Perennial Wildflower Meadow

Weeds: A Matter of Perspective

A weed is a wildflower whose name we haven’t learned yet, in the same way that a stranger is a friend we haven’t met yet. Like the hogweed above – a plant, by the way, that is in the top ten percent of the most nectar-rich and valuable-for-pollinator wild plants, a plant that is also edible by humans and animals – ‘weeds’ are plants we mostly love to hate.

Ah yes – weeds! Those wreckers of manicured lawns and tidy driveways. Those nasty undesirables that must be dug up or, as with the seldom-used holiday home above, Rounded-Up. 

But wait – what’s this? All over Ireland people are letting the ‘weeds’ take over! Just look at this fabulous example at the Heron Gallery on the Sheep’s Head (above). It’s like we’ve had a mad rush of blood to the head and are changing life-long attitudes. What has caused this? Was it the pandemic, like we account for so many other changes in our lives? 

Mostly, it’s down to the incredible work of the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan, a program devised by the National Biodiversity Data Centre and two lead researchers, Dr Úna FitzPatrick of the Centre and Prof Jane Stout of Trinity College. (I had the immense pleasure of a day with Úna recently.) It’s been very successful, with many county and town councils signing up and pledging to implement pollinator-friendly horticultural and agricultural practices. For the last few years, The National Tidy Towns Handbook is on board too, with an emphasis on native species and pollinator-friendly planting.

And this is urgent!

Pollinators are in decline, with one-third of our 98 wild bee species threatened with extinction from the island of Ireland. The problem is serious and requires immediate attention to ensure the sustainability of our food, avoid additional economic impact on the agricultural sector, and protect the health of the environment. 

Working together for Biodiversity:
Tales from the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan 2015-2020

Each of us with any little patch of ground can do our bit too. All you have to do is set aside whatever portion of your garden you’re comfortable with (10%? 50%?) and turn it into a perennial wildflower patch. I’ve been doing this in my garden (above) now since 2017, so this is my 6th year. in 2018 I introduced Yellow Rattle from seeds bought from Sandro Cafolla at The National Wildflower Seed Collection. Called the meadow maker, Yellow Rattle (below) parasitises on grass roots, thinning them out and providing space for other wild seeds to take root. Apart from that, I have had to keep an eye on incursions of bracken and nettles. 

The results have been all that I hoped for. Every day I am tempted out to my little mini-meadow with my camera. The rest of the lawn I try to leave as long as possible between cuts and it’s amazing what comes up there too. Take a look at my video, Lying in the Grass, for a sense of the sheer wonder and variety of what has appeared all over my One Acre.

The driveway and all around the house is gravelled and I have resisted the temptation to tidy it up in any way. In return, a huge variety of wildflowers have appeared – Groundsel and Pineapple-weed, Scarlet and Yellow Pimpernel, Silverweed, Cat’s-ear and Autumn Hawkbit, Germander and Thyme-leaved Speedwells, Herb-Robert and Keel-fruited Cornsalad, Dove’s-foot and Cut-leaved Crane’s-bills, Common and Bush Vetch, Sowthistles (Prickly and Smooth), Sheep’s-bit, Sorrels and Chamomile. 

I even discovered a rare little plant popping up in my driveway – the gorgeous and curious Sharp-leaved Fluellen. According to the distribution maps it’s been slowly making its way west from Wexford over the years – but how on earth did it land in my driveway? It’s a mystery like that, that keeps me fascinated with wildflowers.

See what I did there? I named the ‘weeds’ – and naming something gives it presence and personality. Once you know the name, there’s a natural curiosity to know more about the plant itself and to keep an eye on it. Thus, they turn into old friends and your heart lifts as you watch a Painted Lady Butterfly feeding on the humble Knapweed, or a Bumble Bee hover over the vetch, choosing which blossom to settle on.

We need to adjust our notions of what’s beautiful if we are to avoid a biodiversity catastrophe. Each one of us can do something to help. If you want to grow your own perennial wildflower patch, there are simple steps you can take – see my posts on my One Acre (then, One Year on, Three Years on, and Four Years On) for what I have done, or follow the Guidance of the Pollinator Plan.

Here’s what NOT to do – don’t buy ‘Bee Bombs’ or packets of ‘wildflower mix’ seeds. As this excellent paper puts it: Wildflower seed mixtures do not help address biodiversity loss. Rather, they cause further disruption to what remains of the natural environment. Follow best practice – mow once a year and remove the cuttings, try to keep down nettles, dock and bracken (and Ragwort if it’s threatening to take over) – and then let it be. Every now and then, go lie down in the grass beside it and listen for buzzing.

And if you’re a keen gardener and want to just make your garden more pollinator-friendly – there’s a guide for that too!

One Acre – Four Years On

Since I decided to try to grow a wildflower meadow, I’ve been documenting the wildflowers on my one West Cork Acre each year. You can chart my progress by taking a look at One Acre, One Acre – One Year On, and One-Acre Three Years On. (Hmmm – what happened to Two Years on?) 

I’ve found new flowers and learned something new each year and this year was no exception. I’ve set aside a portion of my garden as a perennial wildflower meadow. My strategy, based on my reading of best practice, is not to cut it until the autumn, and then cut and rake it once everything has more or less finished blooming. The raking is important, since leaving the cut grass fertilises the soil, and what you want in a wildflower meadow is soil that is as impoverished as possible.

A perennial wildflower meadow is what happens when you provide minimal intervention – just sit back and let whatever comes up, some up. But when a lawn has had years of cutting, and the grass is thick, one intervention that is recommended is to scatter the seeds of Yellow Rattle (above and below), a native wildflower that helps keep the grasses sparse, allowing other flowers to gain a foothold among those thick, tough roots.

This year, the meadow flourished. The Yellow Rattle had seeded itself very successfully last autumn – so much so that I was wondering if I now needed to thin it a bit – oh the irony. Along came my young friend Niamh and patiently harvested as much of the seed as we thought she should. Some of it went to her house, and the rest I scattered an area of the meadow I seemed to have missed before. 

The other thing that happened was that I discovered that bracken had invaded part of the meadow (above). Left unchecked, bracken will take over and choke out everything else. It’s an important plant in its natural habitat and provides food and shelter for several invertebrate species – but it’s vital to manage it in a situation like this, if you can. Niamh pulled out what she could and stamped down the rest. I will need to keep on top of this or my meadow will drown in bracken.

The wildflower meadow is only small one part of our One Acre. For the rest, I try to cut as little as possible and just about every day I wander around, trying to record what’s coming up. I was so entranced at what was happening in May that I made a little slideshow called Lying in the Grass. Here it is again – every single flower was photographed in one week in May this year, all on my one acre .

The months of June and July are the height of the wildflower season and all parts of the acre sprout flowering plants – the lawns, the stone walls, the hedges, the gravel driveway and the boreen that our neighbour uses to get his cattle across the top of our property – it’s where the Chamomile grows.

I continue to be delighted at what comes up all over our acre – the colour and variety is amazing, and I feel like I am doing my part for our pollinators. But mostly it’s just – beautiful!