Making our Meadow Blog

Cornflower annuals

All the manuals and experts (particularly those at Landlife) say that if you want an instant 'meadow' don't use real meadow species use what are called Cornflower annuals, or what our agricultural forebears used to call (and what modern farmers still call) weeds. You know the sort of thing, poppies, cornflowers, corn cockle, corn marigold, etc. I though this would be a good use of an old bed and they are absolutely right. Because they thrive on fertile soils, there is no need to strip the top soil to reduce fertility. Because they are all annuals (due to the management regime) they all flourish and the results are there to see in a matter of months. It only lasts a season but then if we didn't have the Cat Army on our doorstep I am sure that the local finch population would have enjoyed the stubbles (probably the only ones left in the country...) and of course they are all self seeding.

Rather than plump for just the 'cornflower annuals mix' which we bought at the same time as the other seed, we added it to a small bag (a couple of handfuls really) of barley we had gleaned fro a field nearby. Being a pretentiously arty sort of person I thought it would be nice to sow this in a swirly sort of pattern with the annuals around it.

I have to say it worked a treat, when the plants were still growing the fresh green leaves of the barley were beautiful, then the succession of flowers, joined by self sown Phacelia and Eschscholzia (once you have either of these, you have them forever - one has germinated in one of my cold frames for god's sake) finishing with gorgeous ripening heads of the barley whispering in the wind. Then we had the fun of harvesting and especially threshing it. We will have another go next year...

Building the pond

Obviously every meadow needs a pond! Well maybe not. But we wanted a wet meadow, partly because everything else in our garden is so parched, partly as a contrast to the dry meadow and partly just because so many plants of wet meadows are so lovely. And ponds are obviously great anyway. There is nothing better for a garden's wildlife interest than water. Being overambitious and having a head filled with darn silly ideas I thought it woudl be good if the pond could act as a sort of reservoir which would overflow and 'flood' the meadow in winter. Yes, that's right our own flood meadow! The pond itself was made in the tried and tested 'dig an enormous hole, put down something impermeable and fill it up with water' method with a couple of additional features:

• I quite liked the idea suggested by the Wildlife Trusts of stepping the edges to create a shelf supporting the sloping pond edge. I have to say this didn't really work very well, perhaps I made the shelves too narrow or perhaps the soil was too silty, or I could blame all the evil cats which came and drank from the pond (this didn't make them evil, it was the gifts they left as payment...) but the sides collapsed in a series of mini mudslides, which was not too much of a problem apart from exposing the plastic pond liner to UV and potentially damaging it, and also looking pretty crap. We found an ingenious solution however...
• I also wanted to use the shelf on the 'north' facing side of the pond to make use of my wasted drystone walling skills and support a retaining wall for all the spoil from the pond which i hoped would also act as a habitat for ferns and other moisture loving plants in the shelter afforded them by the wall and the hedge behind it.  Unfortunately I got my calculations a bit awry and the wall actually ended up facing east, so got the full blast of the morning sun, which in mid summer was pretty hot, and the few ferns I had planted were quickly scorched into oblivion. I had to revise my planting plans, and so far the only plant which has survived has been a Cistus x purpureus 'Alan Fradd', some delicate Irises which get their job done in early spring and of course the usual weeds. I think the real problem was yet again poor design and execution on my part: besides the direction the retaining wall should have had much deeper planting crevices than the ones provided. Three Dierama plants which were planted in September 2005 have not really done anything since, in spite of flowering earlier in the year. I have toyed with the idea of ripping the whole bank out and starting again...but i don't have the time. Besides the submerged part of the wall is excellent providing homes for many frogs, toads and invertebrates who would all be disturbed if I were to tear it out. And I am sure that many invertebrates find the hot slopes favourable...who knows, maybe we will get some lizards next? In the mean time I have tried another attempt with little Sempervivem spp. which may establish more readily in the Autumn and survive.
• We also wanted a dipping platform at the edge of the pond to allow us and others to enjoy the pond and its denizens close up. I initially planned to build one from scratch, but fortune favours thieves and I managed to reassign a disused recycled plastic decking section which had previously been used by my employer, Filcris Ltd, for demonstration purposes, and which looks great as well as being very effective. We have finished it off with two enormous lumps of recycled limestone (these were about to be thrown away by someone!) which we use as perches while watching frogs and damselflies and searching for The Newt.
• I aqcuired range of different pond plants from Naturescape in September 2005 including:
  • Amphibious bistort - this hasn't really done very much in it's first year which is surprising since in the wild it is quite invasive. Probably just as well given the size of the pond...
  • Arrowhead - this flowered well in summer 2006
  • Water avens - these were planted in what became a death trap, with far too little soil only a few cm above the surface of the liner which became exposed and dried out when the water level fell in the summer. They all perished... Round 2 due to begin in 2007 with a new plant in today!
  • Yellow flag iris - this grew well in 2006 but did not flower.
  • Frogbit - not sure what happened to this!
  • Purple loosestrife - I thought this had perished with the water avens but it had survived and flowed throughout August, inspite of being quite a small plant. England expects!
  • Marsh marigold - my father had one of these in his pond and it was a raging monstrous triffid of a thing, absolutely huge! So i thought I would restrict it a tad and put it in a water plant pot about 4" in diameter. Since then it has sulked and looked quite sickly, only producing 2 flowers and moping around all summer. So this September 2006 I released it and planted it directly into the pond soil. Only time will tell...
  • Spiked water milfoil - did well, doing it's oxygen thing while producing interesting little flowers above the surface.
  • Cuckoo flower - sadly this went the way of the water avens. New plants just in so another attempt underway.
  • Ragged robin - interesingly this survived surprisingly well with a good flowering season. and survived the subsequent summer. A real trooper!
  • Flowering rush - this was the resounding superstar of the summer pondlife with loads of really incredible blooms, each one covered in more hoverflies than the last one, including a huge (2cm) hornet mimic. Excellent value which I cannot recommend enough. 
  • Soft rush - another lovely plant complete with subtle bright green flowers which has survived very well.
  • Lesser spearwort - basically a tiny, very upright buttercup with spear like leaves, it flowered and survived in it's fragile, inconspicuous sort of way.
  • White dwarf waterlily - interestingly this turned out to be dark pink rather than white. Which was fine since it was gorgeous. Didn't do much in it's first year, which is probably good since it is supposed to be a dwarf plant which won't take over the whole pond.
• The summer heat combined with a policy of not topping the pond up meant that there was a very scary drop in water levels (about 9" or 225mm), which left many plants high and dry. The ones with deep roots which could tap into the pond water survived. Others didn't. This is the way it goes and we didn't want to be dashing about wasting water, preferring to find plants that would survive The drop in water levels also exposed the liner again and we had to solve it. Finally we got some old hessian sacks for free at the stone merchants at a garden centre (interestingly the same garden centre whose water garden section had wanted extortionate amounts of money for tiny squares of very lightweight material). This was pushed into the mud, under rocks and fixed around the dipping platform, and worked a treat with plants quickly establishing in it.
• The dead zone mentioned earlier was solved with little paving stones 6" across.
• That's about it really. Pictures to follow. I want to set up a 'pond cam' but have no idea how to do this...any advice welcome! ;o)

Managing the meadow - year 1

Once the seed was sown in September 2005 it was then just a case of sitting back and letting nature take its course. We were blessed with mild, damp Autumn in 2005 which made for ideal conditions for the germination and establishment of the seedlings. Over winter not a lot happened so the fixed point photo for April 06 shows the situation quite well. The well watered area in the wet meadow benefitted from th epond overflow and and had established well. However the dry meadow was ...well...dry, and not a lot was growing there besides the cowslips I had planted (see the plant pictures photo album) and a collection of 'weeds' (mainly spurge). I am a very impatient oerson, but Nicole managed to persuade me to let it be. Nevertheless I did intervene a little with some additional planting, some of which I had planned all along anyway:

• Orchids: I love native orchids, particulalrly Bee orchids (Ophrys apifera) so when i found that you can buy and plant them I was immediately hooked on the idea. I bought a batch from a lovely chap called Richard Manuel,  who is the Secretary of the Hardy Orchid Society http://www.hardyorchidsociety.org.uk/. We bought 6 Green Winged Orchids (Anacamptis morio) and 12 Bee Orchids, and he also gave me a couple of Lax Flowered Orchids. He also gave me lots of advice including a very comprehensive recipe for a special mix of beech leaf mould compost, which was quite hard to find round here. I really enjoyed the technicality of it all and when the bulbs all sprouted in late September into tiny little plants it was very exciting. In the spring I transplanted the strongest looking Green Winged Orchid plants and transplanted them into the Wet meadow, since the dry meadow (where I hoped to put the Bee orchids) was still a very harsh environment. I protected them with eggshells to keep the slugs at bay and monitored them religiously...so I could watch them all keel over and die. It seemed that they just rotted, the ground it seems was just too damp. The rest of my first batch of orchids fared no better, they either rotted in the soil or they dried out and shrivelled up. I haven't given up, however, so watch this space...
• Snakeshead fritillary - I love these plants as much as I love native orchids, and while I sowed seed with the wet meadow mix I was not expecting good results so I thought would help them along bit. I planted some plants (rather than bulbs) which subsequently flowered and then rotted, much the same as the orchids had. I found this hard to understand as they are generally plants of moist grassland habitats in the wild. Hmph. I will try again next year...
• Perforate St John's Wort (Hypericum perforata) I found this on a market stall at a knocked down price in May 2006 and just thought I would stick it in the Dry Meadow, it does sort of fit with the mix of plants and helped to add some interest early on when th area was so bare. The bees loved it and it gives me great opportunity to bore people with the old 'this is perforate st john's wort because it has holes in it's leaves' routine (which isn't necessarily true - other Hypericums also have this feature - but the kids seem to like it. I will try to take a picture next summer). Not being one of my favourite plants, it established well and has thrived.
• Because the dry meadow was not doing much i thought i woudl experiment with sowing some of t hseed i had left over in seed trays and transplanting it. To account for the vernalisation requirement of many species I put some in the fridge for a couple of weeks (it took a while to convince Nicole about this) before sowing them, and did a trial with both chilled and unchilled seeds. Neither was very successfull and the few seedlings which germinated did not transplant well.
• Assorted dry meadow plants - I also bought a batch of plants from the same company Ibought the pond plants from ( http://www.naturescape.co.uk/ ) including
  • Bulbous buttercup - Ranunculus bulbosus
  • Meadow buttercup - Ranunculus acris
  • Salad burnet - Sanguisorba minor
  • Goats beard - Tragopogon pratensis
  • Lady's bedstraw - Galium verum
  • Devil's bit scabious - Succissa pratensis
• These were planted in various places around the dry meadow in July 2006 to help fill in the many gaps. So far they all seem to have established successfully.
• Finally in August it came time to cut the hay for the first time. I was initially going to get a scythe to do this, but franly for such a small area it woudl have been insane and i would probably have ended up chopping off my foot. As part of my researches i came across this site which is well worth looking at if you like looking at slightly mad austrians with extravagent clothing and interesting facial hair armed with scythes: http://www.thescytheshop.co.uk/picture%20gallery.html. So anyway, out came the shears and frankly even that only took about half an hour. But we did get 2 whole BAGS (!!!!) of hay, so now we are going to have to get a rabbit to eat the hay. I left the hay on the grass to allow it to ripen off and to ensure that the invertebrates which lived on it could escape. After this the stubble was cut with a mower (at the highest setting) several times until the end of September to simulate late simmer grazing (until we get a very small flock of sheep sorted out)...
• A final order of plants (for this year) have been ordered and are due to be delivered any minute. I'll tell you more when they get here ;o) Can't wait!