Your GARDENING FORTNIGHT
Val explains how to create your own little patch of wildflower wonder
Idon’t have a really enormous garden at Spring Cottage. It’s a third of an acre and one third of that is dedicated to fruit and vegetables. The large, rectangular stripy lawn has never been an option here, because there just isn’t enough room. Anyway, I am very keen on meadows and this is the perfect time to stand, stare and watch the many bees visiting mine. Soon I will have butterflies, for gardens with longer grass encourage many summer-flying beauties. I expect to see lolloping sooty ringlets, flighty skippers, vivid orange and brown gatekeepers and lots of meadow browns, although not necessarily in that order.
My mini-meadows are not large, sadly, and they are more in the style of horticultural meadows because they contain daffodils, camassias, cultivated orchids and an an upland fritillary, named Fritillaria pyrenaica. These bulbs self-seed among cowslips and other native flowers. I was inspired by the King’s meadows at Highgrove House and I can remember one perfect May visit when silvery-blue camassias rose above the sooty tulip ‘Queen of Night’. These pre-empted the many wildflowers.
I was also influenced by the National Trust. Some 20 years ago they were forced to rethink their mowing regime for purely financial reasons. They decided to leave most of the grass to grow and it worked visually, because they cut smart paths right through it. My mini meadows are surrounded by neatly-mown grass and this provides a sharp contrast and that makes it looks as though it’s meant to be there, not just neglected. The National Trust’s human visitors loved the new look, but so did the birds, bees and butterflies. They were drawn in by plants that had re-emerged from the seedbank, seeds that had lain dormant for decades. Others, like bugle or Ajuga reptans, were finally allowed to flower and please the bees.
Meadows like this are win-win
What had started as a financial cost-cutting exercise by the National Trust had brought back wildlife and the public loved it. When I moved here in 2005, I had already been experimenting with meadows for five years or so, encouraged by what had I had learnt from Highgrove and the National Trust.
I knew that I didn’t have to remove the topsoil with a digger, to cut fertility, as was advised by the first books that were published.
My own equipment consisted of an old battered Flymo which I used to scalp the ground on a wet early September day. Once I’d opened up bare patches, I scattered a mere handful of yellow rattle seeds given to me by a local farmer. This annual, with the yellow hooded flowers, is often called the meadow maker because it feeds on grass roots and thins the sward. This opens up gaps and allows seeds in th
