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Index- Wildflower Gardening Web Index
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The
Back Garden
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Skip to : Play spaces
using child safe wildflowers |
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Back Gardens
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| Using wild
flowers in your back garden is fun
and it attracts wildlife. Always include species which attract butterflies
and bees.
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The back garden wildflower display can incorporate mini-meadows, full
blown wildflower meadows, woodland and rockery displays. Pond,
orchard and hedgerow seed mixtures are all available to complete the design. The
garden can be designed with tall ornamental grasses
Back gardens need not be maintained to a high standard. Instead
the design should focus on species diversity, blazes of colour, seasonal
changes and feeding wildlife.
Formality can be achieved with
wildflowers especially when they are placed just off the lawn as low
growing mixtures which are cut three times a year.
Design By Nature back garden advice is to link the back garden to the
local flora to attract wildlife along a wildlife corridor
The following
guidelines when designing a back garden:
- To the windward and north side 60% of the shrubs and trees planted should be evergreen
such as Scots Pine and wind hardy species.
- All the plants planted in the back garden should be plants
that encourage a relaxed atmosphere where you can unwind from the
stresses of the day in peace and quiet surrounded by a glorious
feeling of mother nature.
- Concentrate on planting bold colour,
strong scents, long flowering periods and mixed species together to so
that when one fades, another is flowering.
- Because of the misconception of no maintenance gardeners forget that
there must be at least one cut per year to remove all the dead
foliage.
- In the design of your back garden, create a woodland or
shrub area where this dead foliage can be composted as a sheet mulch
across the surface of the soil. Its here that blackbirds will
scratch looking for worms throughout the year.
- The back garden should be pesticide and chemical fertiliser
free.
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Species with a high wildlife feed value, such as Field Scabious,
Ox-Eye Daisy, Selfheal, White Campion, Woundwort, Cowslip, Plantain, Lesser Knapweed and Birds Foot Trefoil
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Features for a back garden include
- Wildflowers sown into gravel pathways
- Low growing wildflowers on edges, verges and underneath standard
specimen trees and clotheslines.
- Mixed species groups of wildflowers treated as herbaceous border
plants
- Creeping and climbing wildflowers to enliven hedges and walls
- Scented wild flora such as Meadowsweet,
Sweet Rocket, Marjoram, Chamomile, Flag Iris, Ladies Bedstraw, Wild Carrot and
Mint.
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Play spaces
using child safe wildflowers |
| Most wild
flowers are safe but Foxglove if
ingested is poisonous but also are many favourite garden such as
Rhododendron, Euphorbia.
Like all things bad for our children its about education, self control,
explanation and not instilling into our children that nature is bad just
occasionally dangerous. We need to teach them to have a healthy
respect for all things wild. While at the same time allow them to
enjoy the Wild Strawberry, Blackberry and Raspberries.
Most wildflowers won't tolerate excessive trampling.
However they all originated in meadows filled with cows.
The following is a list of the toughest species that will colonise a
wild lawn designated as a play space:
- Plantain
- Selfheal
- Ox-eye daisy
- Bedstraw
- Red Bartsia
- White Clover
- Dandelion and Common lawn daisy (both of which we don't stock but
will if asked)
- Speedwell
- Birdsfoot Trefoil
- Hard-wearing wild grass species available from specialist grass
suppliers
Some of these species are recommended because they will grow on
compacted soils or will quickly re-colonise once the children stop playing
on the grass.
Many of these above species are contained in our
wild flower mixtures
which should be grown adjacent to the harder wearing wild flower areas.
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Most of our customers want a recommendation as to what to do with the clothesline and the garden
shed.
Under the clothesline, we need
to plant phosphate resistant and tough wearing species such as
plantain, Selfheal, and chamomile. All these plants are low growing and
capable of dealing with the drips from wet clothes.
"On the shed, plant honeysuckles,
wild roses,
wild vetches and under plant the base with wild mint to drive moths
off. "
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Index- Wildflower Gardening Web Index
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