Late-summer wildflower & insect bonanza

No posts for a few days as I have been using every spare moment of the fine weather to complete hay making for the year. OK our garden is much bigger than average, but it's not as if we have acres and acres of hay meadows. The challenge is our steeply sloping terrain, which means everything takes longer and needs more physical effort. Having the right weather for drying the hay makes all the difference and each rake-full has been swishing smoothly over dry ground, instead of sticking in heavy, wet mats as it has done for the previous SIX years!

Two things struck me (apart from aching shoulders): first the rapidly disappearing evening light – sunset in these parts was at 7.59pm yesterday – meaning that the opportunities for getting out in the garden after work are getting fewer and shorter; secondly what a bumper season it is for early-autumn wildflowers that are continuing to attract hundreds of insect pollinators.

Pick of the bunch are the trio pictured below.

Hemp Agrimony Eupatorium cannabinum

Wild Angelica Angelica sylvestris

Devil's-bit Scabious Sucissa pratensis

All have composite flower heads, with each stem of Hemp Agrimony and Wild Angelica bearing  hundreds of individual florets. The Hemp Agrimony forms substantial clumps reaching at least 1.5 m in height, and seems to favour semi-shaded woodland-edge conditions, but where there is good afternoon sun. The Angelica makes self-seeding colonies in damper areas, especially around the lower of our two ponds, where some individuals have strikingly dark purple stems, contrasting beautifully with the slightly pink-flushed white umbels. I keep meaning to save seed from the best plants, but have yet to put my good intentions into practice...

We are especially proud of our Devil's-bit Scabious, which are native to unimproved grassland here in Devon, including areas close-by to us. We introduced some responsibly sourced plug plants to our meadows in spring 2012, a few of which have flowered for the first time this year. I have harvested and sown seed in trays, aiming to raise dozens of new plugs for planting out next year, the theory being that I can boost the population faster this way than by relying on natural self-sowing alone. We'll see!