Tag: Plantlife

Create a buzz in your garden 

  • No Mow May with Johnsons Lawn Seed
  • Rewild your lawn with Johnsons Wildflower Mix

For the month of May, Johnson’s Lawn Seed is encouraging gardeners to say “no” to mowing their lawns, in a move to halt the declining numbers of bees, butterflies, and wildlife, as part of Plantlife’s No Mow May initiative.

A special new product will also be introduced, helping gardeners to further support our beloved creepy crawlies.

No Mow May returns next month and was first launched in 2019 by the botanical charity, Plantlife to highlight the terrifying loss of natural habitats including almost 7.5 million acres of flower-rich meadows and pastures having been lost since the 1930s. The result is fewer pollinators and fewer insect-eating birds, with entire habitats on the verge of complete collapse.

Recognising this, Johnsons Lawn Seed, alongside the No May initiative is highlighting the importance of our gardens, as a place to support vital wildlife.  Small steps, such as having a slightly overgrown lawn or planting wildflowers that are rich in pollen and nectar, will attract beneficial insects and bees to gardens.

How to get involved

No Mow May doesn’t mean messy, overgrown, and scraggy patches of lawn to attract wildlife. Johnsons Lawn Seed’s Celebration Wildflowers Mix – launched for the 2023 season – can take a part of an existing lawn or flowerbed and convert it into a meadow. Containing bright and vibrant annuals, the mix has 17 different flowering species including cornflowers, poppies, cosmos, marigolds, and daisies, providing a diverse assortment of local insects.

Celebration Wildflowers

Not only do the Celebration Wildflower tins make ideal gifts for garden-loving friends and family, but they also offer an important gift to nature, as the wildflowers will encourage pollinators into gardens, providing nectar for these vital winged insects.

Outdoor spaces will come alive with bees and butterflies for months at a time as soon as the flowers appear.   With coverage of up to 15m2 from one tin and an RRP of just £9.99, Celebration offers a lot more for your money and will bring wildlife to your garden in its droves.

In the Tin

The Celebration Wildflower Tins contain a stunning mix of flower seeds, chosen to create a riot of colour and attract all kinds of pollinators to the garden:

Common NameColour(s)
Paper DaisyWhite/Pink/Purple
Pheasant’s EyeRed/Orange
Pot MarigoldRed/Orange/Yellow
CornflowerBlue/Pink/White
CosmosPink/Purple
Painted DaisyRed/Orange/Pink/Yellow
Dwarf Morning GloryBlue/Purple/Pink/White
Chinese Forget-Me-NotBlue
California PoppyMulti Colour Mix
FineflowerBlue/Pink
Farewell to SpringPink/Red/White
Baby’s BreathRed/White
Candy TuftWhite/Blue/Pink/Purple
Love-in-a-MistBlue/Pink/Purple/White
Corn PoppyRed
Celebration tins with seed

Why rewilding matters

Bumblebees are by far the most well-known pollinators and without these little buzzing creatures there would be far fewer flowers, fruits, and vegetables growing around us.  According to a BBC report, bees pollinate approximately 70 of 100 crop species that feed 90% of the world, with honey bees alone being responsible for $ 30 billion a year worth of food.

Another benefit of leaving your lawn uncut is it protects butterflies as they lay eggs and food for insect larvae as they grow and develop. There are about 60 types of butterflies in the UK, but they are declining more rapidly in urban areas.  A major scientific report from Butterfly Conservation shows that almost three-quarters of the UK’s butterfly species in the UK have suffered population declines over the last 10 years.

Seeds created by the wildflowers can also be eaten by garden birds and the taller plants will provide shelter for all kinds of wildlife, increasing biodiversity in an outdoor space.  It’s also ideal for the novice gardener as the wildflower lawn is low maintenance, requires little water, and does not require a green thumb to keep it looking bold and beautiful.

Plants grasses too

For those that want to establish grasses as well as flowers, Johnsons Country Meadow Mix when planted in an urban setting is beneficial to support insects and other wildlife.  By planting native wildflowers, you will provide attractive drifts of colour throughout the summer months, as well as maintain the No Mow May pledge.

Country Meadow 200g_L

The Country Meadow Mix is a mixture of native origin as sown by professionals and contains birdsfoot trefoil, black knapweed, and yarrow, as well as grasses including browntop bent, crested dogstail and Yorkshire fog. 

The diverse lawn and native wildflowers are both natural and sustainable and are essential for establishing a healthy wildlife community.  Think soft meadow colours, wildflowers, and native plants such as cow parsley, poppies, and buttercups accompanying wispy grasses and you have wildlife-friendly sanctuaries in your backyard.

Get the kids involved

Or why not get the kids involved with No Mow May and use either of Johnsons’ mixes by making a seed bomb? This is a fantastic gardening activity that children will love.  All you need is some wildflower mix, some clay, and compost.

Mix with water to form a dough ball. Once they have dried, simply throw them onto your lawn or into your flower bed and watch how a magical meadow of blooms grows.

What’s more, each mixture of Johnsons’ wildflowers will establish within eight weeks. By not mowing the lawn this May, the longer length will create a haven for wildlife, newts, frogs, and hedgehogs to forage, as well as beetles and worms that will also bring birds to your garden to feast on the many invertebrates.

It’s not too late for gardeners to start getting involved now as part of the build-up of the charity’s No Mow May initiative.  

Guy Jenkins, Consumer Manager at Johnsons Lawn Seed says: “No Mow May represents an opportunity for homeowners when it comes to native wildflowers and helping to support the biodiversity and nature of their area.  

“Our Wildflower mixes can help the pressures our pollinating insects and other wildlife face by creating a sustainable environment within the urban garden.”

Johnsons Celebration Annual Wildflowers are available in 50g tins with an RRP of £9.99.

Johnsons Country Meadow Mix is available in a 200g carton with an RRP of £14.99   Both are available from garden centres or retailers.

Road verges: 20% drop in diversity of wild flowers puts bees at risk as plant ‘marauders’ take over

* ‘Silent killer’ air pollution and poor management have reduced floral richness by nearly 20% on verges

* Plantlife reveals the ‘dirty dozen’ plant marauders that are increasingly rampant on road verges

* Wildlife at risk: Red clover and lady’s bedstraw – two particularly wildlife-friendly plants – are experiencing the most rapid decline on verges

* BUT ALL IS NOT LOST; better management of our road verges could have spectacular results for wild flowers and wildlife, delivering an estimated 400 billion more blooms (or 6,000 flowers per person).

A marauding gang of invasive native plants including nettle and bramble are thriving on a diet of ‘junk food’ and taking over our once flower-rich road verges reveals Plantlife, Europe’s largest conservation charity dedicated to wildflowers and other flora.

Almost 90% of Britain’s wild flowers prefer lower-nutrient soil but they are being crowded out of the countryside as a result of air pollution creating unnaturally rich conditions, particularly on our road verges. Analysing trends since 1990, Plantlife has identified that our road verges are undergoing a dramatic change with plants that enjoy soil rich in nitrogen – much of it deposited from vehicle exhausts – spreading like wildfire including stinging nettle, bramble, rough meadow-grass, cow parsley, Yorkshire fog and creeping buttercup.

The boom of these ‘nitrogen guzzlers’ is crowding out wild flowers that had found a haven on our road verges, including some of our rarest and most threatened species such as fen ragwort and wood calamint which are now clinging on at a handful of verges, their last remaining habitat.

Victims of the changing verge include wild flowers like tufted vetch, bugle, tormentil, red clover, lady’s bedstraw, white campion and greater knapweed. Air pollution combined with decades of poor management has seen the floral richness of our verges decline by nearly 20%.  

Dr Trevor Dines, Plantlife Botanical Specialist, commented: “Our once colourful and botanically diverse road verges are becoming mean, green thickets where only thuggish species can thrive and more delicate flowers are being driven to the brink of extinction. 

“After the froth of cow parsley in May, many verges no longer enjoy a bountiful summer; for the 23 million people who commute to work by road, the verge can be their only daily contact with nature – a floral parade of pink orchids, sapphire-blue tufted vetch, white oxeye daisies and billowing yellow lady’s-bedstraw – that we know can boost health and wellbeing.”

Why road verges matter 

  • So often undervalued, road verges are home to over 700 species of wild flower – nearly 45% of our total flora – including 29 of 52 species of wild orchid.
  • As other grassland habitats disappear – 97% of meadows have vanished since the 1930s (5) – verges are a last remaining refuge for many bees, butterflies, birds, bats and bugs as the wider countryside becomes increasingly hostile. Red clover and lady’s bedstraw, two of the top six verge species that support the highest number of invertebrates (6) – are amongst the plants experiencing the most rapid decline.

Dr Dines said: “The destructive impact of air pollution on human health is well documented but how pollution affects plantlife remains under-appreciated: vehicle exhausts can result in up to 2.5 kg of nitrogen per mile per year being dumped on our road verges – a rate that only a fraction of our wild flowers can cope with.

“Poor management has combined with pollution to create a perfect storm. Not only have councils adopted an over-eager regime that sees flowers cut down before they can set seed, but the mowings left on the verge simply add to the soil richness. Under this management, summer-flowering plants such as eyebright and harebell are disappearing and only the toughest of characters – like nettle and bramble – are prospering.”

Plantlife’s vision for Britain’s road verges is simple: verges remain safe for motorists but are managed for wildlife as a matter of course. Some strikingly simple changes – like cutting less and later in the year and harnessing the power of semi-parasitic yellow rattle to act as nature’s own lawnmower – can significantly improve the biodiversity on our verges, bringing benefits for wildlife, for us and for future generations.

Plantlife can reveal today the spectacular results a concerted regeneration of our road verges could deliver. Plantlife research estimates that if all of the road verges in the United Kingdom were managed for nature there would be a spectacular 418.88 billion more flowers, or 6,300 per person in the UK.

Dines added: “Verges are positively bursting with the untapped potential to arrest the alarming decline of our wildflowers and wildlife. If all our verges were managed for nature we would see an area the size of London, Birmingham, Manchester, Cardiff AND Edinburgh combined adorned with wildflowers.

“This surge in pollen and nectar would have a genuinely transformative effect on the prospects of wildlife – half of which we have tragically lost in the past 50 years alone. Re-enlivening our neglected roadside offers us a route away from biodiversity oblivion.”

Over 24,600 people have signed Plantlife’s petition calling for councils’ management to better benefit flowers and wildlife. Those councils that have already adopted our guidance have seen strong floral and financial results. Dorset Council estimates they have saved over £100,000 through, among other things, fewer cuts since 2004.

Pictures: Plantlife