Newby Gardener

You're right Bags, it was a very careless choice of word on my part. My excuse is that I was writing very late at night and should have been in bed ;) What I was trying to explain is that it's a tiny patch of land that is special not only because of its geology but due to the fact that it has always been in private ownership and has never been cultivated. Presumably in previous times it must have been grazed fairly regularly to have evolved as it has over the centuries. We DO have a land management agreement, which includes us removing seedling trees as well as grazing or cutting the 'grass'. The link is for the council owned major part of the site, we are on one edge of the hillside.
www.ywt.org.uk/reserves/townclose-hills
www.ywt.org.uk/news/2012/08/01/searching-glow-worms-townclose-hills

Seems to me there's really no thing as a wild flower meadow. They seem to involve an awful amount of work.

Your meadow sounds lovely, trishs! I'd love to see it. However, I do wonder about the term "untouched". I presume what is meant by that is that it had not been ploughed and sown with crops other than meadow plants for many generations. Is that right? Correct me if that is wrong. But the thing is, even the meadow may not be untouched land really. Presumably it would have been forest before human beings started farming there and using that bit of land for pasture. If the meadow needs to be "maintained", then clearly what nature would do to it is different from what we as humans want it to be. So, in my mind, that is not untouched. It is a human-made landscape, not an untouched natural one. Sorry to be picky but I do think it's important to understand exactly what terms mean. If what I suggest is correct (it may not be), the land is not untouched. And if nature 'wants' dog mercury to grow there, and you can't manage to prevent it and can't get help with the old style pastoral maintenance, why not just let nature do what nature does?

I speak as someone who knows full well that if I didn't maintain our garden as a garden, within thirty years, or possibly less, it would have reverted to a forest of birch, ash, holly and sycamore, with brambles galore, honeysuckle, ivy and so on, with perhaps a few glades where deer browsed or where a old tree fell down and opened up a light area until new trees took hold again.

In some ways this is a challenge, but in other ways I find it very encouraging – give nature half a chance and it will get on with Life all by itself and hide human interference very successfully

Bindweed has taken a bigger hold than normal in one of our borders this year. It must like the rotten weather we've been having!

We are fortunate to have an actual wildflower meadow (which is part of a larger SSSI) but we have been struggling to maintain the quality of the sward in recent years. Many years ago The Nature Conservancy people used to help locate groups of volunteers who would come for the day with scythes and rakes to help cut and remove the 'hay' at the correct time of year. Eventually we started keeping sheep which grazed the hillside perfectly but as time went on we began to have sheep die for no obvious reasons. When I finally figured out that they were being poisoned by eating Dog's Mercury we asked for help (from English Nature) who did a bit of spraying but not enough repeats at the correct time and the evil weed is now everywhere and we have not heard from them for ages. The personel are forever changing and they are always strapped for cash so that a small (but quite unique) site such as ours just doesn't seem to be of enough importance to them to save It's a crying shame. We continue to do our best to maintain the site but I can barely walk and there is a limit to what my husband can mange on his own as he gets older. At it's best we have/had cowslips, hay rattle, scabious, orchids, twayblades, bluebells, harebells, etc etc as it's a very ancient untouched plot of land.

gaga
Yes the roots of your bindweed go very deep, almost to Australia

Some people walk their border every day from spring onwards and pull up every little bit of growth they can see.
Others will let it grow up poles and then treat the foliage with glyphosate.
I do not know anybody who has been able to eradicate it completely.
The big problem here is that the roots like to grow between the roots of your other stuff. And that would mean digging up each plant, separating the bindweed roots from the host plant, digging out all the root bits in the surrounding soil. In other words: a nightmare.
But maybe another G-netter knows a good remedy.

While I was away for a fortnight, my already scruffy garden acquired a fine - and lethal - crop of nettles and a forest of horsetail, plus a vast amount of seeding rosebay willow herb. I will have to ring the nice gardener who cleared it for me a couple of months ago and confess I've let things slide.

The garden we inherited on moving to the south coast 6 weeks ago was infested with bindweed (convolvulus) It was strangling and choking all the plants in one border.I have pulled yards of it out but have been told that it will always be back as it has very long roots. Any advice on getting rid of it?

My approach to wildflower gardening, which seems to work, is to pull out (or at least, not allow to seed) plants I don't want, rather than putting in plants I do want. That way, what is fairly local and which likes the soil in your area is more likely to just plonk itself in your garden in its own time.

[Wanders off wondering whether there are any online sites or gardening progs about Patient (or Natural) Gardening, by which I mean watching what Nature does and encouraging it.....]

.... When one wants a 'wild' bit.

The gardening programmes make it look so easy don't they jeni? I find it nigh on impossible to establish wild flower areas as our soil is very fertile and the dratted nettles soon take over. I used to know Marnie Hall years ago and she reckoned plug planting was the only solution. It worked for a while but I couldn't keep up with the maintenance.

Yes .ive probably spent about £100 on plugs and seeds! I'm going to try the natural route if people can get seeds to me!
I'll try to grow them in my conservatory and then Gary to Kant them as plugs.
So please folks, if you're coming to Brum. Bring seeds!

www.kingsseeds.com/Ko-Bespoke/productlist.asp?cat=1/WILD%20FLOWERS/

Have you tried this firm, Jeni?

Masses of it around Argyll at the moment. Ragwort and meadowsweet are the dominant wayside flowers with a few umbellifers thrown in and the occasional other goody like harebells or a clutch of toadflax. All very lovely and the herbivores are fine – at least we didn't see any keeled over

I want wild flower seeds from the wild! As I'm disabled, I can't collect them myself. If anyone is coming to the midlands meet and has access to seeds, would you please bring them with you?
I'm trying to stablished a meadow at the bottom of my garden and packet seeds are not working!
Anything except convolvulus, ragwort and that tall purple thing(can't remember the name) gratefully received!

I saw a whole front garden full of it today - and it wasn't mine!

The trouble with ragwort is that it's very pernicious and once it gets a hold it can take over an area smothering everything else. Even a plague of cinnabar moths for the next ten years wouldn't make a dent in a neglected field near us.

Another good way to see it off, Barrow is to cut it down to ground level then stick a large pot or suitable container over the top. You may have to leave it a year but if you plant the container with something that complements the border you can hopefully forget all about the ragwort. I often do this with large docks which suddenly appear in a mixed border as trying to dig them up is futile.

The field is at the back of the house and the ragwort is in a planted area at the front. Thought I had read somewhere that is is not good for animals so when I found it I did check that part of my garden which is next to the field and there is none there. Will keep cutting it down and hopefully it will die off.

I tend to be very wary of toxic weeds since we have lost several sheep grazing on our SSSI land. And poisoning is not a nice way to die It took me ages to figure out the cause. The culprit turned out to be Dogs Mercury.

Young regrowth of ragwort amongst grazing pasture could be ingested by animals. IF Barrow lives adjacent to fields with animals it's wise to get rid to stop seed spreading but otherwise, yes, leave odd plants for the moths, if they are not in prime flower beds We have many such 'weed' plants in our wild garden for the benefit of insects and wildlife.

It is also the breeding ground for the cinnabar moth.

Ragwort is only toxic to herbivores when dead (the plant not the animal ). They tend to give it a wide berth when it is growing in their fields.

The person who cut down the ragwort is an experienced gardener (he comes in to cut the grass for me) and would know about disposing of toxic plants. I could get him to do the rest of the garden for me but I am trying to save money!!

Jeni - don't have horses in the garden but sometimes do have cows and deer in the field behind me!

It's not good for horses! I hope barrow doesn't have too many in her garden?

Hope you're managing to deal with the ragwort in your garden, barrow. It isn't all that toxic really. Poisoning is actually very rare. When I find some in my garden, which I do frequently, I pull it up with my bare hands.

Here is some information

It's actually quite valuable to invertebrate wildlife so I was quite pleased to see that it is thriving on roadside verges as we drove north from Wales on Saturday.

Barrow - forgot to say... good for you tackling the gardening. It's a very rewarding activity, both physically and mentally. I've enjoyed growing stuff for nearly 60 years now. Always happy to share my knowledge and experience, but sometimes quite a lot of detail is needed to get a full picture, eg what kind of soil, size of flower bed, location, etc to be able to offer the best advice.

Barrow - I hope whoever cut down your ragwort wore gloves and safely disposed of the plant as it is highly toxic. It is important not to let plants set seed so you need to make sure new growth does not reassert itself. The roots are big and difficult to get out but the plant is supposedly a biennial or short lived perennial so you might be able to just keep cutting its head off until it dies off naturally.