Wild Flowers

                 I have wild strawberries edging a long bed, enough to give me a cupful every day

This garden is designed for insects. We have lost so many already and our beautifully mowed lawns and weed-free gardens have not helped.  I've stopped mowing the lawn (the idea is to have a mown path round the edge, but I haven't managed that yet) and have introduced some wild flowers into it and elsewhere and intend  to put in more as time goes on. Although it does take time, I can see a difference this year, in that there are a whole lot of smaller-than-usual flying creatures around. For example a tiny ant and a tiny spider that I've never seen before. 

The wild flowers in the lawn include yellow rattle, that feeds partly off grass so helps to keep it down and provide an area for other wild flowers. 

The yellow rattle is dying already, those are its seedheads in the grass

This is the second year for yellow rattle and it has helped a patch of wild geranium to grow in the lawn, together with some ragged robin and a kind of large, very yellow dandelion. I already had daisies, buttercups and clover in the grass. 

 Ragged Robin

  I also have a red clover and bird's foot trefoil at the back and a tub of  lesser knapweed that looks a bit like a thistle without the thorns. All of them attract a wide range of wildlife. 

                                              

Red clover                                                                         Birds foot trefoil            

Lesser knapweed

And I have several Fox and Cubs plants, which I'll need to keep an eye on as they can spread but they are so very pretty. 

Fox and cubs plant

The two dead frogs I found in the garden this week  are a mystery. I'm afraid the foxes got them in the pond, because they didn't seem to have anything wrong with them that I could find. I am sad about them.