Daffodils meadow is the first thing we planted in our Chewton Mendip field.
I always love
d Daffodils. They might not have the delicate shape or colour of many summer blooms such as peony or dahlia, but nothing beats the joy of seeing them dancing like a ray of sunshine with the still crisp earlier spring breeze.
Their bright colour and cheerful face is like a loud announcement of spring, and they seems have a unique power to lift my spirt when ever greeted by them in the garden or a woodland walk.
As a lover of flowers, simple being in a meadow of many blooms is a ultimate dream of me as a child. Even as a grown up, I aways can not help to stop the car when passing by a field of rapeseed flowers in the near by countryside.
So planting a Daffodils meadow in companion with our young apple and pear trees was the first thing come to my mind I when we were planning to start a new Orchard in our Chewton Mendip field.
After persuaded Andrew to be on board with this ideas, I started to research which Daffodils varieties to plant. Through days and hours of reading and learning, I realised how big the Daffodils family is. I was in awe of unique fragrance and beauty of many different varieties of them.
Like many of you who loves gardening might have felt when seeing many different beautiful plants in a nurseries, I felt difficult to decide which one to choose. I was only be able to narrow my choice down to the 14 varieties, when telling myself I will planted more in future.
As some of you might already saw in our PYO days, those lovely 14 varieties including Red Devon with bright orange petal, pale white double headed Bridle Crow, Pheasant Eyes with powerful scent, and many more.
We decided to naturalising the bulbs in the grass. This follows regenerative farming methods, which will leave the glass and other native wild plants undisturbed. They will continual playing their role in providing home to bees, butterfly and other wild life and improve local biodiversity. Even though, it means extra work to feed, water and sometime replants more bulbs as we might lose some of them to wild life but we would like to share our garden and space with nature.
We planted our Daffodils in October 2020. Even though we were able to use a tractor and have our lovely local farmer contractor Paul to assist with planting, it was handwork. We hired a specialised bulb planting attachment to the tractor, which drilled the bulbs under the grass. After a great deal of work in marking, lifting the bulbs in to the bulb planter, tractor work, and other tasks, we finally planted 24,000 bulbs.
Even though we completed the planting task, it is just a start of our story of our Daffodil meadow. As we choose to grow eco-friendly, we have continued work to maintain our lovely meadow. Every Spring and Autumn we feed our bulbs with organic matter. We watered them when it is too hot in summer. Also replants more bulbs in Autumn as some local moles sometime eating some of them. It is your visit each Spring give us encouragement to keep our hard work. So we like to think you all who come to our Pick Your Own Daffodils! We love to see your happy face in our flower meadow.
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