Growing wildflowers

	*Growing Wildflowers in Your Garden*
HOME	Shropshire Wildlife Trust Magazine Summer 2006

	If you have ever visited a good wildlife garden, two things probably caught your attention. Firstly, it was probably whirring and fluttering with life! There were bumblebees, hoverflies and butterflies, moving from flower to flower, gathering nectar or pollen. Secondly, you might have noticed plenty of native wildflowers – under the hedge, tucked into borders alongside cottage garden plants, or knee deep around the pond edge. Native plants and invertebrates have a special, long standing relationship and wherever you find one, the other is somewhere close by. Once this connection has been established in your garden everything else, from chiff chaffs to hedgehogs, will follow.
	There are plenty of ways of including wildflowers in your garden, and if you can build a habitat around them you will be providing more than just nectar and pollen for visiting insects. Red campion and greater stitchwort at the bottom of a hedge will soon start to provide shelter for small mammals amongst the leaves and stems. Here bank voles and wood mice will hunt for seeds, common shrews may find a slug or two and wrens will search for spiders. An undisturbed shady hedge bottom will soon attract all manner of wildlife if it includes native flowers.
			But perhaps the best way to grow a mass of wildflowers whilst creating a fabulous wildlife habitat is to make a small wildflower meadow. This is not as difficult as many people imagine, but it does require hard work and commitment! The easiest way to do this is to start with weed free, bare soil. Choose an area where the soil fertility is as low as possible, otherwise the meadow grasses will grow more vigorously than the wildflowers and soon your flowers will be swamped. If your garden soil has been cosseted and composted, you may need to remove the top six inches and replace it with subsoil from another area. Obtain local seed if you can. The species within it will be used to your conditions, and your local invertebrates will be better adapted to these plants. Sow the seed at a rate of about 4 grams per square meter onto raked soil, and walk over it, gently pushing the seed into the soil. Don’t cover the seed – some species need light to germinate. Shoo the birds away, water gently if the weather is dry, and wait. Actually, not much will happen for some time – a meadow is a slowly evolving habitat, in need of maintenance and attention. But as the flowers and grasses establish, you will begin to see a tapestry of species emerging.
	A meadow must be cut once every year in late summer or early autumn. Cut with a scythe or strimmer and leave your hay for a few days to dry. Rake it off with as must vigour as you can, allowing the seeds to drop and make contact with the soil beneath. Here they will germinate and replenish those that are inevitably lost each year. If all this sounds like hard work (and it is!) you may like to opt for a cornfield mixture – annual wildflowers including poppies, cornflowers and corn marigold. These only require pulling out after flowering to ensure that fallen seed will germinate to produce the colourful display again next year.
	Any garden full of insects and other invertebrates soon becomes home to all the other animals that depend upon them. For every creature you see there are probably a hundred that you don’t see, hiding beneath the foliage of low plants, deep amongst the leaves of shrubs, under stones or logs, in fact in every small space where there is shelter. Plant wildflowers in your garden and watch the wildlife arrive.

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