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Landscape Institute hosts Climate Emergency Conference

Held last week, the Landscape Institute’s ‘Mitigating the Climate and Biodiversity Emergencies’ conference was delivered virtually over three days.

The conference debated a number of important themes and discussed imperative actions, exemplar practice, core skills and thought leadership around mitigating the climate emergency. Delegates heard from a range of established speakers on the topic, and there was also the opportunity to contribute to the debate by connecting and networking with people from across the landscaping profession and wider, associated fields.

On Day One, Anthony Dewar, Professional Head Buildings and Architecture, Network Rail, together with Matt Winfield, England Director at Sustrans and Selina Mason, Director of Masterplanning, Lendlease debated “what are the contradictions for landscape designers when designing for Net Zero?”

In attendance at this discussion, we were interested to hear from the contributing parties that the main barriers to adopting more biodiverse, nature-based solutions can be summarised as follows:

As we all look forward to Easter and hopefully some time off spent in the garden, we have another very welcome guest blog, this time from  Madeline Miller.  Madeline is a writer at Best legit essay writing services and Lia Help. She covers gardening tips and has a particular interest in wildflowers. She also is a blogger at Big Assignments.

Many people are now looking to create wildflower meadows, whether that’s in their own back gardens or on  a larger scale. They’re certainly better for the environment, and are more beautiful than a regular lawn. However, they can be more difficult to bring to life than a regular lawn. Here’s why your meadow (if you are seeding) may not be succeeding, and what you can do to fix the problem.

Not Doing The Right Preparation

 There are lots of seed mixes on the market that promise you a wildflower meadow,  but when you sow it where you want it, none of them bloom. This is often because you haven’t done the prep work before buying those seeds.

“You need to know…

Wildflowers compliment a stunning eco-house in the Chiltern Hills

This month we are sharing a wonderful project that has been a real labour of love for one of our clients. Ilona and Andrew, together with their two children, have followed their dream of building something very special in the magical Chiltern Hills and we’re thrilled to have been invited along on their journey.

The story starts back in 2016, when the family happened upon their chosen space and their vision for a sustainable, environmental and eco-friendly home and garden began.

Inheriting a 1950’s bungalow, and determined to progress their ideas, the family appointed architectural designer and television presenter, Charlie Luxton, to assist them to bring together their sustainable build aspirations.

The original house structure was demolished in August of 2020 to make way for a contemporary eco-build.  The architectural design incorporates a thoughtful and sustainable approach aimed at keeping energy use very low and heating and cooling to a minimum which will make for a much more comfortable living environment. The huge, high performance, triple-glazed windows contribute to the airtightness of the building and the glazing ‘lantern’ allows light to flood to all corners of the building throughout the year.  The adventurous…

Introducing our Authorised Reseller Programme

Regular readers of our blog posts will long be familiar with our Accredited Partner programme, whereby we assist landscaping professionals with unrivalled insight and training in the delivery of successful wildflower landscapes.

Our Accredited Partners are entitled to exclusive discounts on the full range of Wildflower Turf products, receive referrals from Wildflower Turf Ltd for landscaping jobs, are provided with access to a dedicated Accredited Partner Manager and receive online and offline marketing support.

(If you would like to learn more about our Accredited Partner programme, our blog article from 2019 is a great place to begin.)

In response to an ever-increasing demand for wild flower solutions, and along similar lines to our Accredited Partner programme, we have launched an Authorised Reseller scheme.

We are the leading supplier of wildflower products and expertise in the market but we are always looking for quality like-minded partners who wish to enhance their own product range to their customers by offering our premium wildflower solutions.

As well as access to trade discounts on our industry-leading wildflower products such as Wildflower Turf® and MeadowScape…

Happy New Year and welcome to our first blog of 2022.

We are delighted to hand our blog over to a special guest contributor this month!  Writer Emily Henry works at Academized and Essay Services. Emily writes about plants and wildlife. She is also a tutor at OX Essays

Bees are responsible for pollinating all kinds of plants – trees, flowers, and everything in between.  Whilst bees tend to be drawn to most flowers, they do have their favourites. Some flowers have unique qualities that bees deeply enjoy. And, believe it or not, you might have one of these flowers in your own garden.

Here are the top 12 wildflowers that most attract bees:

Daisy

Daisies are designed in a way where they offer a unique way for pollinators like bees to get to the pollen and nectar. Besides their light scent and bright colors attracting bees, the head of the daisy is the most attractive. The single flower head on a daisy is made of the ray flower part and the center disc. While the ray flower part doesn’t produce any pollen, the center disc does, since the disc is made up of tiny flowers. So, the ray flower acts…

Peat and Plastic. Begone!

With COP26 now a fading memory (read our review of the summit here), we wanted to conclude our blog posts for the year with an update on what we, here at Wildflower Turf Limited, are doing to ensure that we “do our bit”.

Our two biggest targets as we look towards the future are to reduce peat use and to reduce the use of plastic. We continue to push research and development boundaries and sustainability is one of the core goals of our R&D department and at the forefront of our product development programme.

In line with public concern about the damage peat extraction does to our natural environment, Wildflower Turf Limited is committed to an annual reduction in our use of peat as a growing medium and, aligned with the England Peat Plan, aim to eliminate the use of peat by 2030.

We are already continuing to reduce the peat content of our turf, with a goal to be completely peat-free by 2026, ahead of the 2030 target set out in the England Peat Plan. And we are very pleased to announce that one of our peat-free goals has already been met…

Take a sneak peek behind the scenes…

Research and Development (R&D) is a pivotal part of everything we do here at Wildflower Turf Ltd.

Our product enhancements and new product development initiatives are driven by our meticulous R&D department, headed up by Dr Janine Robinson, and we invest heavily in order to continue to push boundaries and innovate.

Our monitoring process allows us to generate a large data set that contributes to an evidence base of understanding. We will continue to strive to establish Best Practice protocols for Turf Management and we look forward to sharing our learnings with you over time.

The spring and summer months are an especially busy time for us as the growing season provides many insights. Growth will differ year-on-year and variations in the weather can influence a meadow considerably; there is some delight to be taken from not quite knowing what a meadow will look like from one year to the next. There is also great joy to be had as each season adds a new complexity and dynamic to the changing wildflower landscape.

Our R&D plots are located at our Hampshire growing site and we’ve collated some of our observations from the spring and summer months of…

We are delighted to hand our blog over to a special guest contributor this month! George J. Newton is a lifestyle content editor and writer for Academicbrits and Nextcoursework. He has a very patient wife of over ten years, who is his biggest supporter. He also contributes his work on gardening and landscape to websites such as Dissertation Help.

A wildflower meadow in full bloom is a naturally beautiful and colourful solution to various ecological issues. In addition to absorbing carbon, they provide a habitat for biodiversity to thrive by accommodating species such as bees, butterflies, and various small rodents.

Unfortunately, weeds have an annoying tendency to compete with wildflowers and steal their resources for growth. While some weeds are tolerable, too many weeds can infiltrate your garden before it can even become the natural beauty that you wanted it to be. However, there is good news, if you wish to plant a wildflower garden.

While it may not be possible to grow a completely weed-free wildflower garden, here are some tips to give wildflowers their best chance to blossom.

Prepare The Garden In Advance

Although wildflower…

A Hampshire village comes together to create something special.

In what we hope will be an action replicated across the nation, the small village of Broughton, near Stockbridge in Hampshire is setting a wonderful example of a community embracing the need for wild changes.

This delightful story begins with local garden designer, Clare Bates.

Trained in garden design at the English Gardening School and Sparsholt College, Clare is also a Pilates instructor and is well known for conducting Pilates classes from her very own wildflower meadow in Broughton.

Inspired after seeing the local farming community embracing rewilding (more on this later) and wanting to do more to help the village of Broughton rewild, Clare joined the Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust as part of their Wilder initiative.

The Trust’s “Team Wilder” project has been designed to encourage people from all walks of life and with different skills, knowledge, and experience to offer, to take some form of action to put nature into recovery, create more space for wildlife to thrive, and reduce the pressure on the environment.

…

The Edenbrook project showcases the many benefits of our SuDS Turf.

This month we’re taking a look back at a long-running commercial project that has been managed by one of our Accredited Partners, Scofell Landscapes.

Based in Berkshire, Scofell Landscapes became a Wildflower Turf Accredited Partner back in September 2018. The team has many years of experience creating, maintaining and improving landscapes for commercial clients and regularly call on us to assist them with their projects.

Edenbrook is a development by Berkeley Homes with a selection of distinctive high specification homes in Fleet, bordering the highly desirable setting of an 82-acre country park, open green space and woodland.

At the outset, a management plan was drawn up by Berkeley Homes and approved by Hart District Council to maintain and enhance the area. Scofell Landscapes was brought in to maintain the country park which included large open spaces, footpaths and ponds.

With the Edenbrook development requiring SuDS (Sustainable Drainage System) expertise, the Scofell team was also engaged to landscape the development and provide remedial work after other services left the site.

Overall, we supplied Scofell Landscapes with 2,070m² of SuDS turf…