Newbie needing advice

[Jacqui Hyde]

We haven't done this before and we're looking for advice about wildflower gardening.

Since 2017, we've mown this area once a year in autumn. The grass was too vigorous for many other plants to compete. Autumn 2020, we mowed very short and sowed UK wildflower seeds. Last summer, there were a few yellow rattle plants, but only a few other flowers. This summer, we have a dense forest of yellow rattle and much less vigorous grass. The photos were taken a few weeks ago when there was still plenty of greenery!

What would you do next to encourage biodiversity?

[Paul O]

Hi Jacqui

I've been experimenting with wildflower patches in our garden for a few years, starting with rough, grassy ground. If you wanted quick results you would probably remove the topsoil or spray herbicide, neither of which I wanted to do, so I did a cut in the autumn just before sowing a general purpose wildflower mix, then another cut at the end of winter/early spring. These cuts must be low enough to be almost scalping the surface (I'm always surprised by the volume of cuttings that have to be removed). Any bare patches would be good for native poppy seeds.

Yellow rattle has done very well in the last few years, even in our wetter areas, I think because it's been very dry in spring. Some wildflower seeds may take a few years to germinate, so it's important to keep on with the autumn and early spring cutting/removing.

A few years ago we had a bit of sloping garden terraced, leaving one area of compacted, low-fertility soil, and this has been the best area for wildflowers: all I do is a bit of scything in autumn and a low mow in early spring, and occasionally pull out any perennial plants we don't want to take-over, such as brambles, and this smallish patch looks great every summer, with yellow rattle, knapweed, betony, yarrow and many others in profusion, and lots of insects from grasshoppers to butterflies using it.

The most colourful area has been where some digger work had to stop prematurely because of the wet weather, so we had a load of municipal compost delivered and spread it over the bumpy patch to smooth it out. We rolled-in a commercial 100% cornfield wildflower mix and got something like this:-


The seed suppliers offer lots of information about managing areas like this, but it can get quite complicated and we like to keep things as easy as possible, so this patch has changed over the years, with oxeye daisies dominating, then other perennials such as pink campion and rosebay willowherb, along with some poppies and the occasional corncockle, and it's up to us to make selective cuts at different times if we want to change the appearance.

I think it's best to start small, rather than trying to create a whole field of wildflowers in one go, unless you are happy to spend large anounts on contactors and sacks of seed, and lots of time on maintenance.

[Amy]

Hi Jacqui. It sounds as if you are doing everything right as evidenced by your reward of a dense forest of rattle. Congratulations. I think you will see a huge difference over the next 3 - 5 years, when the former rattle patches are colonised by other plants.

It can however all take A Lot of Time which is hard to accept, accustomed as we are to instant gratification.

Some thoughts on seeds and, below, some ideas for positive actions:

It is well worth taking photos of the various areas, at different times of each year, or even counting plants within a random meter quadrant each year, as a record of the changes. It will encourage you when progress seems, but only seems, to be slow.

Successful seed germination leading to mature flowering plants, is, I think, more of a dodgy process than some of us expect. An open field with grass cover cannot give the same results as a cosseted seedtray with sterile compost. The old saying to sow One seed for the birds, One for the mouse, One for the crow, One to rot, And One to grow, in my opinion, wildly overestimates the potential for success. Consider a dandelion clock, or the hundreds of seeds produced by a mature knapweed plant, or a wild bramble, and yet we are not inundated with dandelions, and to my eyes, brambles spread more readily by tip rooting their stems rather than by seed, so I think the vast percentage of seeds produced by any plant must fail to successfully germinate and successfully grow on to produce another flowering plant.

I've found that germination success from some plants seems to take ages, at least 3 - 5 years to show as visible flowering plants. As an example, I'm thinking of common fleabane, the yellow one. For 10 years I have had large masses of it which are spreading rapidly by runners, and every year the fleabane produces millions of seeds on 1000s of flower heads. Only in this 10th year have I seen new separate areas colonised with a few young plants, which I think can only have been spread by seed.

There are other examples of plants which seem to produce masses of seed which apparently fails, and I'm thinking here of my experience with hemp agrimony, the tall dusky pink one. I introduced a few hemp agrimony plug plants about 7 years ago, and these plants produce masses of seed each year, but there is no visible spread anywhere else. This is surprising, as the plant grows on densely vegetated road verges in the area.

Others, such as knapweed, buttercup, or meadow vetchling and greater birds foot trefoil, seem to set seed readily, and one can see the young plants bulk up year by year. (All the plants I mention grow on acid soil in wet North Devon. Your local plants in Gloucester will be quite different species, so don't worry about the names, I just mention them as examples from my personal experience.)

Many of my most 'successful' aka rampant plants spread vegetatively eg watermint, fleabane, meadow sweet, silverweed, white clover, creeping buttercup. They appeared naturally with no intervention from me other than changing the management to stop all year round grazing.

I have hand spread both dried commercial seeds and home produced seeds on bare patches and molehills each year, and all the commercially produced seed mix seems to have completely failed, apart from a few rattle plants - such a huge disappointment at the time, though from what I have learned from David Crook's topic: Buy local seed wherever possible viewtopic.php?p=60#p60 backed up by an ecologist's advice to me - the failure of my bought in seed was probably a very good thing as there was plenty in the natural seed bed) - and there has been limited success from the home gathered seeds (but thinking back to that tiny percentage of success, I have probably been expecting far too much). The proffered solution from an ecologist to me, has been to Limit the Extent of Grass Cover, by Mowing, which you are already doing (and the forest of yellow rattle will also probably be key for you (apparently rattle is not key for my site which has very poor soil naturally.))

Increasing biodiversity: this really depends on the amount of work you are willing to undertake and the extent of your meadow area.
Some suggestions:

- Mow a new strip and collect the grass, every 3 weeks/once a month/whatever, progressing along the meadow. This was once recommended to me by Steve Pollard, and I think it is brilliant advice. Autumn flowers will be encouraged by mowing in the spring, spring flowers by mowing in the late summer. It will also give you a variety of sward heights within your area, each one suiting some sort of wildlife. It does mean that you have to grit your teeth and sacrifice some flowerheads in the particular strip you are mowing at that particular time, (but the roots remain and the leaves will bulk up) and it is all for the greater longterm good. I suppose another downside would be that you take out some of the rattle as well, but perhaps it might be practical to avoid those patches of growing rattle within the strip? Cutting ongoing strips also spreads the toil of the main cutting and clearing task into bite size pieces. Or - as Paul O says, make selective cuts. I strim selected patches of cocksfoot and moor grass, and problem plants such as water hemlock dropwort, and I will be mowing and pulling some of the fleabane in the future so that it does not take over. Or - if your meadow is large enough and you have stock proof fencing and water available, you could put some grazing animals into it for the spring and summer. Just enough animals to eat down the majority of the grass, but not enough to strip it. Have a look at the resources section of this site and the Moor Meadows site for further info. I've posted about my experience with horses lightly grazing for 2 months on another topic elsewhere here - they didn't eat the rattle. However your dense forest of rattle may be so effective that you don't need to do any extra mowing or grazing at all..

- Have one area if you can afford to spare it - of nettles and a brash pile, (branches, garden cuttings, logs,) but only if your soil is not very rich. Brash piles which are great for hedgehogs and invertebrates, do breed brambles, and sometimes nettles, so you might wish to think about the siting, and whether you want the work of controlling them. However your neighbouring hedges might already have plenty of nettles and brambles.

- Leave any dead trees or bushes standing if safe. If the meadow is part of your garden, it might be best to reduce the risk of honey fungus and remove/stump grind any dead or felled tree roots, just the roots, and then the rest of the tree could be logged up and the logs left in a stack if you have room. I personally wouldn't worry about honey fungus in a field situation, generally, I leave dead trees alone for nature to take its course.

- Watch out for ash trees if you have any - I've found it is best to consult a tree surgeon earlier rather than later - if the ash dieback has progressed too far, the trees are unsafe for the tree surgeons to climb. In order to leave dying trees pollarded at say 5 m high, the tree surgeon has to climb the tree. I have had some dying ash pollarded, so that when they eventually fall they don't do too much damage, but there is dead wood left for the wildlife in the meantime.

- Collect seed from nearby hedges and laybys. (Not near new roads where the highways authority may have spread rich soil and sown seed of a faraway provenance.) Sow seeds of your favourite plants (from local areas) to germinate in pots/seed trays with exhausted compost (compost from pots which have had plants in them and the nutrients have been used up) and leave the trays outside all year. Some seeds need the winter cold to trigger germination. Plant the new plants out in the spring whilst the soil is still moist* or in early autumn. Likewise take cuttings or divisions of your favourite plants to grow on as plug plants and plant out next year. (*Update - I have since read that Butterfly Conservation recommends that plug plants are planted out in the autumn. It depends on whether one's soil remains damp in the summer or not - see the forum Plug Plants on this website.)

- Look at the trees which grow naturally near you, and plant one or two for the wild life. You might find free seedlings or berries in leaf litter on the roads. Willows, hazels and hawthorn are brilliant for wildlife. Watch out for blackthorn or dogwood which sucker and create a lot of maintenance work. Cut your hedges every 3 years in rotation, or 1/3 each year, with a batter, i.e wider at the base and tapering in towards the top.

- Leave a margin of longer grass next to your hedges. (I can't see one in your photo) i.e only cut the grass alongside your hedgerows (in a strip of 1 - 3 or 4 m wide depending on how much space you can spare) once every 3 years or so in rotation. (I watch a fox pouncing on voles in the tufted longer grass on spring mornings.) A variety of field margin widths gives a variety of habitats and offers more opportunities to different wildlife species (voles, mice, beetles, butterflies, etc etc) - some experts recommend a scalloped edge = irregular widths of long grass alongside the hedgerow. Leaving a margin or longer vegetation allows you to leave old plant stems standing for insects to overwinter in, and if you leave flower seed heads, eg knapweed, in these margins, the birds will feed on them, perhaps in the autumn, which they, the birds, might not be able to do if all the seedheads were cut earlier with the rest of the meadow in late summer.

- Place open fronted nest boxes and bird boxes with holes at different heights and in both open and private places, and plant common ivy, on both fences and trees, and plant native honeysuckle in the hedges if you don't already have it.

- Create a bank/heap of bare soil in a sunny south facing spot = this is good for all sorts of invertebrates - but you will have the work of keeping it clear of vegetation.

- if you leave some cardboard or something similar on the ground, to block out the light and eventually kill some unwanted plant without using chemicals, (gardening practice), this can prove irresistible to snoozing slow worms. I weigh the cardboard down with old logs and small branches.

- if you can spare the space, leave your mown grass to rot down in a big heap for a year or at least for the summer and autumn - grass snakes, which are harmless to humans, would love to lay their eggs in it. Spiders love it.

- Leave any leaf litter collected from the garden in a heap. A pile of stones or bricks could be left in a corner. (watch out for brambles colonising it.)

- Dig a pond or ditch. The ponds charity at https://freshwaterhabitats.org.uk/ gives advice. Even ponds and ditches which dry out are valuable.

I second Paul O's suggestion - don't try to do the whole lot at once, just do a little bit each year.

Enjoy and keep taking those photos. Please update us on your progress in a year or more's time!

(PS - Feeling that this post illustrates my amateur ignorance, I did a little digging and have posted some basic info on plant succession, which I found helpful, on the forum topic of Soil, here: viewtopic.php?f=73&t=456&p=1222#p1222)

(PPS - visit your local coronation meadow - http://coronationmeadows.org.uk/coronat ... estershire, and other Wildlife Trust Meadows near to you, such as https://www.gloucestershirewildlifetrus ... ol-meadows, as these will inspire you. You might also get in touch with Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust and see if they have any dried seed, or for next year, green hay seeds (see elsewhere on this website and the Plantlife meadows website for discussions about green hay), but you may not need further seeds: anything growing naturally in your soil will probably be far stronger and better adapted to your site than anything introduced.)

[Jane W]

Just to pick up on one of the ideas suggested for improving biodiversity, which was the idea of a bank or patch/es of bare soil. I had a pile of sand on a tarpaulin sitting on the grass for a long time...and was really surprised how many insects were using this. Mainly to burrow into and nest.

I Recently looked into the life cycle of oil beetles. They lay their eggs on plants ( celandine), and the larvae hatch and feed on it. When solitary bees visit the celandine to feed, the hatched larvae crawl onto their fur and are carried to their burrow, where they live out the next stage of their life cycle in the bee burrow. A fascinating and complicated relationship.
But it made me very aware of how few bare earth patches we had, to provide nesting burrows for solitary bees ( and probably lots of other insects too). I noticed them competing for the small patches of bare earth on pathways.
Its not that easy to keep bare patches on banks or in fields, especially in the sun.
I find best places for bare soil can be under trees ( where celandine also grows), under bracken or bramble patches or sometimes steep banks or earth hedges, and of course on pathways where continuous use by animals or people keeps the ground bare.
Amy mentions putting cardboard or similar over a piece of ground to create new bare patches, and this is an interesting idea...and certainly the slow worms would be glad of that too.
When I finally used up my aforementioned sand, and removed the tarpaulin ( after about 18 months in situ) it was completely bare. Within weeks however lovely plants appeared...including yellow rattle which I almost never see here. I didn't plant a thing, the seed bank in the soil presumably had it all there, waiting for the right time to germinate. So, keeping some patches bare is probably very worthwhile, but takes a bit of effort. Anyone else out there any thoughts on this?

[Amy]

Hi Jane. It's very interesting to read your comments above. I would never have thought about insects using loose sand, though I suppose that's no different to naturally occurring sand dunes, and if the same insect species living near the coast find a man made sand dune, they'll use it. How rewarding for you, as long as you didn't mind leaving your sand untouched for a few months.

Yes, I've read about the oil beetle too, and rather wished I hadn't. It was much easier to admire its iridiscent violet in happy ignorance of its habits. Everything seems to have its parasites. It took me a very long time to overcome instinct and to come to terms with the idea of introducing yellow rattle to parasitize my grasses and vetches. Did anyone else feel this?

I have noticed a few examples of naturally colonised, natural bare earth habitats: - In the middle of Exmoor, a deeply cut rough untarmacked vehicular track runs through moorland, so on poor soil. The West facing bank of the track is bare and sheer, and stands at about 30 cm high. I happened to go there during the July heatwave and saw hundreds of ? mining bees (they wouldn't stand still for identification!) buzzing around and using myriads of tiny holes in the bank, for a stretch of at least 20 yards in length. I've never seen anything like it elsewhere around here, though the more I'm learning, the more I'm noticing.

I think the dryness of the soil might make a difference. For example, rabbits abound near me, but they don't try to live on my land. We think that the valley bottom is is probably too wet for them.

Moles and bank voles build nests above the high water table, and often take advantage of mounds of soil above the natural ground level - ie mounds where my precious fruit trees are planted. The voles find the deep mulch from my meadow grass cuttings on those mounds, irresistible as an all year round warm shelter. (I put it on for the sake of the trees not the voles!) I try not to think of the voles knawing the tree roots, which I have read that they do, and the trees generally seem ok with vole nests alongside. However I do put a wide-fitting and 8" high vole guard around very young tree trunks. I once lost many holly saplings and viburnum shrubs when voles debarked them during a few days of snow. (I use a cut down tree guard as I have found that ready-made vole guards are close-fitting, and if left on, they trap moisture which severely damages the tree trunks.)

We spread large amounts of clay pond dredgings, to dry out before moving it to a final home. A year later, I noticed a bee going in and out of the dried clods of clay subsoil, so we decided we ought to leave it until at least the end of the summer before moving it. Two years later, the original rampant pond vegetation has covered the bare soil, and I don't know if it is still of any use to the bees. The dog tells me that something is actively living there.

There is a stretch of high sheer bank above one section of the upper reaches of the River Exe. (Not my land) For several years the bare bank was used for breeding by sand martins. The sand martins have not been seen for the last 2 years. Coincidentally or not, the bank has been colonised by willow saplings. Really sad.

It's popular here at the moment to help the solitary bees and wasps. There's a big debate of whether a bee hotel actually works. Some people say don't waste your money on expensive ones, they rarely work for bumble bees but can do for smaller bees.

https://www.foxleas.com/make-a-bee-hotel.asp - masses of in depth readable info on this subject.
NB The author says bee hotels are of benefit to red mason bees and leafcutter bees. The mining bees use open sandy soil or short grass.

Some people say drill different sized holes into fence posts - I wonder about the presence of timber preservative. If plastic can leach from some plastic containers into our food, then might timber preservative leach into grubs? If neo nics can disorientate bumble bees, then what might timber preservative do to insects feeding and living upon it? Then there's the issue of whether the drilled holes should be cleaned out to stop parasites building up. Parasites' rights, anyone?

Surely a heap of variously sized and aged logs, branches and garden clippings left on the ground - in the sun for bees and wasps, perhaps in the shade for other creatures - and a host of different dead plant stems left standing - such as meadow sweet, nettles, knapweed, hogweed, teasel, would do the trick, AND provide shelter for many more species - flies, ladybirds, etc, as well as some bees and wasps - but then there's no marketing required, no money spent and no DIY satisfaction and the holes wouldn't be there, altogether in one place, ready for regular observation.. What does anyone else think? (PS Belatedly remembering my years of living in flats with just a window sill, a balcony and a path with a single narrow border which wasn't mine, I can see that a bee hotel is a neat, aesthetic and compact solution when there's no space for a pile or stack of rotting logs and branches.)

Another thing I just don't 'get', and perhaps other MM members would please enlighten me - many bee hotel advocates state the housing and chambers must be kept dry and in a sunny place. But that doesn't happen in nature! Does it? Standing plant stems are bound to become wet and decay. And who can provide a place that remains both sunny and dry over winter?

Here's a couple of videos by the eminent Prof Dave Goulson, bumblebee expert.

Part 1

Part 2 The results

Prof Dave Goulson is a research scientist at the University of Sussex. He has written several books and hosts his own youtube channel, all aimed at amateur nature lovers. He also gave a talk for MM which is available on the MM youtube channel.
His youtube channel has titles such as - How to make an earwig hotel, Look inside a wasp nest,
Grow native or non native plants in your garden?
Watch, and you might surprise yourself by falling in love with a weevil.

Is any of this of any use to you, Jacqui?

[Paul O]

I love it that so many meadow-making members take the welfare of their wildlife so seriously. I remember a few years ago my wife and I were discussing slashing down a large bramble patch in a field when we realised a small bird was swearing at us from within the patch - it was a warbler telling us to get away from its nest, which of course we did, and the brambles remained until the winter. My shed door is particularly favoured by numerous creatures: I've put a page about some of them here: https://zedland.uk/moremeadows/sheddoorstory.htm.

[sarah jameson]

It's good you left the bramble patch until winter. I think I would have just kept it anyway for future springs and future warbler nests?

[Paul O]

Yes, it's hard to decide what and where to leave things like brambles in this field. When we moved here 20 years ago the field had been used occasionally for a few cattle and/or cut for silage and had little of interest in it amongst the vigorous grass species apart from common dock, stinging nettle, bramble and a little cuckoo flower and meadowsweet. My wife planted hundreds of native tree whips along some edges and we left a large area of grass for field voles, as we have a barn owl tower nearby at the bottom of the garden.

Now I have a mower capable of cutting as much as I need, and it's more of a patchwork, with mown paths, some rough-mown areas for voles, some areas cut by scythe and plenty of tall rough grassy patches. I decided that the best areas to leave for the brambles and stinging nettles was alongside the brook, which gets plenty of sun, while I intend to keep cutting brambles and nettles in most of the more shady areas, though I never keep up with this completely.

I think the hardest thing is to introduce more wildflowers, as this field is generally very damp (not this year though!). At one end the grass is extremely vigorous, maybe because the septic tank soakaway is nearby, so I was looking for an alternative to yellow rattle to help control it: it seems that a sub-species of Eybright - Euphrasia anglica - might be suitable, if I could find a source of seed or seedlings.

Still, the large patches of bramble and nettle alongside the brook are doing well, and we certainly saw plenty of brimstone, speckled wood, meadow brown and comma butterflies this year, and succeeded in identifying garden warblers and blackcaps amongst the secretive bird species who use the area.

[Amy]

Hi Paul O, I loved your shed story and the description of your meadow and the blackcaps. How very rewarding for you.

If you ever wanted to reintroduce swallows to another shed - (would they consume your bees and hornets if they re-nested in the same shed?), it might be worth considering cutting out a small slot in the top of the shed door, say about 3 inches deep by 6" for the swallows to fly through, putting a bare ledge with about 8" headspace on a roof beam, for them to stick their nesting mud to, and playing swallow calls to attract them in. We did this with a stable block, they flew in, and eventually chose to nest in the stable which didn't have the calls playing - so the calls attracted them in the first instance, and if I guess that there is only the one space, then once they have discovered the building and are flying around inside it, the calls could be stopped (in case the swallows think the calls are defensive) to encourage adoption. We put another board up beneath the nest to catch the mess.

Also on your wet land - I wonder if your cutting and clearing is proving to be enough on its own to spur the wild flowers to show, especially as you already have the cuckoo flower and meadow sweet which are very promising? This happened to me, and the wettest areas are massively more interesting and more floriferous than the adjacent drier parts - king cups, purple loose strife, orchids, fleabane, marsh valerian, hemlock water dropwort, sneezewort etc were all there in the natural seed bank, and I'd never seen them before even though I'd known that land for over 25 years.

Do you think that water mint and knapweed would cope with the vigorous grass near the septic tank, as both would be fantastic for your solitary bees? Both are late flowerers, so I suppose you could try cutting the grass hard in the spring and early summer in that particular area, before the water mint wakes up, and then again in October after the knapweed has gone to seed, just to get them going. Water mint is so easy, I've just inserted some stems into a slit in the wet ground where I've made a mess digging up docks.

It would be interesting to hear if you succeed with the eyebright amidst the vigorous grass. Whenever I've noticed eyebright (but I wouldn't know the varieties), it has been growing on very very tightly grazed, poor, old pasture. I expect you've seen this:
https://devonassoc.org.uk/devon-flora/part-17/ page 507 and map 443

Sorry, Jacqui, if the chat about the bees and the birds has hijacked your post - were you interested in wild flower biodiversity rather than general biodiversity?

[Paul O]

Thanks for the swallow suggestion, Amy: we do have a shed where the previous owner had made a gap in the door, but so far as I know the swallows never used it, and some years ago we put in a new door, but making a ledge and gap as you suggest is now a project for this winter. As my wife makes pots, there's even spare clay we could put out nearby, so I'll report back in 2023 if it works.

Your suggestions for getting wildflowers in the vigorous, wet patch of our field by the brook are interesting: I'm sure watermint would survive, and maybe some of the others if we cut it enough. The main problem is that this patch is at the opposite end of the field from my grass dump, meaning I spend more time going across the field and back than I do mowing, and this area tends to get less attention than the rest of the field. So the answer is to have another dump area at the far end of the field. Kingcups are present nearby, down in a shallow ditch; we have taken some to a garden pond, but they have never managed to move from the ditch on their own. So far, the only flowers that have appeared there are buttercup, dandelion and recently a few angelica.

As for dock - there was plenty in the field 20 years ago, and I remember in the first summer after buying the mower I chugged up to a large patch to cut it, but it was covered with mating green dock beetles, so I left it. Years ago a botanist told me that when a dock's leaves are full of beetle holes the plant survives but its seeds are infertile. Anyway, after a few years of selective mowing and scything, the dock plants have decreased in number and are probably doing good, bringing up trace minerals from deep down and feeding various insects and molluscs. Our hens are fond of a fresh young dock leaf too.

Trying alternatives to yellow rattle such as bartsia or eyebright may not be worth it, as I'm not sure whether they are aggressive enough to have a significant effect on the vigour of the plants they parasitise, but we'll certainly try watermint, kingcups and fleabane to get going.

Jacqui's original post seems to have started a long ramble about all sorts of things, but it's good after a very wet November day to think about what might be coming up in the meadow next spring.

Below is a video of what makes our field damp. It was taken on 11th March this year, looking across from our field, but could have been taken today! https://zedland.uk/moremeadows/BrookSpate2022-03-11.mp4