On the other side of my garden there is a small meadow and if you look further there is the next garden belonging to my neighbour. The meadow is full of wild flowers, many of which I know the name and others that I just guess. A daisy is not just a daisy. there are different types of daisy. Grass is not even grass, but has its own flowers which form the many seeds for the further existence of the meadow. The whole concept of this meadow is to let is grow and it needs no gardener to do the work. When our estate was built this part was sewn with the seeds of the wild, those that no-one really wants in the garden and so they have their own garden.
It begins to grow as soon as the last days of Winter are saying goodbye. First of all a few green shoots and a month later you discover that the green shoots are developing with their own way of life: no leaf is the same as that next to it and some are already taller than the others.
I just took a walk outside with my mobile camera and this is what greeted me. I would now probable need a machete to carve my way through to the neighbour next door. the grass has grown tall, most of the plants have flowered and now there seeds are left and that is the excellent idea. This meadow is protected until the end of June, to give time to the plants to spread their seeds for the next year’s display. When the men have done their work and everything has gone it is not the end. Even until October there is the beginning of the following meadow. And next year the short life of our local meadow continues.
Do you see the nicely coloured pink flowers at the edge of the meadow? I am not entirely innocent for that. I had some sweet pea in my hedge to brighten it up and the seeds were mine. It seems that over the years my sweet pea plants have joined our meadow and now we have them growing here and there from my original plants.
Some things are short lived, but they return. I love my little wild meadow.
Chronicles of an Anglo Swiss 
My little meadow (only 1 meter square, more or less) is just starting to bloom. We’re having a late summer, maybe even a short one if Bear gets her way.
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Sort summers produce more intensive flowers
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A beautiful meadow….and protected, too! That’s wonderful.
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When the meadow is cut, it is dried for hay for the animals
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Wow. The Swiss are so resourceful! What a great thing to do.
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Ephemère – a word I got to know probably first in French, before the English word – it beautifully describes something of a short, fleeting moment and your meadow is just that. My ‘meadows’ or as we like to call it Our Garden, is rather a prairie! Everywhere sturdy growth of lost birds’ food, I have grass so strong I can’t pull it out, nor cut it, nor mow it…. I have grains for bread and the occasional sunflower. We probably would get arrested for the hemp the birds kindly left on the grounds for us and more!
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I didn’t even know the word and had to look it up. I had some nice hemp in my garden, also from the bird seed. Otherwise I no longer have a lawn, we have our meadow and that is OK. And today it was mowed down.
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Our whole garden looks like a meadow.
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Which also has its beauty
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Oh my; I just wrote about the perennial pea in a less than flattering way. I probably already told you about that. I also featured it for next Tuesday. I just told someone about it. Perhaps it was in response to one of your earlier posts.
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I quite like them, but they do seem to be immortal and always return
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You know, even though I need to pull many of them up, I really like them in the right situations and on the roadsides. I tried planting some more at the farm, but they did not cooperate. They decide where they want to grow; and really there are already plenty there.
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It is the seed pods that spread them everywhere and quite far
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Yes, but when I collect seed and put them where I want them to grow, they don’t. After trying a few times, I just let them do their thing where they want to. Those at work spread slowly, but happen to spread where they can stay. I pull out only a few that get too close to the road.
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