16 AMATEUR GARDENING 6 JULY 2019One man went to mow
L
IKE many a grandmother, I’ve
worn a route between my house
and my grandchildren’s home,
and along the way I pass the
Rollright Stones, near the village of
Long Compton on the Oxfordshire/
Warwickshire border. I’ve been travelling
along this road for more than 40 years,
in all weathers, and locals will know what
I mean when I say that it’s brutal up there
along that part of the old Jurassic Way.
For many years the lanes nearby
had a really good form of red campion
(Silene dioica). This bright pink-red
flower stretched round the Warwickshire
lanes for miles and it was a wonderful
thing to behold. Sometimes this pretty
campion clung to the hedge bottom and
mingled among wild bluebells, and the
combination of cobalt-blue and ruby-red
was a wonderful sight, especially if they
overlapped, as they often do.
Both bluebells and silenes are
extremely good for bees and butterflies
in May, when there are few wildflowers.
Silenes are commonly called catchflies
because they produce a sticky foam
that traps visiting pollinators. The name
Silene comes from the Greek woodland
god called Silenus, who was the tutor
of Dionysus, the god of wine, andLeave some long grassy areas for wildflowers such as
red campion, says Val – otherwise, they will disappearSilenus was often depicted as a drunk.
These days, there are only odd
snatches of red campion because it’s
fallen foul of the mowing machine. One
Friday evening recently I counted six
people mowing their verges on gang
mowers, or sit-on contraptions, in that
area alone. Forgive me for being sexist,
but they were all men of a certain age
and they don’t just mow a few feet either
side of their drives. Many of them are
going for 100 yards or so to create a neat
grassy verge. Red campion, like many of
our wildflowers, relies on self-seeding.
If it’s cut in flower, it simply fades away- and that’s what’s happened.
Gardeners can help to redress the
balance by planting red campion on the
shadier edges of their garden, because
it’s considered a woodlander. There are
female plants and male plants (dioica,
the second part of its name, means
two houses), so they need to be cross-
pollinated, but I’ve never had trouble
producing seeds.
There are two economical ways of
raising wildflowers for your garden. You
can grow them from seed and generally,
after a period of cold weather, they will
germinate in the spring. You can also
buy wildflower plugs in early spring or
TIP
Mow around or through
areas of long grass so
that they look as though they
should be there. A ring of twiggy
sticks helps to define the area
and you can run the mower
around them.autumn. Buy just five plugs and grow
them in the ground close together so
they form a colony. Allow them to flower,
collect the seeds and then sow the seed
as soon as you’ve collected it in seed-
sowing compost.
This system will provide you with lots
of fresh, viable seeds that are more likely
to germinate than seeds from a packet.
You will be able to raise hundreds of
plants the following year and several
villages have adopted this method to
populate their verges. Our unmown
meadow is a magnet for garden visitors
(and pollinators alike) and I would never
go back to having a closely shorn lawn
all over my garden. I just wish those
mower men thought the same way!“I would never go
back to having a
closely shorn lawn
all over my garden”
Val’s long
lawn is full
of fl owers,
including
wild orchidsLeave unmown areas of
your garden for wildfl owersRed campion (Silene
dioica) and bluebells
(Hyacinthoides
non-scripta) form a
wonderful sight when
they bloom togetherGardening We ek
with Val Bourne, AG’s organic wildlife expert
All photography Alamy, unless otherwise credited
Red campion
is a good food
source for bees
and butterfl ies
during MayVal Bourne Val Bourne
One man went to mow
Buy a few wildfl ower
plugs, grow them close
together and then
collect the seed
TI Media