April WEX - Planting Wildflowers

Hello! Last weekend our WEX group had their monthly meeting and had a great session as per usual. Freddie was there and he has written another of his excellent, and very informative, blogs reporting what they did.

Over to Freddie and enjoy. :) 

This month at WEX we were planting wildflower seeds for birds and other wildlife. Insects are on the decline so its really important to help them on their way by planting wildflower seeds so that they can pick up nectar to feed themselves. Insects are really important pollinators and they help us too by keeping ecosystems running.

Firstly, we were designing a wildlife friendly garden for bees, insects, birds and other animals. Here is a picture of my garden design.

This garden includes: -

• A stream.
• A bug hotel made out of logs and bamboo sticks.
• A pond at the end of the stream, a good habitat for frogs, sticklebacks, nymphs and other wildlife.
• A bird hide.
• A bat box.
• A forested area complete with bird boxes hanging in the trees.
• A hay stack as a home for grass snakes.
• A compost bin for worms.

(Nicola here, I very much like the sound of this garden.)

After that we went out of the classroom and onto the reserve to see what wildlife friendly features, we could find which were the same as the ones in our designs. I found: -

• Bird boxes.
• Wildflowers. (Nicola here again, have you noticed all the lovely wildflowers in the garden that volunteer Martin has created near the VC? It's quite beautiful.)
• A bat box.
• A bug hotel.
• Ponds.
• Grass snake hay stacks.
• Wooded areas.

Next, we went back up to the classroom and out into the wildlife garden. We had some mixed wildflower compost (which had wildflower seeds inside it). We cleared the weeds out of a certain bed and got it ready for sprinkling on the compost mix, hopefully in a few weeks’ time we will have a patch of fully grown wild flowers!

Lastly, we planted the rest of the wildflower compost mix in our own little pots to take home with us. We made a bee feeder which consisted of a garden cane with a card flower which we had cut out stuck on top. In the middle of the flower we stuck a milk bottle top on which we filled with cotton wool. This is for soaking with sugar water as a treat for bees and butterflies until the wildflowers grow. Here is a picture of mine. You can see that the seeds are already starting to germinate!

Thank you Freddie, great blog!

We look forward to hearing about how your wildflowers grow and what they attract.