Project Description

Since we’ve all been spending more time than ever at home this year, and are likely to continue doing so throughout the summer it’s a great opportunity to add in some easy to manage pollinator friendly areas. Obviously not everyone is able to hire a landscape architect to transform their garden, so I wanted to share how I created a pollinator friendly area in our garden a couple years ago on a very small budget!

The first and easiest thing that I did was leave a strip of our back garden untouched to allow it to naturally ‘meadow’. Dandelions, clover, and daisies flourished, and it provided some great early season pollen for our pollinator friends. But I also wanted to create a space in our front garden to give it some colour and provide another haven for pollinators. We live in an area which is notorious for its granite filled ground and our garden is stacked with piles of granite rocks that had been excavated and thrown aside when the house was built so, I decided to make use of them as best I could.

I dug out a roughly rectangular section of grass along a small border wall and used the granite rocks from our garden to create a border around the soon-to-be flower bed. I filled the space with compost, picked up some ‘pollinator friendly’ bulbs and seeds and planted them according to the instructions on the package. I chose not to use weed control fabric as I was happy enough to have a more natural look to my flower bed and didn’t mind a few grasses and weeds springing up, and bonus; it was less work and less cost! I have very rudimentary gardening skills, so it’s been a bit of trial and error, but we’ve now found what works for us. Or more accurately; what grows without us having to do much up-keep, while keeping our pollinator pals happy and fed!

Currently in our garden we have, wallflowers, foxgloves, irises, gladiolus, heather, verbena, poppies, rosemary, and a good few other things that I haven’t got a clue what they’re called but bees love them and that’s good enough for me. I’ve found that heather, wallflowers, poppies, foxgloves and rosemary are super low maintenance and provide some lovely colour and smells for the garden!

Family members near us also created a meadow in their garden, along with some bird feeders and were astounded at the increase in garden birds! Our children absolutely loved playing in the meadow, smelling flowers and making wishes on dandelions! It also led to some adorable photo ops!

Our meadows and flower patches have been a great success and best of all didn’t require a lot of money or effort. If we focus on helping our environment from the smallest up approach, we’re benefiting every species, including us!

Images © Katie Carroll