Brighten your world, one packet at a time

This year the RSPB introduced some garden seedmixes that I helped devise with our wonderful supplier, Sylvawood Seeds, which is a small, principled, independent company.

Matt at Sylvawood worked really hard to ensure we had great seeds from UK sources that didn't use pesticides or seede dressing, plus the packing is plastic free and uses FSC card (from sustainable forests) and the inks are vegan.

I've been growing two of the mixes in the garden this year, and look forward to trying out the others this autumn and next spring.

I've been growing the Cornfield Colourburst (below). Intriguingly, the Corn Marigold, which would have injected splashes of golden yellow everywhere, didn't come to anything. That can happen with seedmixes - your soil, or more likely just the germination conditions, can sometimes mean that one species or other in the mix is less successful. But, because it is a mix, you still get bags of value and colour.

You can also see I only had a few Common Poppies in there, which I did expect from a spring sowing. Had I sown it in autumn, I would have anticipated many more to bloom.

The bees have been adoring the Cornflowers, and the pink Corncockles have been a hit with hoverflies - there's actually a Marmalade Hoverfly buried in this Corncockle flower (below), quietly supping away.

I've also been growing Best for Bees, which is the mix of my favourite annual flowers for bees. They're not native plants (in fact, many people are surprised to find out that many common annual 'wildflowers' such as Poppies aren't truly native) so they're definitely mixes for the garden, not wild places, but they're fab.

Bees love blue, so this mix is predominantly on that side of the spectrum - here are the intense blue of Cornflower and the lilac of Scorpionweed (Phacelia tanacetifolia).

My bed of Best for Bees has done well, but not as well as Matt's has. Take a look at this! 

Several of the RSPB mixes can be sown in autumn - September and the first half of October are ideal, once summer's heat has hopefully dissipated. 'Best for Bees' is best left until spring, but the more subtle meadow mixes are perfect for getting going later this year.

So get planning for which ones you're going to try, this year and next, with the double whammy of pleasure for us and for your garden wildlife.