Is a wildflower meadow like a lawn with weeds in?

I was honoured to be asked to chat to Ken Crowther about Meadowmat on BBC Radio Essex this afternoon.  Well, honoured and very VERY nervous. Happily the team there are used to neurotic people like myself and I was soon put at ease.  So much so that my allotted 20 minute spot passed very quickly indeed.

Meadowmat, a great way to create wildlife habitat

Ken's first question was "Is meadowmat just turf with weeds in it?" and in all fairness, I'm sure plenty of people, including my beloved husband, would say tha it is.  After all, if some of the plants in my meadowmat were to spring up in my lawn, I'd probably do my best to eradicate them.  But, a weed is simply a wild flower in the wrong place, and in the right place, they're beautiful both visually and ecologically.

200 years ago, if there was such a thing as Meadowmat, it would probably have been regarded as a poor-man's medicine cabinet....I'm kicking myself for not saying that earlier.  Wild flowers have been used to produce herbal remedies for centuries with their recipes being handed down from generation to generation.  Funny how modern technology has all but killed off traditional skills...but that's a whole other argument.

wild flowers and bees are inter-dependant

Wild flowers evolved alongside pollinating insects such as bees and butterflies and as a result, they're interdependant.  Flowers need bees, bees need flowers. Simple as.  And as Ken and I discussed, vast quantities of ancient wild flower meadows have been lost since the second world war; modern farmers need to concentrate on food production, road verges are not always managed for the full benefit of wild flowers and so gardeners are the people who are best placed to help re-create and care for wild flower meadows --- no matter what size----to help support UK wildlife.

So is Meadowmat like garden turf with weeds in?  I think not. Meadowmat is a wild flower meadow on a roll and it makes the important task of rebuilding our population of wild flowers and pollinating insects into an absolute joy. Garden turf is a joy too...for what is a garden if it doesn't have a lawn?

plants for pollinators

Take a look at Q Lawns' new video featuring two different ways to encourage pollinating insects into your garden.

Penny Bennett Architects' gazebo with a green roof

Wild flower meadows are lovely, but they're not everybody's first choice.  Living green roofs on the other hand don't affect the way your garden can be used, but they do have a whole heap of benefits for butterflies, bees and householders.
You'll find the video on Youtube by clicking on this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVsYVkMl-kk

A brilliant book about bringing bees into the garden



 Back in January, I bought myself a copy of Jan Miller-Kelin's book, Gardening for Butterflies, Bees and other benficial insects.  My first thoughts, were that this would be a valuable resource to learn more about the way that all 34 of the plant species in Meadowmat would interact to help support pollinating insects and indeed other creatures. Here's the link to my blogpost at the time. http://meadowmat.blogspot.com/2012/01/gardening-for-butterflies-bees-and.html



I'm happy to say that the book is amazing and I could certainly recommend it to professional garden designers as well as to interested amateur gardeners like myself. 

Here's an extract from the book, see what you think

There are a few rules of thumb in attracting butterflies into the garden:-

1. Butterflies are attracted foremost by sight, so home in on large clumps of the same flower.
2. They seem to prefer purples, deep pinks and sometimes yellow and white, and do not go to deep reds at all
3. They need to feed in warm, sunny places, sheltered from the wind.
4. The individual flowers hould be single; doubles and other fancy cultivars are often ignored.
5. The nectar plants need to be well-watered in times of drought so that enough runny nectar is produced.
6. Provide different laval food plants for different species and,
7. of course, there can't be any spraying of insecticides!

I never realised that butterflies are influenced by colour schemes.  If you'd like to read more, the book is available from http://www.amazon.co.uk/.