Call of the wildflower
A NATURAL APPROACH HAS MANY BENEFITS AND IT’S A TREND THAT’S GROWING
LAST week I was down in Hampshire working on a new television gardening show. For part of the project t we laid out some wildflower wer turf.
This is a relatively new landandscaping product which you install nstall like a carpet, in much the same way as laying a new lawn.
Different mixes are available for various situations such as shady areas. The plants are already established in the turf containing a number of native and naturalised species. It is grown on moisture retentive, biodegradable, recycled fibre matting which acts as a barrier to suppress any problematic weeds and grasses.
Ideally it should be laid on nutrient-low soil as grasses quickly take over rich soils.
The wildflowers reminded me of creating my first garden at the Chelsea Flower Show in 1995. The late Marney Hall supplied lovely plants which we draped through mossy stones at the front of our ‘wild’ plot.
Marney was an award-winning garden expert who did much to bring wildflowers to the fore forefront. Her interest in them developed f from her work as an ecologist, researching ways to improve the management of nature reserves, in p particular for rare sp species of butterflies. S She won many gold meda medals for her gardens at Chelse Chelsea and was a lover of life w who deserves more recognition.
One of the many pretty plants in the wildflower turf was Viola ‘Heartsease’. Also known as the wild pansy, Heartsease is a charming flower, bearing lots of small blooms with purple, yellow and white petals throughout summer. It’s a native perennial and will self-seed freely so could be a good option to allow to run native through a border or wild garden. Equally it is a lovely choice for hanging baskets and containers.
It’s quite subtle compared to the bigger and bolder pansies that we rely so heavily on for our winter and spring containers.
You can direct sow it now and throughout the summer, and keep deadheading to encourage continuous flowering.
I stumbled upon another wild violet when walking in the woods – Viola odorata. This is a sweet little beauty, all the petals are pale mauve and it was peeping out from underneath the flowering wild garlic.
Its demure qualities inspired the term “shrinking violet” to describe a shy, retiring person. It’s also scented and is a good ground cover possibility for under deciduous trees.
Marney Hall was ahead of her time, as now more and more people are becoming aware of the beauty and importance of wildflowers. As pollinator plants they provide valuable nectar to the insect population such as bees.
You don’t even need to plant wildflowers – by adopting a more relaxed attitude and leaving a little bit of your garden uncultivated, the weeds (or wildflowers!) will colonise quickly.
For example, nettles are a wonderful breeding ground for the larvae of butterflies, as are thistles, docks, sorrel weed and meadow grasses.