Meadow Creation

The pond surrounds were unappealing areas of coarse grasses liberally dotted with vigorous weeds such as nettle and dock. Whilst this is a habitat for some wildlife, we decided a proper meadow area would be more desirable. The existing turf had to be completely dug up before sowing wild flowers, or it would have quickly taken over again. We decided to stay “organic” and not to use glyphosate or similar weedkiller. Another way is to cover the area with black sheeting to kill all plants, but this takes time and we were impatient to get ahead. So we dug out the turf and weeds by their roots as best we could. This was very arduous, as the soil, a chalky clay-loam, is very compacted and dry.

In Spring 2007, the Pond Club children sowed wildflower seed over the dug areas. We used an eclectic mix of meadow flowers and grasses such as would give rise to a hay meadow, cornfield annuals, and some garden annual seeds kindly donated by parents. The result by July was a very rewarding colourful display. There were, however, quite a lot of nasty weeds remaining – particularly annual sow thistle. These were pulled up as far as possible, while trying not to damage the desirable plants. A“weed” in this situation is simply any plant that we don’t like.