Planting Wildflower Seeds - The Wildlife Garden Project

last year I started a wildlife garden project I wanted to turn my back garden into a haven for wildlife I could do things that letting the grass grow wild encourage wildflowers to grow this intone will encourage the pollinators such as bees hover flies and butterflies to visit the flowers this in turn will encourage the birds and mammals that eat them to visit my garden and I can do a small part into trying to combat the biodiversity crisis that we face in this country and all over the world it's ready could be a very small part but it's something and it's what I can do so this is now the second year of the project so I thought today I would show you little bit about what I've done so far this year and show you some of the results that we've got in the garden this could be quite a nice one I think so thank you very much for joining me today [Music] so this is where we start in early summer 2020 done a little bit of work with grass you may be able to see that I've cut the grass short but left three areas to grow longer these areas are leave to grow wild and see what turns up I've also cleared a couple of areas by the fence where some brambles were growing I've got loads of bramble on the other side of my garden so I didn't need any more there so as well as leaving areas of the lawn to grow naturally I'm also going to give it a bit of a helping hand by planting some native wildflower seeds in a lawn I've got my tools seeds and peat free compost ready are these seed mixes from a company called seed poor I'm not sponsored although if anybody from Siebel is watching I totally be ok without just saying they do these wonderful mixes of seeds with various pollinators in mind I have here a butterfly mix a bee mix and a wildflower lawn mix as well as a meadow mix it's the wild flower long mix I'll be starting with these seeds are from flowers that would naturally grow in grassy areas or graced fields in the UK the balls themselves are made from a mix of peat free compost and clay the compost provides nutrition to the seeds and the clay protects the seeds from predators there's also chili powder in them to stop slugs and snails from eating the young shoots this mix will contain seeds for flowers like Buttercup dandelion white and red clover Berta foot trefoil and common that weed was around 30 seeds in each ball the balls do need to contact with a swirl however so to plant them in an established lon I need to remove a small patch of grass after I've done this I adds a small amount of peat free compost and placed in a single seed [Music] so I started doing this and digging out multiple pouches my original intention was to take regular holes in ten lines by ten rows there by ticking out 100 holes for the 100 seeds in the packet but I quickly realized that in order to do this I ended up digging out at the same kind of plan so that was about to plant seeds for this would be a stupid thing to do so I changed tack and dug out irregular holes in patches of the garden that were pure grass on Moss I ended up with much less holes now plans but hopefully it will look more natural anyway I also parted some of the seed boards in the patches of bare soil from where I cleared out for brambles and these patches are use the butterfly mix of seeds these seeds have a mix of purple pink and blue flowers designed to attract butterflies these peoples need to be watered well to break down the clay now I guess we wait [Music] okay let's skip ahead a few weeks and the grass has gotten longer there's time to get the lawnmower out and we establish the areas of short grass which really make the longer areas stand out my neighbors must think I'm crazy filming myself mowing the lawn I can just imagine the conversation always made was not the garden again well what are you doing now he's filming himself cutting the grass yes that sounds about right [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] it's also important to keep the bird feeder and bird baths clean and topped up there's been a long spell of hot dry weather and the birds need water the bird feeders and baths can be saved as a disease spread so I'm giving mine a scrub and disinfecting it [Music] wait for it to dry fill it up with fresh water and then top up the food perfect checking in on the seed balls we can see that some have begun to sprout I have no idea of this stage what's growing but hopefully we'll be able to tell in a few weeks one thing I'm very excited to see growing is the yellow rattle that I planted in the autumn last year I wasn't sure it was going to grow but it's everywhere yellow rattle is a pretty yellow flower that semi parasitic on grass the root of the yellow rattle take water and nutrients from grass growing nearby suppressing their growth this thins out the grass and ask other plants more space to grow these are an essential plant to have in a wildflower meadow area another visitor to the garden is this common frog there's been at least one sometimes two frogs in my little mini pond every day for a couple of weeks I'm hoping this might mean frogs born next year but we'll have to wait and see okay moving on several more weeks so let's check on the progress this is year two of my wild like garden project and it's much closer to how I want it than it was last year but there's still a long way to go making wildlife garden can take years and there's a lot of work but when you start to see the flowers bloom and the insect life buzzing around it's definitely worth it let me show you some of the highlights this is a female red-tailed bumblebee enjoying a pretty purple flowers of a thistle just give you an idea of scale this thistle plant is almost as tall as I am [Music] the areas of long grass are now filled with bright yellow flowers not entirely sure what they are as there are many many species of flowers that look similar but my best guess is common cat's ear or maybe common hawkweed [Music] here's some more mixed in with some oxide daisies I'm not the only one enjoying these flowers this male thick thick flower beetle is too [Music] here are some more oxeye Daisy surrounding my apple tree aparted last year and behind the apple tree you can see some red valerian [Music] there are numerous foxglove flowers all over the garden absolutely beautiful if highly toxic plants but for the second year running I have some beet orchids growing right on the boundary between the long and short grass I love this flower hopefully they'll become a regular feature in the garden I really hope they spread and I'll see even more next year another pretty flower growing amongst the grass is this dotted loosestrife it's very small now but it can grow up to one meter tall but it can take up to five years to reach this height this area of the garden is where I planted lots of wild flower seeds last year the results were a bit mixed I'm not entirely happy with how it looks and I feel it could be better and I may attempt to do something with different with it but I'm not sure yet there are however some very nice plants growing here including creeping buttercup [Music] read Campion [Music] [Music] more fox clubs [Music] yarrow and purple toad legs there's a constant battle with the ground elder which I've left to grow on the other side of the path you may have seen a video a few weeks ago where I cooked and ate some of this plant I will need it now while it's flowering as apparently it has a bad taste and a laxative effect not good [Music] this part of the garden I still need to figure out what to do with its shady and the ground elder currently dominates everything so this will be a task for much later in the year or maybe early next also threatening to get out of control is this bindweed again I'm continually pulling it up but a grows back very quickly it does have this amazing bell-shaped flower which is very popular with the bees so I don't mind having Sun growing I just don't want it choking the other plants checking the area where I planted the seed boss earlier in the video there's been a lot of growth for tall plants at the back of some flowers I planted and I'm looking forward to seeing them bloom but around here there's a lot of different plants growing unfortunately I don't really know if any of it came from the seed balls or just grew on his own but there are some interesting looking plants though the real European field pansies I've seen these growing other parts of the garden so these didn't come from seed balls are not a naturally occurring flower which I don't mind at all they're very pretty and they are native so they are most welcome [Music] we also have this shepherd's purse another naturally occurring flower named after the triangular-shaped seed pots after taking a closer look I don't think any of these parts come from seed balls which usually take quite some time to flower and a - to mush results until next year lastly a quick look as an apple patch most people would pull these up as soon as possible by nettles play host to such a diverse range of life today I want to draw your attention to the abundance of ladybirds and all stages of life from larvae you [Music] - peeper [Music] adult [Music] why the semi ladybirds here that's because a major food source for them but these aphids which can be found in huge numbers all over the metals [Music] [Applause] well thank you for joining me for look around my garden I hope you enjoyed it let me know in the comments section what you've got growing in your garden what kind of flowers and insects do you see there I'm really interested to find out what other people have so if you enjoyed the video please do like it and subscribe to the channel for more content like this one so once again thank you for watching this video and I'll see you next time good bye and that in turn will encourage the birds and mammals or what eat them and I could have some kind of biodiversity going on the downside of a delay while I live garden logic because you also have neighbors okay

Channel: Greg's Wildlife

Views: 22,352

Rating: 4.9605913 out of 5

Keywords: wild flowers, wildlife garden, wildflower meadow, greg's wildlife, gregs wildlife, wildlife garden project, planting wildflower seeds, planting wildflowers, garden flowers, garden flowers plants, uk gardening, lawn mowing

Id: UUzZumrLlvA

Length: 14min 1sec (841 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 21 2020