Down reserve at Winchester.

And didn't Magdalen Hill Down look wonderful! Took me right back to the spring and the field trip some of us went on. It's definitely on my list of places to go back to.

[ChrisC]

lovely wild flowers and i do love the british flora, but, my complaints are,
why doesn't she look into the camera to talk?
why do programs insist on having a cameraman already indoors to film these people knocking?
focus on mug and glasses while they are sat talking at the kitchen table, what's that all about?
i thought the farmer came across as a bit too much of hero for my liking, yes good on him for doing it but at no point did he mention how much we the taxpayer were paying him to do it.
how many people not already interested in the subject would have watched it? preaching to the converted? this is where i give the one show some credit, i've had quite a few non nature people ask me if i saw the bit on butterflies or spiders etc on there.
minor gripes i know but i'll reserve final judgement until she gets to the gardens.

what i will say is more power to her elbow for the campaign though. much needed and long overdue. Go Sarah!

[Susie]

I think Sarah Raven's pretty good overall. She did a programme a while back joining up areas of land local to her to create an insect corridor of wild flowers and plants so I am guess this current programme is a spin off of that.

My only gripe is that she seems to sleep in her clothes prior to wearing them on telly.

[ChrisC]

don't suppose you can remember what it was called?

[NickB]

My only gripe is that she seems to sleep in her clothes prior to wearing them on telly.

...style and substance?
Some people are hard to please
N
......Slightly disturbing to have myself so associated with the places of the dead....