Second year’s progress

The pictures above show the cemetery meadow at the end of May 2022. Two weeks later, by mid-June, there is a greater variety of flowers with ox-eye daisies, sorrel, lesser stitchwort, betony, and white clover among the buttercups.

By August, the rich purples of scabious and knapweed are showing…

…and providing food and shelter for lots of wildlife

Grass in the formal gardens of Moorhaven suffered from the hot dry summer but there was a lovely display of catsear and yarrow where we avoided mowing around trees

October was rain- and wind-swept but the scabious kept flowering. We flail-mowed the two smaller areas, one of which was immediately filled with buttercup leaves enjoying the extra light. The larger area will be mown in November as soon as the rain stops. The thicket of native trees that we planted in the spring survived the dry summer (with the help of a few barrow loads of water) and has thickened up nicely despite being shaded by a large oak tree for much of the day.

Thicket of native fruit and nut trees