helenann

By helenann

Elderflowers

As I walked home from Pilates class, I noticed a small Elder tree covered in clusters of flowers, which is my blip today. 
Earlier, at uke class everyone was still on a high, following the  festival at the  weekend. 
This evening, I attended a Plantlife presentation on Zoom, which was a follow up to "No Mow May", called "Let It Bloom June"..There  was a useful summary of five different "flavours" of grassland which  you can create by different mowing regimes. I think  our garden lawn is what might be regarded  as flowering lawn ( cut every 4-8 weeks) while at our local wildlife area we have created a wildflower- rich meadow (cut and cleared twice a year, avoiding April- August). If left unmown for two years, a meadow becomes one of tall herbs, where the strongest plants have  become dominant, and there  is a reduction in the variety of plant  species. If left for even longer, it will become rough grassland with scrub. Finally, if the shrubs and and trees are only thinned and coppiced on  rotation, every 10 -15 years,  a scrub mosaic grassland results.       
The types of plants grown in grassland are important: the  flowers of perennial meadow  plants  provide  20x as much nectar and 6x as much pollen as annual plants, while  native or near native plants are more beneficial  to pollinators, than exotics.
There were useful tips on approaching local authorities to encourage them to adopt a "Let it bloom June"  approach with reduced mowing regimes. 
Lots to think about!   

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