News

Very soon we will be launching the inaugural issue of our Newsletter.  We are very excited!  To celebrate the occasion we are creating some pretty thrilling stuff for you to read!
“Be the First” to see our time-lapse photography with voice-over as James Hewetson-Brown talks you through the concept of growing a wildflower meadow.
“Designing or Simply Considering the Concept of a Green Roof?” will showcase a few of the sensational  projects we have been involved with, that we believe you will find inspirational.  It doesn’t need to be a grand design to be impressive either as you will see.
“Eco Friendly or just a Gimmick? will be an excerpt from a recently commissioned Bug Report that proves the bio-diverse credentials of Wildflower Turf roofs.
We hope primarily that you will enjoy what we have written and as this will be our first newsletter we would value any feedback you can give us.  Which of course can be done via our website.
If you wish to subscribe to the newsletter you can do so on our home page. We really hope you do because we know you are going to be thrilled!

Wildflower Meadows as we all know, look absolutely stunning from the time they start to flower in May right through to cutting in September.  But aside from this obvious attraction, did you know that quite a few of the native wild flowers in that meadow can be either eaten, used for their healing properties or even as a cleaning agent?
Just imagine the scene –  after toiling away in the fields or in the garden you can rub your aching muscles with oil from St Johns Wort after washing with soap made from Red Campions and wash your hair with Musk Mallow.

Feeling a little peckish after all that activity, you could gather from your wildflower meadow a dinner of herbs – leaves of Bladder Campion, Oxeye daisy and Salad Burnet (tastes like Cucumber) served with tasty young Bladder Campion shoots lightly cooked with butter, accompanied with a glass of wine made from Field Scabious or a drink flavoured with Meadow Sweet.  Delicious!

A Beast is what the garden at Follers Manor was before Landscape Architect Ian Kitson turned into a Beauty that complements its elevated surroundings in the newly designated South Downs Country Park.  Featured in Channel 4’s programme Landscape Man, Follers Manor is located at the eastern end of the South Downs and was a project that offered the opportunity to demonstrate just how beautiful a wildflower meadow can look when integrated into an innovative modern design.  Full of flair and elegance there are distinct echoes of Antoni Guadi’s Parc Guell with an English twist.
When we were first approached in May 2009, we only had a vague idea of how glorious the finished garden would be.  Ian’s design featuring a wildlife pond at the bottom of an intricate winding path naturally had to have a wildflower meadow, which created a seamless vista against a backdrop of the East Sussex countryside.  We are sure you will agree with us when we say we were thrilled when we saw the finished project.
[caption id=”attachment_363″ align=”aligncenter” width=”300″ caption=”Wildlife pond surrounded by wildflower meadow in…

Last Autumn we were delighted to be approached by Architects HPW Partnership, concerning a new themed area at Paultons Park in Hampshire.  Peppa Pig World is due to open at Easter 2011.  As part of this project there is a “12,000 sq ft indoor play area providing a brand new space for visitors to take cover on wet days, and the largest Peppa Pig dedicated shop in the country”!  HPW had specified a green roof and recommended Wild Flower Roof Turf. Paultons Park had used our turf in the past and were keen to go with our system.
Owner and Managing Director of Paultons Park, Richard Mancey and project manager Keith Ashley, met up with James Hewetson-Brown to talk through this exciting new project, and to discuss how the proposed green roof could be tackled. As contractors BBS Green Roofing had been selected to install the turf and the overall construction of such a huge project needed to be carefully managed.This was very successfully executed by Steve Vincent who has 15 years experience is this very bio-diverse trade.
Three weeks ago this phase of the new building was successfully completed.  First to be…

We are proud as punch that Olivia Stewart, a young designer with her own company, chose our Wildflower Meadow Turf for use in her Conceptual Garden, Clear Waters Rising.  This design was entered and short-listed for the RHS Young Designer of Year Award at Tatton Park.  As you will have seen on BBC1 Olivia achieved a Silver Gilt Award for this beautiful design inspired by a camping trip to the Lake District.
We were a little worried that the turf was a little too young for this concept, but we needn’t have worried as you can see from the link below. It was just about perfect.  Her design definitely reminds us of the Lake District with some wildflowers already blooming whilst others are just waiting to spring into colour.  We would be interested to hear if you agree with us.
Well done Olivia, the sky is the limit now and we wish you every success for future designs!
Olivia wasn’t the only designer that chose our companies products for this show.  Marcus Green came to us with quite an unusual…

The Chelsea and Hampton Court Flower shows are now a distant memory but not so distant that we can’t congratulate a bunch of our customers for their beautiful designs and thank them for choosing our wildflower meadow turf as part of their project.
Chelsea Flower Show:
We were pretty thrilled to be asked by four garden designers, to supply turf for their Chelsea exhibits whether that be a trade stand; Lily Sawtell of Lily Sawtell Designs and  Richard Eccleston of Oakleaf Gates or a spectacular show garden; Paul Stone for the Eden Project Garden and Sue Hayward of Sue Hayward Garden Designs.
Sue’s design for the “Stephen Hawking Garden for Motor Neurone disease”, won a  Bronze Medal in the Contemporary Category Show Garden, Congratulations Sue.
“Eden Project – Places of Change” designed by Paul Stone was awarded  a Silver Flora Award by RHS. Well done Paul! We were very proud to be asked to supply Wildflower meadow turf for this imaginative and colourful garden. You can find even more photographs on the  BBC website.  The picture below was taken by photographer Robert Davidson.

Barn Owls (Tyto alba) are a species of conservation concern in the UK, so being given the chance to change their fortunes albeit very slightly and locally was not an opportunity we were prepared to pass up.
Some while ago the nice people from The Hawk Conservancy popped over to the farm to install a nest box in one of our high barns.   The goal was to encourage the Barn Owls that had been seen flying around the farm, to rear young in a place where they would be relatively safe and there was clearly a guaranteed food source.
Barn Owls are low flying predators and prefer open farmland with abundant hedgerows, edge of woodland with field margins left alongside hedgerows.  They feed on small mammals such as short-tailed voles, mice, shrews and small rats – just what you would expect to find scurrying around a farm with open tracts of rough un-grazed grassland and acres of wildflower meadow turf.
A few weeks ago, and with great anticipation on our part, The Hawk Conservancy returned to see whether Mr & Mrs Barn Owl had decided it was a Des. Res. and had set up house in there.  To our great delight they…

Hard work always pays dividends and in some cases, well deserved recognition.  The National Motor Museum, Beaulieu was the venue this year for the annual Hampshire Awards ceremonies run by Hampshire, The County Magazine, where our very own James Hewetson-Brown proudly accepted First Prize for Hampshire Business of the Year 2010 as presented by Mark Houghton of Space Air Conditioning, this years sponsors of the Business of the Year Award.

Our wildflower meadow turf is an innovative, sustainable product that provides inspiration for designers and gardeners throughout the country who wish to encourage not just beautiful wildflowers into our lives but also the accompanying fauna.

We cannot ignore the fact that this recognition reflects the growing awareness that  many of us feel that we need to provide habitats that attract butterflies, bees, beetles and birds, of which there is a rich assortment (article coming soon) in the absence of the age-old wildflower meadows that our ancestors enjoyed.
Well done James and team.

Here is a whizzy little application we have been trialing to enable our fellow bloggers to see how spectacular our wildflower meadow turf looks when fully grown. It is an interesting little project that I wanted to share with you all. We decided to use a spare bit of land just outside the office which was very chalky and bare and got a little bit creative using time lapse photography created by Stephen Hill.  In order to see this at its best, we recommend you click here.
Wild Flower Turf – From rolls to meadow in 9 Weeks from James Hewetson-Brown on Vimeo.
Notice how the Pink Campions displayed early, shortly followed by Oxeye Daisies and Bladder Campions. It’s all about progression, balance and competition between the various grass and flower species. The turf looks quite alarmingly sparse when first laid but as you can see after a couple of weeks it really begins to grow and thicken up. After being quite pink for a couple of weeks, it now displays as an overall white cloud. We can’t wait to see what flowers next!

The meadow surrounds the new wildlife ‘dipping pond’ where the pupils will be encouraged to hunt for ‘mini-beasts’!  This project will be part of the curriculum starting this autumn.