Our meadows are at their shimmering finest in June. It is truly lovely to see visitors pause as they enter the garden and witness their delight at the sight of the drifts of wildflowers under the apple trees.
I could wax lyrical about the waftiness of it, the finger-tip temptation of tactile grasses and the hum of bees sipping nectar (Click here to see the video :-). ). But I'm a practical soul, not a poet, and what most people really want to know when they encounter our meadows is ‘How did you create it?’ Here's how…
Eighteen years ago, the orchard was a wonky double row of fruit trees, with a plain mown lawn beneath it. Each tree was set in a circle cut out of the lawn and topped with gravel. It looked utterly dull, and maintaining it was a tedious and time-consuming chore.
Inspired by the meadows leading to the main entrance at Great Dixter, I figured that a perennial wildflower meadow would be prettier, more wildlife friendly, and save hours of mowing time each week. In February 2009 I hired a turf cutter and a rotavator, stripped off most of the turf and lightly scuffed the surface. I then sowed a seed mix of perennial and annual wildflowers, without grass seed, bought in bulk from a wildflower seed supplier. I knew that the scraped-off grass would re-grow, but figured the wildflowers would get a head start on it if sown into bare soil. And that's pretty much what happened.
In that first year, the annual wildflowers flowered; the field poppies (above), cornflowers, corn marigold and corncockle. But these are not hay meadow wildflowers, these are the wildflowers of annual field crops, of cornfields, as their common names suggest. They follow the plough and need bare soil to germinate and grow. We didn't see them again in this area, as expected, but we did collect a lot of seed to use elsewhere.
As the grass recovered, the perennial wildflowers held their ground and have since steadily built up over the years, spreading and seeding where it suits them. It's not uniform - near the hedge where it is shadier, taller umbellifers and large meadow cranesbills hold sway. In the sun, it's the ox-eye daisies, clovers and hawkweeds that shine.
Over the summer, we leave it be, allow the seed to fall, let the grasses turn tawny then blonde. And then we cut the whole thing down in early September, using a strimmer first, raking it up as we go, then the mower on its highest setting, working it down over the course of a week or so until it's as short as we dare. We try to finish it before the apples start to fall. Scraping rotten apples out of the long grass isn't a lot of fun, especially once the wasps find them. Yes, it is hard work, but much less work over the course of a year than mowing the whole orchard every week.
For early spring, I've planted a few hundred Narcissus ‘Hawera’ which push up through the grass ahead of the main meadow regrowth. I also planted a few hundred crocuses too, which we see for a day or two before our resident population of marauding wood pigeons feast on them, or trample them down. They are far and away our biggest pest, doing more damage than squirrels or pheasants here.
So that's the story. Which suffices for most, but some inquisitive souls want to know more, such as…
‘Did you weedkill the grass before you scraped it off?’
No. Grasses are the essential part of a meadow - I wanted them to grow back once the flowering plants had had a chance to germinate. And using weedkiller to kill grass before planting a ‘wildlife friendly’ meadow strikes me as contrary to the principle of the whole idea.
‘Do you remove the grass clippings when you cut it down?’
Yes, we rake it all off and take it away. Keeping the fertility down helps the wildflowers that thrive in poor soils.
‘Do you have yellow rattle in your meadow - what does it do?’
Yes we do. It's a self-seeding annual and is semi-parasitic on grasses, so it weakens them and gives the flowering plants more space. In the collage picture above, it's the one top right. Of course, it must have been a troublesome weed for our forebears who were just trying to grow good grass to feed their animals.
‘My meadow is full of nettles/docks/marestail/clover/ground elder… How do I get rid of it?’
Look closely at the collage picture above. In at least four of them you can see the fern-like stems of horsetail (Equisetum arvense). Removing it would be completely impossible - it roots down to around two metres. And it does add a lovely frothy backdrop to the flowers. Meadows will eventually be what they will be - that is the point. Sow what you want, but in the end, the flora that is happy in your soil will stay, plants that aren't happy will disappear, and new arrivals that like it will move in. If you really don't like what grows in your meadow, you've really got two choices - accept it or do something completely different :-).
'Are wild flowers better for insects than cultivated plants'?'
Yes-but/no-but/probably, but….
When I look around my garden, there seem to me to be more bees of every kind, and more butterflies, on the cultivated plants than on the flowers in the meadow. But that's partly because of the type of cultivated plants we choose to grow. We almost always opt for single, simple flowers, rather than double flowers. Single flowers tend to have intact nectaries and anthers, full of sugars and pollen, whereas double flowers often don't. Also we grow plants that thrive in our temperate climate, so are suited to the types of insects that also live here. Some tropical plants, for example, have very long throats, suited to humming birds and very large moths with long tongues and are the wrong shape for our bees - though they have worked out ways round this. I have watched a bumble bee bite a hole in the side of a Salvia flower to get to the nectar at the base of the flower.
Butterflies in particular love the pink Echinaceas that grow here, crowding around the top of the cone to feed. When it comes to feeding, insects head for abundance and ease of access. But breeding is another matter. Here, the larvae rely on very specific food plants to fatten up. Peacock butterflies will happily feed on Buddleias, Rudbeckias and Echinaceas, but the caterpillars need nettles to feed on.
Just to check, I wandered around the garden after work this evening, enjoying the late afternoon light. I quickly spotted honey bees on three hardy Geraniums and a fat bumble bee burying its head in the pea-shaped flowers of Baptisia ‘Solar Flare’. I don't think you can see it in the picture though. So no, you don't have to choose one or the other. If you can do both, so much the better.
And finally… ‘How often do you go and sit on that seat and just enjoy the meadow?’
Not as often as I should. Enticing though, isn't it?
