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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