Wildflower meadow musings
Inspired by the machair we saw on Benbecula last summer and keen to bring more good insects into the garden I tried a few different things to get a mini wildflower meadow in our Milngavie garden. One was a BeeMat kindly given to me as a very thoughtful christmas present and one was a 100g bag of Cornfield Annual Wildflower mix from Bee Happy Plants. The third area was sown with just Echinacea Purpurea. First up the bee mat has definitely worked and the area covered is always swarming with bees. The mat covers a square meter and comes as a 200x50cm strip of matting containing Common and Greater Knapweed, Goldenrod, Cosmos, Borage, Anise Hyssop, Californian Poppy, Verbena and Lady Phacelia. The aim of the mat apart from to produce a wild flower meadow of course is to eliminate weeds. I havn't had to weed the area all summer so thats good. When it comes to laying the mat, you still have to prepare the soil and cover the mat with soil so it is no easier really than sowing seeds direct to the soil, but no harder either. My only gripe with the mat is that it has produced largely a dense area of borage with some Lady Phacelia sticking through, and lovely as that is to me and to the bees, it would be more attractive had some of the other seven seed types germinated. I would be keen to hear what other people have experienced in the Glasgow area in this regard. The cornfield mix is 45% Corn Cockle with the rest made up with Corn Marigold, Cornflower, Corn Chamomille and Wild Poppy. As with the bee mat, the seeded area is largely a monoculture, in this case made up of Corn Cockle with one or two Wild Poppies emerging but yet to flower. The area looks quite nice but again would be enhanced by more diversity. I would be interested to hear if other people have tried a similar mix in the local area. The Corn Cockle is not swarming with bees to anything like the same extent as the borage area. Last up is the Echinacea - not much to tell since they did not germinate at all!
