The CHAS is doing a project with the London Wildlife Trusts Gunnersbury Triangle reserve to demonstrate how you can garden for pollinators in a very small space. We’re providing plants for two planters which will be installed at the entrance to the reserve in May.
Fran Goloway & I have been hard at work researching the plants to flower from March to October – not easy in a small space! We wanted native plants, as this is a nature reserve, and also needed to consider how popular they are with pollinators and how happy they are in pots, as well as season of flowering and flower colour (although we haven’t got a colour scheme as such). From an initial longlist (see here), we’ve come up with the following:
- cotoneaster horizontalis (to grow up the trellis)
- foxgloves
- sweet peas
- climbing nasturtiums
- lavender
- poppies
- scabious
- cornflower
- crocus
- thyme
- viola
- sedum.
We’ll obviously take stock as to how well they do during the year and change the mix of plants as appropriate.
The Greenhouse Team are growing many of these, although the thyme is proving challenging. Between them, we hope they’ll keep bees, butterflies, moths and hoverflies happy over a long period.