Update 30th July – see photos at the end of this post!

Harry Cook, Thompson & Morgan trial panel member, and his wife Pat are members of It’s Your Neighbourhood with Loughborough in Bloom and look after the area called ‘The Green Belt’ around their house. Here Harry writes about the wildflowers that they’ve been planting.

Wildflower planting in The Green Belt

Last year was the year of the wildflowers for Britain In Bloom and Charnwood Borough Council ‘Green Spaces Access To Nature’ planted up large areas of wildflowers around the town. These areas were sprayed with a specifically-targeted non-residual weed killer and then rotavated. Voluntary groups then sowed the seeds and raked them in  – we had a wonderful display for the RHS judges to see. At the end of the year the plants were mown and left for the seeds to drop and then raked off.

Planting wildflowers

The Green Belt area by our house also had areas sown with wildflowers last year. It was mown in autumn for the seeds to drop and in spring this year l over-sowed the area by slitting the ground with a Sisis pierce. This made it easy to sow the seeds, which l mixed with dry sand then raked in with as little ground disturbance as possible. All seeds are up and looking good. We have also planted foxgloves among the wildflowers and at the side a brook that runs through the park we have a large area of ransom (wild garlic) with lovely white flowers.

Ransoms (wild garlic)

This is a list of the wildflowers and grass seeds used:

Yarrow
Common Knapweed
Wild Carrot
Lady’s Bedstraw
Field Scabious
Ox-eye Daisy
Bird’s-foot Trefoil
Ribwort Plantain
Cowslip
Self-heal
Meadow Buttercup
Bulbous Buttercup
Yellow Rattle
Common Sorrel
Corn Cockle
Common Bent
Crested Dog’s-tail
Slender creeping red fescue
Smaller Cat’s-tail

Wildflowers doing nicely

Update 30th July 2013

As you can see, the wildflowers are doing very well…

Get your own wildflower meadow started using the top tips and variety specific guides at our dedicated wildflower hub page.

Rebecca Tute

Rebecca works in the Marketing department as part of the busy web team, focusing on updating the UK news and blog pages and Thompson & Morgan’s international website. Rebecca enjoys gardening and learning about flowers and growing vegetables with her young daughter.