Kitchen Garden Forum

A friend of mine has got so fed up with her council not cutting the verge outside her house that she's decided to turn it into a proper wildflower verge and is ordering specialist turf with which to replace the current grass. I gather she's had to apply for special council permission to do this. I'm intrigued by this idea.

With our local area suffering similar council cutbacks in grass cutting I'm wondering whether our Parish Council could be persuaded to follow a similar route in some of our more public areas.

Does anybody have such specialist wildflower turf in their public areas? . Can anybody give me more information about the types of turf available and any photographic examples of where it works well?

It seems to me that if austerity cutbacks are continuing to impact on public areas, this is perhaps one area where we could start to make a virtue out of a necessity and enhance our local surroundings.

Dundee City Council have started laying small piles of earth along some verges and they are full of flower seeds, not all indigenous wild ones sadly, but nice all the same.

Bournemouth council have been putting in swathes of wildflowers in public areas for a few years now and they are glorious. The locations range from roadside verges to areas in parks. They don't use turf, though. Each spring they turn over the top soil (I'm not sure what machine they use, but it will be a big 'un!) and sow wildflower seed directly into the turned earth. As they do this each year, the seed must be for annuals. There are lots of California poppies, normal poppies, cornflowers and plenty of others and it's a very colourful and long-lasting display.

OH and I dug a test patch in our grass last year and threw on a cheap box of Wilkinsons wildflower mix and it came up a treat.

Some of the ones in Mudeford are not resown but left to self sow & they just drag these rake things over early spring. One or two areas at entrances to different estates have been planted by the community, along with the daffs & no moaning from the council. I might have been know to throw in a few of my dried poppy heads around while strolling past certain dull locations - not proper woods & beach places just residential areas that could do with a bit of cheer, not that successful to date though.