Hope springs: Our wildflower meadow helped us grieve
to rake over the earth so the birds wouldn’t have a feast and render our efforts useless. My husband and I took a section each and dragged rakes across the soil. My arms were dead for days afterwards.
We took photos standing in our wellington boots on this patch of cleared earth. What were we hoping for? We had no idea what it might look like or even if it would take off. Our faces in those pictures tell their own story of anticipation now the work was done.
After that we did nothing. Rain fell, the spring sunshine warmed the earth and delicate green shoots started to poke their heads out of the ground, delighting us. Our little project was taking off.
Then almost exactly a year ago, on a beautiful early summer’s night, we got the devastating news that my husband’s brother had died. The world as we knew it would never be the same again.
The fact that the flowers bloomed so beautifully last spring and summer gave us a lift. The simple fact of their growing was like a small miracle. They kept us rooted when we felt unmoored by grief and their blossoms felt like blessings.
The autumn came and the blooms of summer faded. We took the scythes and cut the stalks and stems, removing the clippings as we learned this was the best way to ensure more of the perennials within the seed mix would come back. Although the patch now looked shorn and abandoned, we hoped the cutting would allow new life to come again.
The winter of 2019 would be a hard one. My husband’s beloved mother passed away. There was no comfort anywhere. We forgot all about wildflowers and focused on getting through the days, one at a time.
Quietly the spring arrived this year and with it the signs of new life in the wildflower garden again. Dandelions and primroses were the first
signs of colour. Almost overnight, tall green stalks rose and the pink of the Rose-Bay Willow Herb came out. The Ox-Eye daisies, or the ‘noinín mór’ in Irish, are only starting to come out. There are so many still to come that we can already see their display will be dazzling.
Closer to the ground, small tufty pockets of thrift flower have sprung into life next to delicate stems of wild grass. Black knapweed, with its sinewy stems and purple heads, have popped their heads up next door to bright yellow Celandine.
The famous English poet William Wordsworth once suggested that when a painter first attempted to portray the rising sun, he took the idea of the radiating pointed rays from a glance at the Celandine’s “glittering countenance”. Their small magnificence is a wonder.
Among the flowers there are plenty of dock leaves, nettles and thistles so large that a Scottish king would make a display of them. They’re not so pretty to look at but as we learn more about pollinators we realise that all these species have their place in the wild garden.
The bees and butterflies have come back too. They’re so plentiful that if you stand anywhere among the wildflowers and look down you’ll be able to see at least two or three bees buzzing around at any one time.
Our hope was that this space would be a haven for the pollinators, that it would bring colour and be a source of joy for others passing by on foot on the road. We didn’t know that it would be a source of solace in our lives, a reminder that the spring still comes no matter
how hard the winter.
It probably suits us that we don’t have to do much with this space. If consistent gardening effort were required, it would probably have failed.
Every day brings new colour to the garden and I will take note of the next full moon to be sure to witness the Ox-Eye daisies under its gaze. This space is rough and ready. A Chelsea show-stopper it isn’t. But when we threw those seeds on the ground, it was an act of hope. It’s become a place where hope grows.