Since we featured Seedball making as part of our April kit and also ran a seedball-making stall to support Herne Hill Forum's Green Up event this Spring, we decided to spread some of the wildflower love along our local avenues' tree pits. Along the way, we've learned a few lessons...
- The top soil in our local urban tree pits is poor. No doubt lots of reasons for this, but we did get the best results in those tree pits where we added a bit of high quality compost before plonking our seedballs down.
- Kid-sized gardening gloves are a must-have. Mention gardening gloves, a watering can and a couple dangerous-looking spades and my boys are up for anything.
- Weeding wildflower beds is impossible for novices (like me)! We've waited for 2 months and, finally, as the wildflower blooms have begun to appear, we're now able to distinguish a poppy from an oxeye daisy...from an uninvited guest.
- Wildflowers don't require much water. Makes sense, right? Native species are right at home.
- Stake it out. Kew's Grow Wild campaign provided the wildflower seeds for our HHF seedball stall and threw in lovely little 'Grow Wild' stakes to mark wherever the seeds were placed. These were incredibly helpful to keep others from unknowingly weeding away our fledging wildflowers along the streets.