#159.21 - Flowers for June

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Here are watercolour paintings done by my class


Me in front of the house


Buttercups in the garden 


Yellow rattle in the front lawn


Last year I had enough of the mowing. I even hate the sound of mowing. I hate it. And the damage it does to the lawn and the insects there. For the longest time I hand cut the grass in my lawn to give the animals a chance to run off. it also broke my heart that I was cutting these dandelions and buttercups. Flowers I loved before they were fashionable to love. Anyway, for this year i told David, I have had enough of killing my lawn. I am going to grow wildflowers.

Then the question... what wildflowers. He asked me if I wanted to do the cornflower, poppy and ox eye daisy mix which was quite pretty. I said... well... the thing with them is that they have to be rotivated every year in. They don't keep the seedbank which is kinda weird. Of course they don't cos they are not local seeds. Poppies are ok further south but they hate Northern Irish weather. We are too wet for them. Just a smidge. And cornflowers are not really wildflowers. They are to Southern England. I have never seen them really wild here. Our true wildflowers are dandelions and buttercups, orchids, welsh poppies... so he said, yellow rattle is good because it is local, it comes back and it helps to establish the seed bank. So you know, win-win.

It did cost me a fortune and David three days of working in the middle of winter. But here are the results. I have done two things with the lawn - in the back I have kept the local flowers - the buttercups and dandelions and welsh poppies - green gold and white. Oh yes we also have cow parsley. I am waiting to see what it does. Then in the front we have the yellow rattle. I am letting that grow with a mix of willow herb and a couple of other wildflowers like plantago. But we lift th dandelions. Sure they have the run of the backyard. Its just that they are so vigorous they will end up overruning the lawn. And all that time and effort not to mention ££.

But the hope is that it will be good for the wildlife and be easy to maintain. We will probably put more seed in later in the year, but the hope is that the yellow rattle will sow itself and open the space out for more wildflowers to naturally establish themselves. Possibly cowslip, orchids, and other local plants. That's the hope anyways.

In the meantime, the garden is shining with buttercups on the other side. It is kinda mental really. It is kinda hard to describe how the entire garden is glowing with the reflection of light off the buttercups. I now have my own light source - the buttercup lawn. 

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