Bee swarm in Cliffe? Help is a minute away.

Cliffe is a village on the northernmost tip of the Hoo Peninsula, its Thames estuary marshes the setting for the opening scene of Great Expectations and now among the most important wetland bird habitats in the south east of England. The Cliffe Pools RSPB reserve and the Higham Marshes carry sea lavender, sea aster and coastal meadow wildflowers through July and August; hawthorn and sloe are dense on the shelter-belt hedgerows of the flat peninsula plateau; and oilseed rape on the Cliffe Court and Cooling farmland gives a strong April flow across this windswept corner of north Kent.

The Medway valley fruit-growing tradition — the western part of the old Garden of England — gives apiaries south of Rochester access to extensive cherry, apple, pear and plum orchards in the Burham, Halling and Snodland areas, with a concentrated late-April to mid-May blossom flow. Oilseed rape is grown on the Hoo Peninsula plateau and the river-plain fields north of Cliffe, giving a strong April flow visible from the A228. Hawthorn is dense on the North Downs scarp hedgerows above Walderslade, Blue Bell Hill and Cuxton; the chalk downland between the Medway crossing and Bluewater carries dense blackthorn, hawthorn and field scabious. The Hoo Peninsula marshes at Cliffe Pools, Northward Hill and Cliffe Creek carry sea lavender, sea purslane and coastal meadow wildflowers through July and August — a distinctive estuarine forage note. Lime trees line the Victorian residential streets of Rochester, Chatham and Gillingham; bramble and elder are prolific on the old dockyard margins and the Medway riverside scrub. Ivy on the Rochester castle walls and the older city fabric closes the year in October.