Bumblebees are synonymous with summer. Their gentle buzzing accompanies our wanders through the meadows beyond the house, where buttercups, red clover and ox eye daisies dot the landscape and provide a bountiful banquet for hungry bees. But habitats such as this have become ever rarer. The loss of around 97% of our flower rich meadows since the middle of the twentieth century is a major contributing factor to the decline in UK bee numbers, affecting bumblebees, honeybees, and solitary bees alike.

While it’s tempting to rush out and buy packets of wildflower seeds to sow meadows of our own, maintaining a successful wildflower area requires a degree of careful management. But there are other, simpler ways, to create pollinator-friendly patches in our gardens and allotments. Avoiding showy bedding plants and opting instead for flowering perennials, herbs, bulbs, and shrubs; planting tussocky grasses (for shelter and hibernation); and providing a source of water with safe places for the bees to land (such as a small water-filled dish with some pebbles) are all relatively easy ways to support our bee populations.

In the garden here, June is in full bloom, with plenty of plants to attract a variety of bumble (and other) bees. The plants proving popular are the Yellow flag irises (Iris pseudacorus), Geranium phaeum “Black Widow”, Geranium macrorrhrizum Spessart, Allium christophii, Geums, Welsh poppies (Meconopsis cambrica), Comfrey, and Knautia macedonica. But the busiest banquet of all takes place at back of the garden where the Deutzia’s powdery blooms are covered in a flurry of bees. At any one time there are Tree bumblebees, Early bumblebees, Southern cuckoo bumblebees, Common Carder bees, Buff-tailed bumblebees and White-tailed bumblebees. They bustle and bump into one another in their feeding frenzy, buzzing and clambering over the pollen-dusted blooms. Already the task of identifying the different species has become more challenging as male bumbles now join the throng. And as summer wears on bumblebee ID becomes all the more difficult. The bees’ hairy bodies become sun-bleached, making the usual colours and patterns of stripes harder to distinguish. Many bumbles even develop bald patches on their thoraxes; the hairs eventually rubbing away as the bees fly repeatedly in and out of their nest entrances.

As evening falls the frenetic buzz of busy bumbles lessens as the females return to their nests for the night. A stillness descends over the garden. But here and there, tucked into a closed flower head or under the starry blooms of the alliums, sleepy, tousled male bumblebees have taken themselves off to rest. They will spend the night outdoors, awakening next morning a little bleary-eyed, until the early sun gradually warms them and their energy levels rise, ready for another day of foraging.

It has been a long wait this year, but at last, I’ve heard the sound that for me marks the beginning of spring: that unmistakable buzz of a large, fuzzy bumblebee.

I don’t need to see her. From the sound alone I can tell she’s a queen buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris). And then I spot her. She buzzes and bumbles over the lawn in a low, zig-zagging flight. The search for a nesting place has begun.

Bumblebee queens emerge from hibernation in the spring, hungry, and in desperate need of pollen and nectar to replenish their dwindling energy reserves. My first sighting is no exception. She leaves her zig-zagging and makes a bee-line to the patch of hellebores at the back of the garden. Soon she has disappeared into one of the wide speckled blooms.

Over the coming weeks she will spend her time re-fuel and investigate potential places to build her nest, burrowing into old mouse holes, or the compost heap; crawling under the shed and into piles of leaves. It’s certainly no coincidence that last year a buff-tailed bumblebee colony was established close to the hellebore patch: bumblebee queens often to choose to nest where there is a plentiful source of food nearby to help produce their first batch of eggs.

Elsewhere in the garden, spring bulbs and blossom, lungwort, fritillaries, and primroses all offer early garden forage for bumbles while cheering up the beds and borders through these earliest months of the year. We leave clusters of violets and celandines that have seeded themselves around the garden from the woods beyond, and plant our own choices in clumps and drifts. Planting in this way provides plenty of forage in each place, helping the bees to conserve their energy by reducing the need to fly too far between plants.

Soon other kinds of bumblebee will begin to emerge, and we will welcome the first solitary bees too. The gentle Andrena carantonica that appear each year in the upstairs bedrooms; tawny mining bees (Andrena fulva) who make volcano-shaped nest entrances in the borders; ashy mining bees (Andrena cineraria) with their characteristic grey moustaches; the red mason bees (Osmia bicornis) that like to sun themselves on the south and west facing walls of the house; and the hairy-footed flower bees (Anthophora plumipes) that zip at speed from flower to flower among the comfrey plants.

But for now, I am content to listen out for that deep buzz of the big bumblebee queens, hoping to spot more before they enter the confinement of their nests for the rest of the year.

On wintry nights when the sky is clear and the air still, Jack Frost creeps across the countryside.  His cold breath and icy finger-tips spread frozen tidings through the atmosphere and across the ground.  Feathery patterns trespass over window panes, forming fern-like arabesques on their cold, smooth surfaces.

While it is easy to imagine these as the unfurling of some winter’s magic by a mischievous figure of fun, the florid patterns that form on our car windows and glass-topped patio tables are caused by a chain reaction of slowly gelling water.  As the spreading frost crystals meet imperfections in the surface such as specks of dirt or scratches, they branch off in new directions forming intricate, wintery patterns that are a joy to discover.

In deepest winter, when the weather is at its most solemn and still, comes the thick, spiny coating of the hoar frost.  Trees are silvered; leaves and grasses powdered.  The countryside takes on a wintery whiteness that is crisper, more defined than the blanketing softness that comes with a fall of snow.

The name “hoar” derives from the old English word “hor” or “har” for white or grey, and describes the appearance given by the mass of tiny ice crystals which scatter light in all directions so that everything coated with them appears white.

For the crystals to form the conditions have to be just right.  If both the air temperature and the dew point (the temperature at which water vapour in air condenses into liquid water) are both below freezing, a process known as sublimation takes place.  The moisture in the atmosphere turns from vapour to a solid (ice) without first passing through a liquid stage.

This is all takes place as we sleep, warmly tucked up under our blankets and with our hot water bottles.  And when we wake on a wintery morning to the chill of the first frost – to find the windows etched with the tracery of window frost or to gaze at the frozen wonderland created by a hoar frost – we experience one of the season’s most defining moments.

Hedgerows are a defining feature of the English countryside, creating a distinctive patchwork over much of the land.  The word ‘hedge’ derives from the Anglo Saxon ‘hecg’ meaning boundary.  But over time these leafy stretches have proved to be so much more than man’s way of marking a plot or controlling the movement of livestock.

Well over half of England has had a continuously hedged landscape for a thousand years or more.  This is despite the removal, in medieval times, of many hedgerows to create an open field system of farming, and the subsequent planting of new hedges under the Enclosure Acts in the years between 1750 and 1850.

Over time different regions developed their own distinctive methods of planting or laying, creating traditional practices that today contribute much to the character of a place.  From the hedges of Cornwall – stone banks topped with turf and adopted over time by a multitude of wild plants, sometimes with their herringbone pattern (known as Curzy Way or Jack and Jill) still showing – to the carefully pleached and well maintained, square-cut hedges of Lancashire and Westmorland, our hedgerows are a distinctive part of our cultural heritage.  And whether created to manage livestock or land (to prevent soil erosion or to regulate water supply for example) they are vital to the survival of much of our native flora and fauna.

As winter approaches and the hedgerows begin to lose their leaves, we get to glimpse into the thicket of branches and twigs; to discover what the hedgerow harbours.  Long abandoned birds’ nests, a loveliness of ladybirds clustering together to hibernate, a stretch of spider’s web, all provide insight into the role our hedges play as shelter.  For flying insects such as butterflies, sheltered conditions are essential, allowing them to gain and retain the heat needed for flight.  For small mammals it is the interconnectedness of our hedgerows that proves key. Networks of hedges provide safe routes to follow, allowing creatures such as mice and voles to move freely in search of food while remaining hidden from predators.

At this time of year the hedgerow’s worth as a source of food is most apparent too.  Great clouds of bees, wasps, and flies erupt from the starry, nectar-rich heads of ivy flowers, while red admirals flit among them.  And as the flowers fatten into dark berries they become rich pickings for hungry birds.

Of course it’s not just wildlife that benefits from this natural abundance.  Hedgerows have long provided some of our favourite victuals: blackberry jam, sloe gin, rosehip syrup, hawthorn jelly to name but a few.  And they are a great source of inspiration; particularly on autumnal days, all aglow with hips and haws, and bedecked with strings of berries, garlands of hops, and the tangle of traveller’s joy.  Clusters of woody nightshade berries hang like little lanterns, and robin’s pincushions – caused by the larvae of a tiny gall wasp, Diplolepis rosae  – redden on the wild roses.

Perhaps it is this sheer density of different life forms that makes our hedgerows so fascinating. Our landscape and our lives are certainly made all the more rich by their presence.

Did you know?

It takes around one hundred years for a new woody species, such as blackthorn, hawthorn, elder or hazel, to become established.  Thanks to this knowledge you can estimate a hedge’s age using what is known as Hooper’s Hypothesis. Just count the number of woody species within a 30 metre stretch, then multiply that number by a hundred.  The hypothesis was formed by the naturalist Max Hooper who died earlier this year, aged 82.