Julia is the director of Birmingham-based garden company Lupin, who have recently launched Brumblebee: a simple and stylish bee-friendly seed mix, expertly selected to support local bee populations!
Bees are critical as they pollinate a large number of our crops and flowers – without them we wouldn’t have many foods, such as fruits and vegetables.
The seed packets contain a selection pretty, pollinator-friendly flowers, which will support the local ecosystem, and can be sown in prepared ground in any sized plot or pot either after mid-April, or in late August or September.
Recent research has shown that private gardens in cities and towns are the biggest source of food
for pollinating insects, providing around 85% of the nectar produced in urban areas (what’s more,
nectar supplies in these areas are more diverse than those of farmland and nature reserves). Every
border and each hanging basket, each window box and allotment bed, makes a difference; Lupin
wants to make it easy to support and feed local bees, all while to enhancing and beautifying
gardens.
We asked Julia some questions:
What do you love about running your business?
“I love the creative side – the leap of imagination when creating a planting scheme, that envisions abundance, colour, texture on what is often a redundant, neglected or unloved space. I love watching customers fall in love with their plants, with the seasons, and come to appreciate deeply their little (or large) slice of earth. I love seeing gardens we’ve created mature and settle, wax and wane. I LOVED creating the Brumblebee Seed mix, and getting it out into the world – I’d like every home in Birmingham to have just one packet, for the bees. We all have to work so much harder to keep this going – every positive gesture, no matter how small, goes some way towards healing or helping.”
What do you love about Birmingham?
“I came here over 20 years ago (via Sydney, Italy, London and France) expecting to find a concrete jungle. And what I found was a green, open-hearted city, full of plant enthusiasts and allotmenteers. I found huge gardens, tucked away behind Georgian frontages and tiny terrace cottage gardens too – all of them cherished and used. I love the mix of people – so many of them green-fingered growers – loving and tending their fruit trees and plots, their perennials and pots, their window boxes and indoor plants. Brummies use their outdoor spaces and their local parks, they’re proud of them, they work to improve and enrich them. It’s a great city for a plant lover.”
Want to do your bit to help stabilise bee populations in Birmingham? Grab your Brumblebee seeds now! Find Brumblebee on Instagram (@brumblebee.seeds & @lupingardens) or online (https://www.lupingardens.co.uk/store/).