Val Bourne says it’s time to bring the lost treasures of our rural flora back in gardens

One of the rules of gardening for me is that your garden should suit its setting and Spring Cottage perches on a plateau overlooking fields where sheep safely graze.

Sounds idyllic, I know, but only two wild flowers grow in profusion in the fields beyond my wall: bulbous buttercup (ranunculus bulbosus) and sheep’s sorrel (rumex acetosella).

Both have seeds which blow into the garden and I do allow the buttercup to have its way, but not the invasive sorrel.

I know that if I had a Tardis, like Doctor Who, I could travel back to the 1920s and those grazed limestone fields would contain up to 50 wild flowers and perhaps more.

These would include orchids, rock roses, harebells and many others. I know this because certain pockets of local flora still exist on steep slopes that avoided being ploughed or sprayed purely because the tractor could not venture there. Pasque flowers (anemone pulsatilla) flourish in these areas too. Pesticides and intensive agriculture are to blame, along with the demise of the rabbit, due to the introduction of a virus called myxomatosis.

These creatures, admittedly the bane of many a gardener’s life, cropped the turf back to almost nothing, giving wild flowers an opportunity to flourish.

Now verges are lush and green, fertilised by car exhausts and the mown grass left to rot down by the gang mowers. We’ve mismanaged these areas in an attempt to tidy the countryside and wasted a lot of fossil fuel in the process.

The golden rule with any meadow planting is to remove the grass within days, so that it doesn’t rot down and enrich the soil and encourage coarse plants and grasses.

It’s not just the lack of spectacle I mourn; those teenage cycle rides down country lanes where hemp agrimony (eupatorium cannabinum) sent up sheets of butterflies on late-summer evenings can never be enjoyed by my grandchildren.

It’s the knock-on effect for insects, which have a special relationship with our wild flora. The orange tip butterfly, for instance, relies on Jack by the hedge or garlic mustard (alliaria petiolata) and lady’s smock (cardamine pratensis) for caterpillar food.

Many gardeners want to have a meadow and there have been several books which encourage you to skim off the top soil and replace it with meagre top soil “lorried” in.

However, I do not have the acreage, or the will, to go down the mechanical digger route. Despite that, I have done well in my garden and my main area of long grass, which contains natives and non-natives, is colourful from March until late-summer.

It begins with daffodils, although not all of them are strictly native I’m afraid, cowslips and primroses, and their inevitable hybrids follow.

There are pasque flowers, then fritillarias (F pontica, F pyrenaica and F meleagris) and then the wild flowers begin to appear. Some have appeared on their own, now that this area is mown only once in the second half of August. The seeds were in the soil and space for them to grow was not provided by hungry rabbits, but by a hemiparasitic annual wild flower called yellow rattle (rhinanthus minor).

I started my colony from seed in early autumn some seven or so years ago, using a handful of seeds. I sheared off the grass to almost nothing, using an old Flymo, and then raked it enthusiastically with a metal-tined rake to expose some bare soil.

I sprinkled the seeds on to the ground and stamped them in, while the Best Beloved insisted that they would never grow. They did and they still do.

The role of yellow rattle is to feed on the grass roots and subdue the grasses, particularly the coarse grasses such as cock’s-foot (dactylis glomerata).

It has worked well and vetches and bedstraws have appeared, but sadly no wild orchids as yet. Yellow rattle produces lots of seeds that rattle when ripe, hence the name. These drop and germinate in spring. My seedlings are about an inch across at present. Seeds can be obtained from Landlife (wildflower.org.uk or 0151 737 1819) and should be sown in early autumn.

Right now you can buy ready-grown yellow rattle plugs from Meadowmania (meadowmania.co.uk or 01672 519994) and plant them.

This company sell about 30 species of wild flower plugs, as well as mixed plug selections and seed mixtures. There’s lots of information on its website.