Wild flowers.

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  • 9th April 2024 at 10:45 am #598103

    Very pleased to see our first 2024 Early Purple or Pyramidal Orchid.
    IMG_0723-compressed

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    9th April 2024 at 11:00 am #598107

    The road sides are beautiful at the moment…cowslips everywhere…amongst many other beautiful wild flowers…I hope they hold off on cutting everything back.

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    10th April 2024 at 7:18 am #598133

    Very true Marmite, we love walking the lanes in Spring. Fortunately and wisely, they do not cut the verges here until the end of Spring, just as the Oxeye daisies are going to seed. Sadly, newly emerging butterflies including the meadow browns seem to pay the price.

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    17th April 2024 at 8:45 am #598322

    We scattered quite a bit of wild flower seeds on a bank in the garden a couple of years or so ago. We do have a few flowers but it is mostly bramble and belbind.

    6th May 2024 at 8:05 am #598773

    Wonderful eight kilometre walk this weekend along our beautiful lanes and hills. Saw lots of lovely wild flowers including bluebells and this years first spotted orchid.DSC04349DSC04340

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    6th May 2024 at 9:58 am #598779

    The borders are beautiful…orchids…swathes of bluebells…magic.

    6th May 2024 at 2:55 pm #598805

    I keep trying to get wild flowers to grow in the strip of garden I have left ‘wild’ wasted a lot of money on seeds, I am trying again, if this lot don’t materialise I’ll have to give up.

    7th May 2024 at 6:39 am #598824

    Please don’t give up Fruitcake. Stop sowing expensive seeds and leave it to Mother Nature.

    7th May 2024 at 3:23 pm #598842

    I don’t intend to give up the wild strip Twinkle, just sowing the seeds. Mother Nature only gives me stinging nettles & buttercups, which are all fine, however, I am trying to get more variety for the birds & butterflies, hence the seed sowing.

    7th May 2024 at 4:41 pm #598848

    We have a 2m wildlife strip around most of our garden. It is strimmed early in the spring before any wild flowers appear and again in the autumn after they have set seed. In between that we let the wild flowers appear as they will and just pull out any troublesome brambles or wild willows. We have planted a few rhodos, camelias and hydrangeas to bulk up the boundary and give some wind protection. When we arrived there was a small patch of bluebells. Husband cuts the lowers as they seed, puts them upside down in a bucket so all the seeds fall into the bottom. The seeds are then broadcast in the wildlife strip. In this way we have created about 50m of bluebells much faster than nature would have done it.

    W tried to get some shasta daisies to grow by sowing seed but it didn’t work so I now grow them in seed trays, prick them out into modules and plant them as plug plants which works really well.

    bluebells 3

    bluebells 4

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    9th May 2024 at 8:16 am #598936

    I have bluebells but they’re not the native ones, they are the large intrusive ones, so I have to keep digging them out from where they start crushing the plants in my flower beds and transplanting them into the wild bit. I don’t tell my neighbour I do that as she is adamant they should be discarded because they are the nuisance variety. She says the same about the wild violets that keep springing up everywhere. Is she right?

    9th May 2024 at 9:17 am #598941

    Spanish bluebells are a nuisance when they invade areas of native English bluebells in the wild. I like the wild sweet violets in our wildlife strip where they are really pretty but not in my borders where they are a nightmare to dig out when they are all mixed up with my plants. It’s a case of striking a balance, one mans weed is someone else’s wildflower .

    10th May 2024 at 8:20 am #598990

    Yes, it’s the Spanish bluebells that keep appearing everywhere in this garden BM, I have to dig really deeply to get them out too and because they’re appearing in amongst my shrubs it’s difficult to get them out without upsetting the shrubs! The same with the wild violets.

    On a happy note, when inspecting my ‘wild’ strip, I can see the start of seedlings emerging! I’m excited!

    15th May 2024 at 7:13 am #599156

    Among the trees again. Lovely oxeye daisies and early spotted orchid.DSC04410DSC04402

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    15th May 2024 at 1:41 pm #599161

    I am pleased to report that I have a huge foxglove and gigantic burdock plant growing in my wild patch, so some of the wild seeds I’ve sown in the past obviously did germinate!

    As usual I can’t post photos as taken on my phone and too big.

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    30th June 2024 at 5:18 pm #601092

    This beauty has appeared in our garden and I’m certainly no expert, but my computer tells me the following.

    Verbascum thapsus, the great mullein, greater mullein or common mullein, is a species of mullein native to Europe, northern Africa, and Asia, and introduced in the Americas and Australia. It is a hairy biennial plant that can grow to 2 m tall or more. Its small, yellow flowers are densely grouped on a tall stem, which grows from a large rosette of leaves.DSC04604DSC04603

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    1st July 2024 at 5:43 pm #601136

    The burdock in all it’s glory PXL_20240701_154020832

    1st July 2024 at 5:45 pm #601137

    Well the wild strip is filling out with something – not sure all of its good but it’s definitely wild

     

    PXL_20240701_154048870PXL_20240701_154030411

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    9th July 2024 at 9:29 am #601387

    I have not cut one of our meadows this year. The number and species of wild flowers that have grown is staggering.

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