Summer in the garden

After my post a few weeks ago about a lack of bees, there are more about in both gardens than there were.  The Borderland garden is now absolutely buzzing with both bees and other insects.  The Telford garden has less, but more than a few weeks ago.  They are particularly attracted to a narrow border that was created last year on the edge of the lawn.  Amongst other things it was sown with saved carrot and fennel seed (from the other garden).  Both the fennel and carrots are now flowering and have made what I am referring to either as my fennel and carrot hedge or fennel and carrot forest.  Most of the fennels are above my head height and many of the carrots are up to my shoulder height.

We ate some of the carrots over the winter, but they were the product of carrots saved over successive years and had either reverted to something a bit wilder or crossed with a wild carrot and many were not very good.  So I left the remainder in place to flower this year for the insects.  They have produced multiples of large globe shaped heads each one containing however many hundreds (or thousands?) of very, very tiny individual flowers.  I think they are very lovely viewed individually or en masse.

The new polyculture patch is coming on well.  It is full of perennials retrieved from the other garden (oca, mashua, scorzonera, skirret, ground nut, Jerusalem artichoke, yacon, Welsh onions) plus wild rocket, kales daikon radish, peas and beans, shallots, herbs, potatoes, squash, courgette and some flowers.

 

and finally – some biodiversity found under a burdock leaf (our cat Fleur)

PS I will be at Shrewsbury Flower Show on 8 and 9 August in the “Our Futures” Marquee with a feature on edible perennial gardening.