It is wonderful to stroll around this property of seven hectares. The charming owners care for it with passion!

Green Lizard

The key to a garden that is both beautiful and welcoming to numerous species of wildlife is diversity. This involves the planting of as many different species of plant-life as possible. Lawn, dense shrubbery, compost heap, abundant flower beds, grasses, pond... etc. Each one of these habitats will serve as refuge for a particular species of insect, for a bird or for another animal that can here feed at leisure, find shelter, or raise its young.

In fact the majority of plants and shrubs in your garden are potential refuges or food sources for many insects. The majority of birds eat insects - variable according to the species and prey in the area. The more plants there are in your garden, the more insects there will be and thus the more birds!

Beneath the calm appearance of the surface of a compost heap a wealth of life is taking place: miniscule animals, fungi and bacteria feed on the vegetable matter and accelerate the processes of decomposition. A compost heap is an excellent means for the recycling your garden's nutrients. What's more, in winter it provides a special frost free place where birds can find insects and seeds.

We were all taught from a very young age that weeds were a nuisance and must be eliminated without care. What a terrible mistake! There are numerous that are both beautiful and at the same time essential for our butterflies and many other insects.

Swallow tail

Whilst providing lovely colour in your garden, an herbaceous border planted with a good variety of flowers will a site for moths and other insects. You can also create a butterfly refuge set up by VivArmor Nature. Between 3 and 400 different species of Moths can live in our gardens! The Butterfly count for Brittany is 104 species of which 56 are in Cotes d'Armor. These insects, in addition to seeds, will provide food at the end of the summer for numerous birds. Also, butterflies are attracted by the bright colours of flowers to feed on the nectar. It is therefore important to give priority to those plants that can provide pollen and nectar for pollinators such as Honey Bees and Bumble Bees. In eighty years, we have witnessed the disappearance of a quarter of the species of Butterflies and Moths in Cotes d'Armor!

Painted lady

Butterflies are becoming more and more rare. Those people who remember the country side and the gardens of the 1950's and 1960's make the same observation: we see far fewer Butterflies than before and the number of species is reduced to just a few. The meadow of our summer holidays where clouds of multicoloured Butterflies flew is now just a memory. Only a few species still commonly fly around and frequent cultivated countryside and urban areas. There are even some place where the common Cabbage White has started to become scarce.
This alarming decline is recent, and the causes are becoming well known. It is principally due to the increasing human pressure on natural habitats. Agriculture of just a few thousand years ago, has for a long time been a factor of diversity in the countryside; open lanes, hedgerows, orchards, wetlands drained and turned into natural meadows, terracing, sheep grazing. Each region was self sufficient and lanes, meadows, vines, woods were all connected to one another. The landscape thus created, which corresponds to the image of the countryside of half a century ago, was very favorable for Butterflies, which were very numerous.

Tiger Moth

The arrival of our modern technological society, which can be conveniently dated at the end of world war two, profoundly altered our countryside and destroyed the balance of thousands of years.
Industrial and intensive agriculture has permitted a considerable increase in yields and productivity. This has been achieved with a heavy price to nature. Mechanization caused the creation of larger and larger parcels of land. This regrouping of lands were often devastating: hedgerows uprooted, banks and ditches levelled out, water courses redirected, copses and individual trees destroyed. The enlargement of these parcels, which have today gone from several hectares to several tens of hectares, is accompanied by specialization of one particular type of culture over entire regions. Monoculture dominates entire areas: cereals and beet on the Northern Planes, vines in the South and on some hillsides of the Northeast, maze in the Southwest, grazing for milk production in the West...
Butterflies are disappearing because they are not adapted to the new living conditions that we have made for them. However, they deserve our attention and our respect. Imagine a sunny afternoon in spring without one single butterfly flitting from flower to flower! They are a part of our everyday world, which they embellish with their fragile grace and their often sumptuous colours. Could we conceive a legacy to our grandchildren of a world without butterflies?