Gardening for Pollinators

Two Green Shoots

That’s what they call themselves but their real names are Kloë and Adam and they are the powerhouse team behind the Garden of Reimagination. You’ll find it just west of Glengarriff and not far from the Ewe Experience, the wonderful sculpture garden and all-round woodsy experience we’ve written about before. The Ewe is the work of Kloë’s parent, Sheena and Kurt. Put a note in your diary now for next year and make sure to plan a visit to both of these incredible gardens.

Kloë and Adam, both highly educated gardeners and conservationists, moved onto the property only three years ago and set about finding what was actually under several feet of moss, bracken and brambles. They had a strong suspicion they would find something special, because their neighbour, Jackie Cronin, now in his eighties, had told them stories about Mrs Hardstaff, who lived there in the 40s and who had been inspired by what she saw on nearby Garinish Island.

An Italianate terraced garden was what she had in mind, so Jackie and some friends were dispatched up the mountain to break out suitable rocks for the steps and paths, bringing them down on donkeys and levering them into place with iron bars. It took Adam two weeks of backbreaking digging and clearing to reveal all those stones steps. He also found little trickling ponds and lots of old plantings.

The Terrace, painstakingly constructed from stone slabs: many gardeners would declare war on the ‘weeds’ that pop up between the paving stones, but Kloë and Adam use these spaces to grow herbs. Here’s Kloë pointing to some special Alpine Mint that seems to have adapted well to this micro-environment

These Two Green Shoots, Kloë and Adam, have a philosophy rooted in a dedication to conservation and in their own passionate beliefs about gardening. Everything, they decided, should be edible, to the extent possible. So they have taken the underlying Italianate Terraces and added layers of edible plants. Some of these are familiar to us and some of them definitely aren’t!

From the top: Nasturtiums and a miniature Fuchsia – very pretty but also edible

At the same time, they are conscious of their West Cork location and have tried to preserve as many of the native trees, shrubs and plants as possible, reflecting that sense of place that makes each garden a part of its particular environment. Everything grows so quickly here, says Adam, although getting enough light in can be a challenge.

From the top: Natural tracery filters light through the trees; a trellis constructed from materials to hand in the garden; Adam’s perennial wildflower patches, newly mown and raked as per best practice as described in One Acre – Three Years On

We attended their Open Day yesterday, a fundraiser for the Save Bantry Bay Kelp Forest campaign. Adam led us on a tour of the garden and then Kloë fed and watered us with cakes and muffins featuring botanical ingredients. We wore masks and kept social distancing in mind and there was a limit on numbers, so it all felt quite personalised and there was lots of time to ask questions.

The sheer variety of edible plants is a revelation. Many of them of course, would have been familiar to our ancestors (anyone for nettle soup?) while others would have been used for ornamentation rather than grown for their nourishment value (nasturtiums, for example).

From the top: Comfrey is a familiar edible and medicinal plant, but the Prickly Ash was a surprise, especially when we learned the berries are what we know as Szechuan Peppers – a key ingredient of Chinese cooking

Adam talked us through many of the plants he grows, some for their leaves, some for their flowers and buds (day lilies – who knew!) and some for their berries or seeds. Some, indeed, for all three, like the Chilean Guava that grows in neat little shrubs and make a great topiary plant.

From the top: I’ve forgotten the name of this gorgeous plant but do remember it’s the seeds that are collected. Chilean Guava is one of the new favourites of top chefs – a delicious alternative to blueberries or cranberries

We are all conscious now of the need to feed and preserve our pollinators and Adam spoke frequently about plants in terms of their attractiveness to bees and butterflies. We certainly saw evidence of both – and another little critter as well (below).

One of the surprises of the day was to find out how readily tea grows here – yes, tea, that most beloved of Irish beverages, and as Adam says, your good old Barry’s tea, nothing exotic. It’s a little tricky – apparently it hates being moved and will go off in a huff if you disturb it – but now they have the hang of it, it’s coming along nicely, although it probably won’t grow as tall as it does in Sri Lanka.

The tea is the tall plant with shiny leaves, and the prolific plant on the left is Woodruff 

Kloë has her mother’s artistic flair and there are nature-sculptures and special spaces off to the side all over the place. They have developed a B and B business as well, with attractive rooms in the house and a Botanical Tent in the Garden for anyone with a yen for the glamping experience.

The Garden of Reimagination is a work in progress, still very much under development. I look forward to returning many times, since it’s clear there is a long-term vision at work here and all kind of plans for the future. If you get the chance yourself – jump at it!

And Kloë – thank you – that tea is delicious!

One Acre – Three Years On

I’ve been documenting all the wildflowers on my acre in West Cork. I started three years ago with the first post, simply called One Acre and then updated it two years ago with One Acre – One Year On.

The only actual gardening I do is to maintain a herb bed. Apart from that, we get the grass cut and the hedges trimmed occasionally, and a great neighbourhood kid comes to do some very select ‘weeding’ where it’s absolutely necessary. I don’t really believe in the whole notion of ‘weeds’ but I reluctantly accept that we have to keep some areas clear.

Growing in the lawn, from the top: Bird’s-foot Trefoil, Self-heal, White Clover; Bog Pimpernel and Self-heal; Heath Speedwell; the spectacular male flowers of Sheep’s Sorrel

Apart from that I have two approaches. The first is driven by my desire to keep the place as non-manicured as possible and Robert’s desire to have it looking reasonably tidy, or at least not abandoned. This approach is to cut the grass as seldom as I can get away with, leaving all the lawn flowers to flourish in between the cuts. I also leave the boreen/right of way above the house uncut all summer, as this is where the Chamomile (below) grows most abundantly and as it’s getting rarer in Ireland I feel privileged to have it.

The second approach is to set aside part of the garden as a perennial wildflower meadow (below). In planning and maintaining this meadow I have followed best practise as laid out by various experts in creating pollinator-friendly spaces and I am delighted with the results.

I started with a grassy slope and simply didn’t cut it for the first summer. In the autumn I had it cut and thoroughly raked. This is an important step – if you leave the cutting in the grass it fertilises or enriches it, and what you want is soil that is as impoverished as possible.

Above, from the top: Oxeye Daisy; Field Wood-rush; Cat’s-ear

The following summer I just let it grow and it seemed to flourish with all sorts of grasses coming up, as well as Knapweed, Oxeye Daisies, thistles, Sheep’s-bit, Ribwort Plantain, White and Red Clover, Cat’s-ear, and lots of Bird’s-foot Trefoil.

Above, from the top: Red Clover; White Clover; Bird’s-foot Trefoil; Sheep’s-bit; A Painted Lady Butterfly and a Bumblebee on Knapweed

That autumn I had it cut and raked again but this time I introduced the only intervention that the meadow has received. Once the grass was cut and raked I broadcast Yellow Rattle seeds (bought from wildflowers.ie which guarantees to only sell native Irish seeds). Yellow Rattle (below) is a magical wildflower. It parasitises on the roots of the grasses, thinning them out and creating more bare patches where wild seeds can land and germinate. Although it does grow in the wild in West Cork it would be hard to find and harvest enough seed for my meadow.

We have lots of birds who visit our garden but I had never seen pigeons there until I sowed the Yellow Rattle. It was like a shout went out, and they descended in flocks, pecking away at all my precious seeds, with me inside banging on the windows or racing out to chase them away. I needn’t have worried too much – they left enough seeds to have a really good showing the following spring. They self-sow readily and I have now had two seasons of Yellow Rattle working away to reduce the tough grass roots.

Above: I still have lots of grass, of course – an amazing variety – and a vast extent of Ribwort Plantain

I said above this was the only intervention I have made in the meadow, but now that I think of it I have also dug out some large dock plants as it does tend to take over. I have since read that this may have been the wrong things to do as its almost impossible to get all the roots.

Above, from the top: Navelwort; Lady’s-mantle; Knapweed about to emerge; Common Ramping-fumitory; Common Milkwort

We have a gravel driveway, rock walls, a stone terrace with steps, and a small patch of trees and ivy and all provide habitat for wildflowers (above) that spring up unbidden from time to time, some welcome (like Corn Spurrey and the Sharp-leaved Fluellen which is an endangered species) and some not so welcome (like the Verbena bonariensis that is fast becoming a ‘possibly invasive’ species).

Above, from the top: Sharp-leaved Fluellen; Verbena bonariensis; Corn Spurrey

You’ve probably seen photographs of annual wildflower meadows (as opposed to my perennial meadow) full of brilliantly coloured poppies, cornflowers and corn marigolds. What they don’t tell you about these kinds of meadows is that firstly they are a lot of work and have to be re-done every year and secondly that you have to be really careful where you get the seeds as many companies sell imported mixes (marketed as ‘bee-bombs’, for example) which do not serve our native insects well and which have the potential for introducing invasive species. My friend Jack has done a brilliant job on his annual meadow, sowing only native seeds from Sandro Caffola at Wildflowers.ie and the results are spectacular (below).

It takes a bit of a mindset change to see beauty in a perennial wildflower meadow and an acre of land where wildflowers are prioritised. Accustomed as we are to equating a well-mown lawn with tidiness and good management, it might be difficult to look at an expanse of Daisies, Cat’s-ear and Autumn Hawkbit and Smooth Sowthistle (all of which look more or less like dandelions), Bird’s-foot Trefoil and Self-heal and not see ‘weeds’ and neglect.

Above from the top: English Stonecrop; Self-heal; an uncommon white form of Self-heal

But that shift in our perspective? We all need to make it now, if we want to save our pollinators.