The 2021 Wildflower photo galleries are not working on the new website as there is no software update available.  Older posts have been archived and can be viewed here

https://www.exmouthallotments.co.uk/j3-archives/index.php/blogs/wildflower-garden-blog

As the green fades to brown in the garden and the yellow rattle finishes shedding its seeds, early August is the right time for mowing the wildflower garden.  Traditionally, meadows were mown to provide hay for livestock during the winter months and animals such as cows or sheep were allowed to graze the stubble left behind in the meantime.

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With parts of the allotment looking like green cobwebs and others flattened by inclement weather, 2021 has not produced the aesthetic effect I’d hoped for in the garden.  On the other hand, wildlife has not been discouraged in the slightest and – where scrambling plants haven’t smothered everything – there have been some patches where the flowers have managed to put on quite an attractive display of colour.

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I’m standing in the garden on a hot, sticky day in June just pondering.  Something’s definitely not right.  After the months of careful planting and weeding, I should be able to relax now that everything is in flower or just on the cusp, but instead I am more concerned than ever.  It’s not that things haven’t grown, rather that they’ve grown too well.  Over the years, I’ve been watching the plants grow progressively shorter as the regular mowing and removal of cuttings gradually reduced the fertility of the soil and I wasn’t expecting that trend to change.  Ideally, I should have a patch that’s little bigger than knee height, yet here I am faced with a common knapweed that’s practically tickling me under the chin and it’s not the only one.

Like a bad Hollywood sequel, April’s drought was followed swiftly by May’s deluge and that cold wind still blustered on, dampening my enthusiasm for a spot of gardening.  The weather had the opposite effect on my plants, with that thorough soaking effectively acting as rocket fuel for the various shoots and stems of the garden, which shot up several inches during the gloomiest weather when I didn’t want to get out of bed, never mind the house.  Regardless of my misgivings, I still had a lot of planting to get on with as I’d received my order of 70 flower plugs this month and they needed attending to straight away thanks to a delay at the depot.

April has been a challenging month weather-wise, with Saharan dust blown away by polar winds that gave way to a lengthy dry spell which has left many plants in the garden with a noticeable purplish tinge of distress to their leaves.   

The advent of spring finds me crouched over, rummaging through the grass on a pleasantly bright and mild day, whilst a wren trills exuberantly from the nearby hedgerow and a red-tailed bumblebee drones around me searching for early sources of nectar.

With the weather intent on alternately freezing and drenching us, it’s something of a relief for me that February is a quiet month for a wildflower garden.  Only in this last week am I beginning to see the first cotyledons of hope sprouting among the grasses, but it’s impossible to tell what’s growing at such an early stage.  All of this gives me an opportunity to fill in some details about the history of the project:

Welcome to the inaugural blog for the newly dedicated Hamilton Lane wildflower garden.  The aim of this project is to grow a range of native flowers and fine grasses that will provide year round food and / or shelter for a diverse array of species from invertebrates to mammals.

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This is very much a work in progress and creating a meadow-like habitat on an allotment site poses many challenges.  What’s more I am learning as I go, so I’ll be making a monthly diary of what’s worked and what hasn’t, as well as talking about what’s growing and who’s visiting.  I’ll probably also leave a few comments about wildlife and conservation in general along the way.

You may be wondering why we need a wildflower garden when there are already so many marvellous blooms on display at Hamilton Lane.  Well, one crucial difference is that this habitat will be providing food for the larval stages of creatures such as the butterflies and moths that don’t like munching prized vegetables and another is that the relatively undisturbed earth allows a bit of peace for the many creatures such as grasshoppers that spend the winter in the soil as eggs or pupae.

There are so many more wildlife benefits to the wildflower garden, but I’d better not ramble on, so I’ll discuss them all in future instalments as the seasons unfold.