Encouraging children to care about wildlife can extend this springtime to rediscovering wild flowers. An awareness of native wild flowers from an early age will set up children in their school curriculum and link to their interests in native birds, amphibians and beneficial insects visiting a home garden or outside spaces of their eco-school gardening club.
‘Farmer’s Nightmare’ Seed Mix for Meadows
Planting small-sized urban plots with meadow flowering annuals seed in spring is accessible. One well-established seed mix, ‘Farmer’s Nightmare’ has provenance in the English meadow planting movement. The original wildflower mix was given the name of ‘Farmer’s Nightmare’ because the mix’s annual wildflowers, including cornfield marigolds, oxeye daisy, cornflowers, corncockle (with their poisonous seedheads) and poppies, were not generally appreciated by farmers in their fields cultivated for agriculture.
Many companies have followed the lead of the late Dame Miriam Rothschild, Fellow of the Royal Society, and her ‘Farmer’s Nightmare’ wildflower mix, considered the original meadow planting seed mix. Jenny Uglow, in her A Little History of British Gardening (Chatto & Windus, 2004) writes about Miriam Rothschild’s garden at Ashton Wold in the 1970s: “in planting her meadows with wild-flower seeds, corncockle and scarlet poppies, moon daisies and mayweed and orchids, has been credited with starting the ‘wild-flower’ movement. After her ‘Farmer’s Nightmare’ seed mix, companies began producing wild-flower seeds and garden centres started to sell ‘weeds’ ”.
Prince Charles has reintroduced wildflower habitats at his residences including developing a meadow at Highgrove House. ‘Farmer’s Nightmare’, a mixture of cornfield flowering annuals, is reportedly sown lining the main drive to Highgrove in The Elements of Organic Gardening at Highgrove, Clarence House & Birkhall (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2008) by HRH The Prince of Wales with Stephanie Donaldson.
Involving Children in Spring Sowing a Small Meadow
Sowing wildflower seed on bare ground rather than lawn reduces competition between grass and wildflowers in their growth and development. Wildflower seed will germinate and grow well on bare ground, after primary cultivation. Digging and forking over a 2 metres by 1 metre plot of available bare ground in a home garden or set within an eco-school gardening club will be large enough to make an impact on local wildlife by sowing a wildflower seed mix such as ‘Farmer’s Nightmare’. Children may become involved in raking after the primary cultivation of bare ground, sowing the seed and aftercare of the growing meadow.
Once digging over the bare ground to improve the soil structure has been completed, the site of the small meadow can be raked in preparation for sowing the seed. ‘Farmer’s Nightmare’ is a popular annuals mix as an introduction to creating a meadow and biodiversity. Sowing coverage of 3 grams of ‘Farmer’s Nightmare’ wildflower seed to 1 metre squared is recommended, to be done in springtime for an expected flowering in July.
Aftercare of a Small Meadow
Many of the annuals will self seed and when the soil is turned over in Autumn; this should encourage the germination of next year’s meadow. Researching the wildflowers in the 'Farmer's Nightmare' seed mix will add to the experience and also inform about the life cycle and characteristics of the plants.
Susan Morris - Susan Morris, Scottish food and drink business manager, organic gardener, author and editor
