We have recently started a series of webinars looking at all things wild flower. Our second webinar was on the subject of wild flower maintenance and we thought it would be helpful to follow this up with a blog on the subject as June is the best time of the year to start thinking about a cutting regime for your wild flower areas.

Our recent webinar covered a number of ideas for maintaining wildflowers and included the latest results from our Research and Development site.

For brevity’s sake, this blog will follow the running order of the webinar. For more detail, follow the link supplied at the end of the blog and listen to the full webinar.  If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to call us for more information.

Wild flower meadows with biodiversity and intensity of maintenance/management in mind

The above was work done by Professor Steve Head of the Wildlife Gardening Forum. There are not many habitats in this country where low maintenance and high levels of biodiversity go hand in hand. Prairie, Veldt and Alpine meadows are low maintenance and high biodiversity, but we can’t grow these in the UK as our temperate climate won’t allow it. However a wild flower meadow is our best shot at low maintenance with the associated reduced costs, and the ability to achieve high levels of biodiversity very easily and in a very short time scale.

From our Research & Development initiatives to date, we have trialled various different cutting regimes that you could employ in wild flower areas and the results you may experience.

Zero cut

This is not a long term option for wildflower meadows as in time they will get taken over by shrubs and then trees and then the meadow becomes a wood. As we monitor our zero cut plot we will look at the number of wild flower species that persist. With no cut and remove, we would expect to see a drop off in the number of plant species in the plot. The other reason to avoid a zero cut regime is the aesthetics or look of the plot. For around 6 months of the year the meadow will look very scruffy as can be seen below:

Zero cut

One Cut

One autumn cut a year is the cutting regime used by many. On our R&D site we did this (no image) on the 19^th September 2018. It is a low cost option and is good for wild life as there is habitat to provide food and shelter through the spring, summer and early autumn when animals are most active. Cosmetically there can be a scruffy look from August to the cutting date although this does depend on how fertile the soil is as a lot of growth gives a scruffier, late-summer look. So one cut regimes do suit meadows where soil fertility is poor. Aim to complete the cut reasonably early in the autumn. Leaving it too late means that the meadow has no time to regenerate before it becomes completely dormant in the winter and this will result in a slow start the following spring as there is little plant leaf area to promote early spring growth.

If there is one essential requirement for a meadow this is it; one autumn cut.

Two Cut

A two cut regime is well worth considering for a number of reasons. This is most useful where soil fertility is high. Cutting in early June and mid-September ensures that both cuts take off the maximum amount of green material and this is a way to ensure the removal of the most amount of nutrients to help reduce overall soil fertility.

Two cuts

Do this for a few years and you can significantly reduce soil nutrition which will ensure a lovely open meadow that maintains species diversity and maximises the colour and variety of the meadow. The Ashley Manor case study in the webinar gives an example of this technique and the result can be seen below. In this case, the two cut regime was stopped after about 5 years. By then, soil fertility was reduced to a level that required only one cut and remove in the autumn and still gave a biodiverse and attractive meadow.

The two cut method can help with keeping the meadow very tidy and aesthetically pleasing, and extends the time the meadow is in flower. Essentially you get the early spring flowers and, as they start to senesce, the June cut removes that first flush of plant material. This then regrows quickly to give some flowers for the summer and early autumn.

One tip after the June cut is to make sure that after cutting, the area is then well watered if the soil is dry. This encourages quicker re-growth and so the area is quick to flower again.

Type of Machinery for Maintenance

There is always interest in what methods and machines are best for cutting a meadow. The answer is whatever is easy and quick as this will ensure it gets done! So it is generally worth avoiding scythes unless you have been trained and are on a health kick! A strimmer and Allen Scythes are good for small and medium areas, but the arisings will need raking off by hand. Machines such as the Profihopper and Grillo will cut and remove in one go and are very easy to use. They make light work of the maintenance, but investment is required as they are not cheap. Tractor powered machines such as cut and collection machines or balers work well for large meadows.

Other Considerations

The design of a meadow is the starting point for making maintenance easy and achievable. There are many things to think about when designing a meadow but don’t overlook the ability of the design to make its future maintenance easier. Paths and margins around the outside of the meadow will allow easy access for cutting and then the removal of cuttings.

There is likely to be some need for spot treating weeds. This can be done by digging them out or spot spraying them with glyphosate. With a well-established meadow, this is relatively easily done. Where seeding wild flowers into soil with a high weed burden, identifying and removing the weeds can lead to a huge amount of work.

Leaf residue can kill a meadow quickly if left to smother wildflowers over a winter. This kill out is often attributed to shade but it is as, or more likely, a result of leaving a thick layer of leaves in the autumn. They will sit over the flowers starving them of light and also reintroducing nutrients as they eventually break down. Cut the meadow back before leaf drop and removing the leaves is easy, especially if you have a collector mower as this will clear the leaves in no time and the mulch makes great compost.

Another tip is to take care when fertilising the lawn. It is possible to have a top quality lawn immediately adjacent to a wildflower meadow (and the contrast is a lovely feature of a garden meadow), but when applying fertiliser treat the two areas separately – avoid fertiliser overlapping onto the wildflower area at all costs.

In conclusion, there is nothing too prescriptive about timings and methods and a well-established meadow is very forgiving and robust. All of these maintenance ideas do rely on a really well-established wild flower space as the starting point and we can help to achieve this with our various wild flower products.

If you would like more detail on any of the above, please take a listen  to our recent webinar on the subject:

Or give us a call on 01256 771222 to talk it through.

As part of our commitment to furthering wildflower education in the UK, Wildflower Turf Ltd offer a unique opportunity to landscape professionals.

Interested in upping your wildflower game? You’re in the right place!

Sean McGeachy Garden Design

Wildflower Turf Ltd support landscaping professionals with a unique Accredited Partner scheme that provides unrivalled insight and training in the delivery of a guaranteed wildflower environment.

Wildflower Turf Accredited Partners gain training in delivering successful wildflower landscapes and are entitled to exclusive discounts on the full range of Wildflower Turf products as well as receiving referrals from Wildflower Turf Ltd for landscaping jobs. Accredited Partners are also provided with access to a dedicated Accreditation Manager from Wildflower Turf Ltd and receive online and offline marketing support.

One of our Accredited Partners is Kent-based garden specialist and landscape designer, Sean McGeachy. A keen plantsman and horticulturalist, Sean has designed & worked with gardens for over 15 years. Sean graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture with full honours, later choosing to focus on his love of horticulture. Having worked in all aspects of gardening, his path has finally taken him to garden design.

Sean McGeachy Garden Design

As an accredited Wildflower Turf Ltd partner, Sean embraces the dynamic nature of wildflower meadows and the many benefits they offer, not only from an installation perspective but also in terms of ecological and aesthetic aspects.

Sean McGeachy Garden Design

“Accreditation has meant that I have been provided with knowledge and technical support from Wildflower Turf Ltd. I am kept up-to-date with any advancements on tried and tested Wildflower Turf products and new Wildflower Turf products coming to the market. Being accredited has also given me direct access to customers wanting to install Wildflower Turf products in their gardens and landscapes.”

Sean McGeachy

If you’d like to join Sean as one of our Accredited Partners or if you’d like some additional information on out Accredited Partner Programme then please do get in touch on 01256 771 222 or email us at wildflower@wildflowerturf.co.uk  The next days available for training are 6th September in Yorkshire and 20th September in Hampshire.

We have recently started a program of lunchtime webinars looking at specific landscaping topics and how wildflowers can contribute to their success.

We hope these webinars will be a useful tool for landscape professionals and will align with the various training modules we offer, including CPD sessions for Landscape Architects, our Accredited Partner Training Scheme for Landscape Contractors and Garden Designers and Council training days.

We conducted our first webinar at lunchtime last Friday and the topic was Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDs). We had a very good turnout despite initial technical difficulties and got some great questions and feedback. So we thought this month’s blog could look at the topics we discussed in the webinar and give you a link to go to the full presentation that was recorded as a result.

So rather than go through the whole presentation in this blog I am lifting some of the slides to give you an idea and hope that they whet your appetite to take advantage of the free recorded resource below.

We looked at how SuDs offer a set of tools to mitigate water flow to prevent flooding, the relevance of wildflowers in these schemes and how their inclusion offers multifunctional options for any development:

What are SuDS?

We talked through the soft landscape options in SuDs and how wildflowers can contribute to these:

Soft landscape options

We then discussed four specific benefits wildflowers can bring to SuDs. The example below is a study by Portsmouth University looking at how the inclusion of wildflowers in a SuDs scheme can reduce pollution:

Pollution Mitigation

We then talked through a cautionary tale of when specifying wildflowers in a Suds scheme is not always the best choice. We went on to explore five wider benefits of wildflowers in urban greening and GI in general. The two examples below are improved biodiversity (which will be relevant when Biodiversity Net Gain is implemented):

Broader benefits

and how using wildflowers can help with meeting regulations:

Regulatory requirements

We finished with some case studies of the 4 soft landscaping SuDs options, some conclusions and then a few of the questions we were asked after the webinar and links to further reading.

The webinar is a 40 minute long seminar of pictures and audio (although the advantage of using the link is that you can fast forward where you like!). We hope it will be a useful resource to offer multifunctional ideas for any SuDs scheme.

Hope you enjoy the webinar and we look forward to the next one!

There is currently a lot of coverage in the press dedicated to the loss of biodiversity – in this country and across the world.

Now the Government is set to introduce a new initiative – Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG). Any new development that disturbs green space will need to have a plan to deliver BNG. In simple terms the developer will have to ensure that a project/development maintains or enhances biodiversity.

Hoverflies and other invertebrates feeding on Wild Carrot

This isn’t new and maintaining biodiversity has been a planning objective for many years. The whole 2012 Olympic project went to great lengths to deliver green infrastructure. It set and fulfilled its own very exacting targets and was an exemplar development in this respect.

Although still in its early stages, BNG is going to be measured, audited and monitored over years. It will be compulsory so there has to be a financial incentive, either as a grant or as a fine. So far it looks like the latter!

This is likely to mean that an ecologist or suitably qualified person will assess the state of the site before work starts and report back on the current levels of biodiversity. In order to get planning permission a design to ensure BNG will have to be submitted and implemented (if impossible to achieve on site then a donor site has to be found and paid for in mitigation).

Wildflowers for development Copyright Contract Ecology Ltd 2019

So to reiterate, the big difference to previous initiatives is that this is going to be mandatory – so any plan will be monitored to ensure its success. There is talk of 30 years’ worth of monitoring.

There is still detail to decide and consultations continue, but the laudable aim is to see a significant improvement in the UK’s biodiversity. The government has recently conducted a consultation exercise on BNG and how it will be delivered (December 2018) and we are awaiting the outcome.  In an ideal world, we will see new developments providing oases of biodiverse refuge for wildlife that link with others across the country to form a network of species rich habitats.

The height, density and structure of a wildflower meadow offers food and shelter for all sorts of wildlife

In all of this wildflowers can help! They are a species rich habitat and offer the ‘diversity’ bit of the word ‘biodiversity’.  A typical wildflower space will have from 20 to 60 species in a few square meters and this will go a long way to answering the landscape professional’s problems of getting enough species into a given area to help their BNG demands.

Expect to find more fauna and wildlife in the protective habitat of a wildflower meadow.

The point is that to meet targets for biodiversity you need a lot of species. A well established and maintained wildflower meadow is about as species rich as you can get in the UK. Whilst wildflowers are not the only answer, we know that flora diversity leads to fauna diversity. A monoculture is proven to limit fauna/wildlife.

With few plant species and reduced height, a mown lawn limits fauna/wildlife

Speed is of the essence too. Wildflowers are quick to establish and bugs, bees and butterflies migrate to this habitat within days. Trees will help but take years to reach a growth stage that will contribute.

Most stakeholders, from ecologists to developers agree that the principle behind BNG is a good one. Getting the detail right will be hard. There is little chance of all stakeholders being happy with the scheme and compromise will be needed. However there are real opportunities to improve biodiversity in urban and semi urban locations using reliable and practical ways that guarantee results.

Get the establishment of a wildflower meadow right and it will reverse biodiversity loss.

Get this right and there are many beneficiaries. The ecologist can watch and monitor improvements to biodiversity. The developer can be safe in the knowledge that they have done their bit for nature for which they can claim positive PR whilst avoiding any penalties. The site owner will have reduced costs due to the lower maintenance required with the upkeep of the site. The general public will have a natural looking green site that improves general health and well-being. Finally and perhaps most importantly, wildlife will have the building blocks needed to survive and thrive.

With thanks to Oonagh Nelson, Principal Ecological Consultant at Contract Ecology Ltd for her advice and input.

James Hewetson-Brown MD Wildflower Turf Ltd

With a busy year ahead, we’ve recently appointed a new addition to our team.

Exciting news this month, as we can reveal we’ve appointed Phil Singleton to assist us to further service our growing customer base in the north of England. Welcome Phil!

Phil Singleton

Phil has a strong background in the horticultural and landscape industries, having formally worked for Icopal Limited (part of the BMI Group) and Greenscape UK (now trading as Fytogreen).

As former Deputy Chairman for GRO (Green Roof Organisation), Phil will use his skills to great advantage from the outset, as we’re currently working on several large wildflower roof projects. Watch this space for further details!

Phil’s appointment follows our northern expansion in 2017, with our production site situated in Helperby, Yorkshire complementing our Hampshire production facility. We have increased our overall capacity and our northern base also enables us to offer training to our Accredited Partners on a more regular basis.

As interest in, and demand for, our range of wildflower products continues to grow apace, we remain committed to providing our customers with outstanding service. Phil is highly qualified and will be instrumental in providing our northern partners with an exceptional level of support.

Phil is very much looking forward to getting to know you over the coming weeks and months, and we are thrilled to be growing our team as we further expand our operations.