Making our Meadow Blog

Winter willow work

Mid Winter and the meadow is at its deadest. Time for some other work. Besides the usual boring stuff we had a bit of fun weaving a screen to protect the shady bed and a raised bed for the herbs.

I got the oak stakes from a local woodworker who manages a part of the excellent Waresley Wood Nature reserve. The stakes and the ash cross beams were leftovers from my initial attempt to work with willow making a living hedge in the front. It is only small and is really an attempt to try to copy the excellent work done at Harlow Carr by the RHS, shown here: http://www.rhs.org.uk/publications/pubs/garden0306/willow.asp

We got the willow from the excellent people at Musgrove Willows (see my links section for details) who recommended a mixed bundle of dried willow and gave me advice regarding soaking it to make it more flexible. I dug a trench and used it to hold a tube of plastic strong enough to hold the willow and the water which filled it. We dug holes for each postand simply rammed the earth around them hard. Since the screen would allow wind to pass through the posts should not need to be concreted in. The thin ash rods were then fixed to the posts to provide a framework through which the willow could be woven. This was the fun bit so I made sure Nicole was involced. Starting with the largest rods we built a rough framework which we then filled in with progressively finer rods. As we were doing it we discovered that by twisting a bunch of rods together held in place with a thinner rod a thick and effective piece could be made which looked great and was very strong.

The idea was to test the design and try to learn the technique to see if it is possible for a longer barrier to control access to the more dangerous end of the garden (the fun bit). But we won't need that until we have some reason to control access. Yes I mean the pitter patter of tiny gardener's wellies. So when you see one going up, you'll know what it means...

In the meantime it should look good and provide a bit of shelter. We are growing a blue flowered deciduous Clematis up it,so we will look forward to its blooms. I don't want to blow my own trumpet and I certainly don't think it matches the work at Harlow Carr, but I am pretty happy with it.

After the screen there was some willow left over and enough ash stakes to make a raised bed, which is about all you can say about it. We applied the twisted rods method here and it worked well.After it was filled and planted I realised that the manhole cover infont of the bed was at a bizarre angle which looked rubbish and which made the grass awkward to cut. Because of this and to improve access to the herbs I laid a stone patio. This was a total pain in the arse since I had to cut most of the stone with an angle grinder. Still, it looks pretty good, I think. You can see the Dutch influence in the quirky angles. Heel modern!

Start of 2008

OK, so I have been really rubbish for the last siz months or so - I have not posted anything for a number of crap reasons. Sorry but there you go shit happens. Anyway the second half of 2007 passed rather uneventfully in the garden, with few changes to the design and layout of the rest of the garden except that is for building a recycled plastic deck with a recycled oak post gazebo, a recycled plastic dual compost bin and a new fence (not recycled plastic unfortunately) which we have very gratefully received from donations from our lovely friends and family as a wedding gift. I don't know how we will pay for the other one - I guess we will have to get busy making a family! A few purchases for the garden have included a fig to be trained along the fence (Grise de St Jean, from Read's Nursery), a red grape to grow over the gazebo (Boskoop, ditto) and a hazel (Di Giffoni, from Chris Bowers & Sons). Apart from these little projects we have both been very busy at work so we have not had the time to spend in the garden we would like. As we look forward to 2008 some of the main projects we would like to carry out include:

• Laying a new lawn with recycled brick paths - I have already bought the grass seed for this so I really have to do it!
• Building another willow screen / barrier for...uhm...safety reasons.
• Putting up a new fence on the other side of the garden to act as a cat deterrant.
• Most importantly, working with my good friend Steen, making a PondCam to show the antics of the various denizens in our pond. We are keen to power this entirely using renewable energy and Steen already has a camera so this should prove to be an interesting project. The main problem (apart from all the technical issues, which I am leaving to Steen...) will be the continuing swamping by blanket weed and Duckweed in the pond. I will have to keep this under control but doing so without affecting any other pond life will be a challenge.

2008 has started well with the usual vast selection of tomato seeds already sown, a new almond, blackberry and tayberry planted and have made a monstrous recycled plastic base to lift the 700l water butt we have to a height that means we can actually get a watering can underneath the tap. And with all the rain we have had in the last few weeks, it is filling up fast. But you can guarantee there will be a hosepipe ban this year... as there should be I guess.

The more observant among you will have noticed that I have deviated from my initial plan to document the development of the meadow to include the whole garden.This has just happened as a consequence of my inherent desire expand upon, digress and generally waffle. So to all those dedicated die hard meadow watchers out there (it's ok i know nobody reads this, i'm just talking to myself really like all the other nerds on the net). So I'm just going to get on with it and post stuff. It's not like it's very important really is it?

June 2007

Well, Nicole and I have just got back from our honeymoon in the Garfagnana region of Tuscany (I am in the business of boring you with tedious details about my garden not my personal life so I won't go about the alpine meadows filled with orchids, vast swathes of chestnut forest or eagles, red backed shrikes and wrynecks all over the place), and of course prior to that was the minor detail of getting married in the Netherlands (ditto) which helps to explain why i have been so remiss in keeping up to date with current posts regarding the meadow and pond.

So, what has happened while my mind has been otherwise occupied:

well, the orchids both went their merry way to monocot heaven and were devoured / damped off /were generally annihilated. EXCEPT for the Marsh Helleborine which i stuck in a pot and forgot about and has even flowered (in a rather perfunctory way). Everything else seems to be doing excellently.

Spring in overdrive

The seasons have rolled on and the meadow is looking good. We only had a few mini-cowslips, the smallest I have seen since I lived near the North Downs in Kent. The orchid experiment seems to be destined for repeated failure, both the Bee Orchid and the Green Winged Orchid are looking decidedly sickly, half eaten and have not shown any signs of flowering. Interestingly the third orchid I set out to try, the Marsh Helleborine, which was faring poorly so was rescued, now seems to be doing better in a pot. If the others do not improve I will dig them up and rehouse them, and forget about gowing them in the meadow. The overall effect of the meadow is one of exuberant full on growth and many of the planst are now wel established. I really need to uploadsome pictures, when I get time.

The pond is doing well it is full of life. A little too full in fact, we had to pull out a mountain of algae in March as it was getting so full. I had wanted to just compost it but Nicole, being such a lovely woman, wanted to save everything, so we spent a whole day picking through it pulling out hundreds of snails, dozens of dragonfly and damselfly larvae, beetles, water boatmen as well as vast quantities of plankton as well as a couple of smooth newts. The tadpoles are thriving and we have had a load of toadspawn as well. Sadly a week after we had removed the blanket weed it was back. After clearing it out again we popped some barley straw squares in. To help aerate the water we have also installed a small solar powered pump. To be honest this does very little and I think that short of having a huge rig costing a fortune it will not have much effect. The weed is gradually encroaching (even with two of the squares).

After the hottest April on record the water level in the pond has shrunk by about 10cm and it is already looking very sorry for itself. The hemp sacking we placed around the edge to protect the plastic is already breaking down (perhaps feeding the blanket weed...) so the liner is at risk from UV degradation and the edge looks rubbish. But the pond is still so full of life, with up to 10 frogs and 4 newts in it at any one time.

Plans to get the PondCam up and running are still afoot, Steen, my technical advisor has got most of it sorted out with only a small detail regarding the wireless connection now holding things up.... watch this space for more details.

Hot newts and amphiporn!

Well today is officially the first day of spring. I looked in the pond this evening and saw not just one but two smooth newts. From now on i will be watching it with a torch every night. Maybe not but perhaps Nicole will, she ran like a hare to have a look when i told her.

More importantly we saw two frogs SHAGGING! Which is early, i reckon. It's not worthy to note on the Springwatch website, but watch this space.

What this really highlights is the urgent need to get the PondCam (tm?) working. We tried it out this week and it leaked like a sieve, and there is still a lot to do...

Will try to get some still pictures of newts! With a torch and a camera. Well, it might work...

Orchids round two!

Hot off the press! The second attempt at growing orchids got underway today, appropriately enough on Nicole's birthday. The orchids I ordered a few weeks ago from Hardy Orchids turned up at work prompting me to leave early to ensure they were planted as soon as possible. My earlier shotgun approach with a large number of small bulbs withered to an early death so this time I have selected just three individual plants:

• Anacamptis morio (Green winged orchid): in the wet meadow
• Ophrys apifera (Bee orchid): in the dry meadow
• Epipactis palustris (Marshe helleborine): in the pond margin

Pictures to be posted soon in a seperate photo album.

Fingers crossed till spring!

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!

Planning and design

So where to start. That was the question which greeted us at the beginning. Well obviously the first thing you should do is a thorough survey of the site. We drew a plan of the positions of various features when we moved in and had a fairly rudimentary look at the soil. The plan looked something like this:

The soil survey (ahem) showed us that the soil was a stony clay-loam with a fairly high pH, very rich in nutrients and exceptionally rich in old bikes, rusty bits of metal, ash, old bones and lots and lots of other crap. Shifting this would take quite a long time.  But first we had to get at it. While we planned our assault over the winter we laid down sheets of heavy duty recycled plastic to kill off the weeds. Then we sat and dreamed up a design. We set some design aims including:

• a dry, calcareous meadow with the usual mix of Knapweed, Scabious, Cowslips, ladies bedstraw and other chalk grassland species.
• a 'wet' grassland with damp loving species such as Ragged Robin, Purple Loosestrife, Cuckoo Flower etc.
• a pond with a variety of native species, including Flowering Rush, Marsh Marigold, Lesser Spearwort, rushes and sedges, as well as the obligatory water lily (Nicole insisted on this, wisely I have to say).
• a rockery beside the pond with ferns and other species in the north facing crevices.
• Recycled plastic edging boards, a gravel path for easy access and recycled plastic raised beds. Also a recycled plastic dipping platform to allow the pond to be enjoyed.
• A "cornfield annuals" area.

On the basis of these objectives and the survey we drew up a plan. It looked a bit liked this:

I was going to make a tarted up Illustrator version with pretty colours and a generally professional look but then, I'm not a professional, and this is the crumpled bit of paper we worked from so I guess it's a bit more 'authentic'. We also worked out a plan of action, having decided what was going where:

• First we had to get rid of the rampant bindweed, couch grass and other aggresive weeds which threatened to overwhelm the whole garden. This would involve stripping off the turf, then digging over the soil to try to get out all the bindweed roots.
• Then we had to lower the fertility of the soil to help the delicate wildflowers we would be sowing, which we would achieve by:
  • stripping off the topsoil. This was to be done by digging it out till we reached the subsoil, seiving every spadefull and putting the topsoil to one side, so that it could be used elsewhere such as in the vegetable beds and renovating the lawn. The sieving was needed  to take out not only the weed roots, but also the stones, broken glass, toy soldiers etc.
  • mixing in low fertility material derived by mixing crushed concrete from the path which was being removed, 20mm limestone ballast and the subsoil. In the wet meadow we would just use the subsoil.
• Using recycled plastic edged paths to define the structure of the meadow, we would then line it with a weed suppressing fabric and then fill it with the mixed up subsoil and limestone/crushed conctrete mix.
• The wet meadow would be lined with a pond liner to a depth of 600mm. The pond was to be sited in a position that was higher than either meadow, allowing overflow water from the pond in winter to flood the wet meadow.
• We would aim to have the site ready for sowing by September 2005. We started stripping the turf in March 2005.

That is basically it. A doddle really...

Have a look at the photo's in the photo section, they tell you all about how we did it.