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Brief Guide:
Sow mid spring to late summer into
a well prepared seedbed
Sowing Rate:
5- 10 grams per square metre
(20.00 kg per acre)
75% Perennial Grass Seeds
(of which)
35% certified
Hard Fescue
festuca ovina
20% certified Crested Dogstail
cynosurus cristatus
20% certified Fine Fescue
festuca rubra litoralis
10% certified Smooth Stalked Meadowgrass
poa pratensis
10% certified Smaller Catstail
phleum pratense bertolonii
5% certified Bentgrass
agrostis capillaris
25% Agricultural
Flowers & Native Cornfield Annuals
28% English Vetch
vicia sativa 16% Sainfoin
onobrychis viciifolia
10% Borage
borago officinalis
8% Corn Cockle agrostemma
githago
6%
Crimson Clover trifolium incarnatum
4% Poppy
papervar rhoeas 4% Birdsfoot
Trefoil lotus corniculatus 4% Yellow Trefoil
medicago lupulina
4% Alfalfa
medicago sativia 4%
Corn Marigold chrysanthemum
segetum 4% Phacelia
phacelia tanacetifolia 2%
Corn Chamomile anthemis arvensis
2%
Cornflower centaurea cyanus
2% Red Clover trifolium pratensis
2% White Clover
trifolium repens
1%
Chicory
cicorium intybus
1%
Yarrow
achillea millefolium
Additional Information:
Before the introduction of intensive
farming, the use of heavy machinery and herbicide, our farmland was a more diverse
landscape with many summer flowering weeds, legumes and specialised local crops.
Sainfoin for example was only grown on the Cotswold Hills and Hampshire Downs providing
a high protein feed for hard working horses. The flower of Sainfoin (pictured) attracted
bees with great excitement. Borage is another crop long gone from our working countryside
and although white (and to a lesser extent red) clover has made a certain resurgence
in use over recent years, it rarely has the opportunity to flower before being cut
for silage or grazed by intensively farmed animals. Again, cornfield annuals have
all but disappeared from the sterile cereal crops cultivated for the ultimate yields
of commercial production. So these bygone flowers are of our great grandfathers
days, our mostly forgotten heritage and maybe the overlooked source of pollen and
nectar our struggling bee and butterfly populations are really missing from their
modern habitats. Sow spring to late summer.
For further information on
Wildflowers
see our Grass Matters
site
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