european bee-eater and italian gardens

how using gravel in italian gardens can create rare ecosystems for birds

Gravel gardens in Italy have become all the rage, owing to the fact that a vast amount of water and maintenance that can be saved while at the same time creating a typically Mediterranean style garden anywhere in Italy.

As a garden designer based in Italy I have been specialised in the creation of Mediterranean style, Italian gravel gardens for many years. However, as an ecological landscape designer I have often considered the harmful effects that the extraction of gravel from gravel quarries can have on the environment at large. As part of the design process, I have to organise the delivery of gravel from large, dusty open-faced quarries in Tuscany where I have been based for the past 10 years. The sight of these dusty pits dug deep into the ground has always seemed like a large price to pay for extracting a few lorries of gravel.

However, upon closer inspection I have noticed that many rare plants and animals, from green lizards to succulent plants can be found in these seemingly ecologically deprived gravel quarries. One such rare visitor to these quarries is the European bee-eater (Merops apiaster). This spectacularly coloured migratory bird is a native to the warmer climes of southern Europe and north Africa and relies upon sandy cliffs in which to nest. Such sandy cliffs can often be found near to rivers where the soil has been eroded by flooding, leaving ideal nesting sites for the bee-eater. Gravel quarries, with their often aggressive extraction also create large cliffs of soft soil where the bee-eaters can use their long beaks to tunnel out their nesting chambers.

The sight of large groups of this rare and charming bird perched high upon electricity cables that run through these gravel quarries instantly eased any concern over whether the use of gravel to make ecological gardens in Italy was ecologically correct or not.
The European bee-eater survives on a diet of insects, mainly bees, wasps and butterflies which it catches in flight. The sting and wings of the insect are soon dealt with by smacking it against a hard rock and between 2 and 3 hundred can be consumed in a single day’s hunting. Bee-eaters are extremely social, living in large communities and they also nest together, making tens upon tens of holes around 10cm wide- leading to long tunnels and a nesting chamber. They lay around 6 white, spherical eggs and both the male and the female tend to the rearing of the young.

Towards the end of the summer groups of hundreds can be seen gathering in trees and on electricity cables as they prepare to migrate to Africa, India or Sri Lanka. They then return en masse in the spring to the quarries and river banks, created for them by the work of both nature and man.