Spring is finally here!

Well, it seems to have been a long time coming, but spring is finally here. The trees are at their greenest and the time for sowing seeds is coming towards an end. Our proven flower mixes continue to delight throughout the UK, for instance, on the Island of Jersey and at Fulham Palace, London,  providing a spectacular pop of colour for locals and visitors alike. It's great to have such good feedback, and we would like to thank all our regular customers for their continued support.

And our new specially designed native seed mixes have been proving popular too - e.g. Haywards Heath town council are using our new Highways mix on verges around the town, so look out for roadsides full of wildflowers later in the year, helping support our pollinators.

Spring arriving in our deciduous woodlands showing off a spectacular carpet of bluebells

 

 

FlowerScapes mixes in St Andrews Park, Jersey, planted by First Tower School, significantly increasing pollinator diversity

Our work can also be seen in a new book; we were asked to supply photographs for ‘New Wild Garden’, by Ian Hodgson, published by Frances Lincoln, so look out for shots of our flower mixes in all their glory.

And speaking of books, see below for a chance to win a copy of 'The Bee Book', co-authored by our very own Steve Alton. 

In order to win one of three copies of the new 'The Bee Book', please Like our FlowerScapes Facebook page and comment why 'The Bee Book' would be a useful addition to your book collection. Three winners will be selected on the 1st of June.

Hedge Your Bets

The FlowerScapes corporate hedge, which replaced a rather dull stretch of Lonicera nitida a few years ago, is really starting to bear fruit, quite literally. Last year we had our first few Spindle berries, and this year they have been joined by the translucent red fruits of Guelder-rose. Rose hips and Blackberries have been a feature for a few years now, and hopefully Sloes will be coming on line soon.

We’ve always been great advocates of native hedging. As well as providing an effective stock- and people-proof boundary, they provide shelter and nectar for a wide range of other species but also act as an interface between people and wildlife. One face of your garden hedge supplies you with food and colour, but the other face looks outward, displaying its wonders to passers-by. And if people want to do a little foraging as they pass, that’s fine with us.

Then, of course, there’s the flora of the hedge bottom, that strange twilight habitat that is neither woodland nor meadow, but shares features of both. Sadly, though, recent studies suggest that this habitat is suffering. Traditionally, the hedgerow was a last bastion against intensive farming; even the most zealous tractor-driver couldn’t get too close, so they remained relatively free from pesticides. True, many were grubbed up to make larger fields; just after the end of World War II there were over 800,000 kilometres of hedges in Britain, but by 1990 there were only 171,000 kilometres left, a loss of almost 80%. But of the ones that survived, the very best could represent fragments of remnant woodland going back thousands of years.

A Nottinghamshire agricultural field devoid of hedge boundaries

Native hedge planting at one of BELECTRIC UK's solar farms

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Recent research by Prof Dave Goulson, of the University of Sussex, suggests that neonicotinoid pesticides, used as a seed treatment on a range of crops, are starting to appear in hedgerow flowers, sometimes at far higher levels than in the crop itself.

It appears that as much as 94% of the neonicotinoids applied to the crop end up in the soil, where they accumulate over the years and are washed out to the field margins. And the margins, of course, are where most of our pollinators will carry out their foraging.

A paper by researchers from the University of Plymouth found that, along hedgerows that formed the boundary between arable fields and roads, bumblebee abundance was twice as high on the road-facing side of the hedge compared with the crop-facing side.  This is probably partly to do with herbicide effects in the field, but also down to the presence of road-verge grassland habitat adding further floral diversity.

So maybe now is the time to consider planting, not only a native hedge, but our road-verge seed mix too? It sounds like another habitat that urgently needs our help.

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It’s always good to have studies to back up what we think we know, even if it sometimes feels like stating the obvious. A recent study by Sussex’s Dave Goulson and Lorna Blackmore of the University of Sterling, demonstrated that plots sown with a ‘wildflower’ seed mix had 5 times more flowers, 50 times more bumblebees and 13 times more hoverflies compared to paired control plots. The seed mix used in this study was a generic native wildflower mix, mainly perennials with a handful of cornfield annuals. Our UK Native Wildflower Mix or indeed our Perennial Bee Mix would give a similar effect.