We are now half-way through week 13 of our GWS wild flower garden at Katharine House Hospice and “We Have Poppies”. You can see them as you drive into their grounds for the poppies are blooming brilliantly….
Our poppies were first on the scene at week 12 along with corn chamomile, our one self-heal, meadow buttercups, a few tiny myosotis blooms and one very tall yellow flowered plant which I only discovered a week later was groundsel. We cleared out all plants and threw them onto the bonfire; now I’m seeing groundsel everywhere! It’s constituent parts are mildly toxic to both man and beast but, happily, you would need to ingest a great amount of this material and over a long period for any real hurt to the body. Groundsel can be found everywhere in gardens, waste ground land crop fields. It was our flower of the week for week 13, last Thursday, when I wrote about it quite extensively on our website and that of KHH.
groundsel plants ready for the bonfire
Our dear Moley Mole has not returned to tunnel our garden and this is probably due to Mr. Sykes warning against over-watering the garden, creating a mole-easy dig and neither have we been visited by any of the rabbit family.
Half-way through week 11 we noticed a great confusion of hoverflies and such like activity about our garden, as well as some bees, so the word must be out about the opportunities to be found at our new patch of wild flowers, which is very exciting….
Our sited bee boxes have not so far attracted any homeless solitary bee as yet but we’re hoping for new neighbours soon.
heads down we win! here we are growing happily at the end of week 10
In week 10, our tallest seedlings had reached a height of 15.1/2 and some of our id seedlings were transplanted into individual flower pots. Now in week 13 most of these seedlings have been planted into our second garden and are doing quite well.
I posted a message on Twitter about out GWSeedkit garden that weekend and have had some interested response. There is much more Facebook posting activity from a wide variety of GWSeed Kit groups and it’s good to see what they are achieving.
As well as hoicking out the groundsel, a few other “weeds” are being removed and we’re checking for their status against removal of the wrong weeds.
our id seedlings waiting to be planted out
Yesterday, Monday, 3rd August, I found our “cultivated” poppies had burst into bloom which, from a distance, gave our garden a blue-hue which looked rather exciting. Mr. Sykes explained these seedling seeds had probably been added to the bare area when used as a dumping ground from other parts of the garden. However, they came to be in our garden I’m glad we have them, for they do look very good.
We have cultivated poppies in our patch
Harcourt Arboretum at Nuneham Courtney grow wild flowers which we’re hoping to visit to photo-pick their collection and view their trees.
We had not anticipated any flowering of our garden until mid-August so to have poppies blooming now is very exciting.
Margaret Halstgead