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Frog Blog...
June 2010
Though the first day of June gave us a final blast of wind and wintry cold, we now have a few days of a classic "flaming June". I'm sitting in a country garden in the vale of York, with a dozen house sparrow nests chirrupping in the ivy behind me, and the sun at 8am is already warm.
June is the month when everybody wants a wildflower meadow in their garden, and we've come to Wheldrake Ings, in the beautiful derwent valley in Yorkshire, one of the biggest remaining flower-rich hay meadows in England, to have a look. Walking through the ings (an-old English word for a riverside meadow which floods in winter), you can see why meadows are so beloved, with the sights and smells of the clovers and ragged robins, the dog-daisys and the fox-tail grass, stretching away to the distant riverbank. And the sound of curlews calling overhead.
But look around - the key feature of a meadow is its openness. No overhanging trees, no shade. Full sun all day. And this wide-open shadeless space is just not available in a London garden, except sometimes in the middle of the lawn, or the patio, and this not usually the chosen spot for a wildflower meadow.
So what we do is, in the best English gardening tradition, we imitate nature, using shade-tolerant flowers which, used in the right combination, with ornamental grasses, create the same effect, the same look as a wildflower meadow. Cranesbill geraniums and foxgloves, felicia and bur-marigold, jacobs ladder and centaurea, centranthus and red campion, all of which are native wildflower species, all do well in partial shade, and are all attractive to bees and butterflies.
Look at some of our meadow planting in "planting gallery".
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