Meadow 2019

Meadow August 2019

By the end of 2018, most of the meadow had died back and as it was predominantly annuals, I knew I'd have to dig it over again. So in spring 2019, the meadow was dug and raked again, looking like this:

Meadow soil April 2019

This soil is very stony & required a lot more raking before I could sow seeds but I got it done before the end of April. I decided to test out different varieties of seed mixes (some garden annuals, some wildflowers) to see which ones thrived the best and again the meadow was partially successful. 

Meadow August 2019

The chickens enjoyed the view without being able to get in there but the rabbits had a good munch again as I'd failed to keep them out. Some areas were sparse again with bare patches and overall, I felt it wasn't worth repeating the same method next year as too many of the flowers weren't thriving. 

Meadow August 2019

By autumn, I'd pulled up the annuals & dug it over again, leaving the few perennials eg Yarrow. I knew I couldn't keep this up every year so having done lots of research on wildflower websites, I decided to switch to a perennial wildflower meadow as it wouldn't need digging each year. I'd only have to mow it a few times and cut it down once a year. Being perennials with grasses, it wouldn't be the carpet of bright colours I'd originally envisaged but having learned about the loss of 97% of our wildflower meadows in the UK, I felt encouraged to develop a garden version. 

So in autumn 2019, I purchased & sowed wildflower & grasses seed from Emorsgate. Their website is incredibly helpful & their seeds all have UK provenance. By Christmas 2019, I was confident that my meadow would be more of a success in 2020 and even more enthused to grow as many native wildflowers as possible. 

Successes:

• I grew a lot of flowers from seed:
• Bees and other pollinators visited the meadow.

Lessons Learned:

• I don't have the energy to maintain an annual flower meadow;
• Perennial wildflower meadows are easier to maintain;
• Keep the rabbits out (again).
• Needed to find out why there are bare patches (again).

Lessons Still Not Learned (that should have been learned last year)

• The soil is too stony, shallow & in places almost all sand;
• Every time you dig the soil over, you disturb the seed bank of weeds;
• Rabbits are cleverer than you think.