Yesterday’s snow melt continued today, revealing pebbled paths, borders and even a few new flowers as clumps of frosted flakes receded into icy damp. It was beautiful for a few days and fun for the boys – a thankful break in the monotony of their schooldays – but I couldn’t live somewhere where snow was the norm. It’s just too cold for me not to mention how long it takes to leave the house.
The sun was also shining bright for much of the day, pushing through the clouds until there was a majority of blue sky. Having bagged the early morning, pre-school slot for a quick wake up yoga session, I felt ready to write. As it turned out I had to help the boys write a poem each before I could get to my own work. I love writing poems and am happy to help them but a 3-hour rapping and rhyming session while trying to instil independent thinking kind of took the flow out of my own verbage.
Several hours later I somehow emerged with 400 words on the wildflowers of Hever Castle for Countryfile magazine as part of their Great Days Out section on Magnificent Meadows – a joy to write albeit under unexpected duress – and we were all satisfied with our days’ work in the end despite each of our feathers being ruffled.
I can’t wait to visit Hever in the summer and see this years’ meadows with my own eyes, dotted around the manmade lake that Lord William Astor commissioned 800 men to excavate between 1903-7. Inspired by Nigel Dunnet and James Hitchbough’s kaleidoscopic meadows designed for the Olympic Games in 2012, Hever’s are similarly polychromatic using 100 percent flower mixes to guarantee long-lasting colour as well as biodiverse food for bees, butterflies and birds.
First grown in 2018, with Hever Castle Gold Club’s Head Greenkeeper Rob Peers at the helm, the micro meadows are now sprinkled throughout the Estate and the adjacent golf course, with new combinations of annuals and perennial, and native wildflowers and introduced showstoppers trialled each year. Hever’s shop even sells wildflower mixes and specially designed Flora Fleece to help grow your own meadows.
Although our new garden design doesn’t allow for any great swathes of wildflowers I’ll certainly be incorporating some of my favourite wildflowers into borders and pots. Even thinking about the bright nodding heads of cosmos, cornflower, poppies and calendula is enough to bring a smile to my face. Hever’s meadows have also reminded me about sweet alison – or alysum – which I always associate with formal borders in a park.
In fact this pretty white flower, actually a coastal native hence it’s botanical name Lobularia maritima, has rather a wayward charm viewed through a naturalistic lens and also smells honey sweet on a clear morning. Wish I could smell some now.
The rest of the day involved a trip up to the flats, where the boys ran in the melting lakes among burgeoning flocks of opportunistic landgulls, and then I finally managed to show the boys the little owl. A good day in the end.