A village green in Lazonby, which received one of our environmental grants in 2015, has produced a riot of wildflowers this year.

In 2015 we gave a grant to improve the landscape and habitats at Scaur Close Green, Lazonby, and we also persuaded the community to register this area as a town and village green so that it would be protected for the community in the long term.

Geoff Wilson gave us this update:

"Scaur Close green is looking about at its best at this time of the year. It was slow in growing during the long dry period and some of the early flowers were smaller than normal I think, but since the rain came most things came pretty well into bloom. By early to mid-August most of the seed should have dropped and the green will be mown and grass collected.

Most wildflowers are annuals so it’s important that the dry seed is allowed to drop to be the source of next year’s flowers.

Here's how it looked earlier in July. To my quite untrained eye there seemed to be a really good mix of grass varieties and flowers. But no apples this year; I think that the very late single night of frost in May caught them out.

Last year I collected some seed from the small patches of yellow rattle that were planted originally and sowed them more generally across the green, with successful results. Yellow rattle is an annual that's parasitic on some types of grass so it helps suppress the growth of grass and gives more air-space for the wild flowers. It seems to have had the right effect.

Nigel and Lois Harbron came again and surveyed the flora species, identifying some species that hadn’t been spotted previously, and some species that had been present last year seemed not to be there this year.

The area that's planted with bird and bee- loving shrubs, herbs, honeysuckle etc. also seems to be thriving .... after the rain; which means there was also a lot of 'weeds' .... but you know what they say about weeds ... they are just plants in the wrong place. They make good compost, so in due course they'll be recycled back to where they came from."

Species identified this year by Nigel and Lois Harbron:

Flowering Plants
Broad-leaved Dock (removed)
Cat’s Ear
Common Mouse-ear
Common Sorrel
Knapweed
Lesser Stitchwort
Lesser Trefoil
Meadow Buttercup
Oxeye Daisy
Red Clover
Ribwort Plantain
Smooth Hawkbeard
St John’s-wort (possibly the hybrid between perforate and imperforate)
White Clover
Yarrow
Yellow Rattle

Grasses
Bent
Cock’s-foot
Creeping Soft Grass
Crested Dog’s-tail
False Oat
Golden Oat
Red Fescue
Rough Meadow
Rye
Soft Brome
Sweet Vernal
Yorkshire Fog

Landscape grants are still available, see our Grants section for details.