Wild flowers

One effect of the weird weather this year is that the pictorial meadow seeds I sowed back in April totally failed to germinate. Not a sausage. They're not cheap either. The previous couple of years they've come up a treat and been a big hit with the bees.  All I've got to show this year are a few shirley poppies that self-seeded from last year and a few opium poppies which always come up everywhere anyway. And a stray foxglove.

Incidently the yellow one in front is a cerinthe which found it's way in there somehow. So anyway I've plugged the gap with some Nicotiana mutabilis that I've been growing so hopefully I'll have something to show for it by the end of summer, that's if the slugs haven't completely ravaged them by then which they seem intent on doing at the moment.

At the other end of the plot by the horseradish the cornfield mix is doing better. No need to sow this again, it's happily self-seeded from last year with the usual mix of corncockles, field poppies and corn marigolds; the purple one at the bottom left is the perennial Phacelia bolanderi, another plant that's popular with the bees:

I've also been growing a few flowers to add to the ox-eye daisies in the orchard. A couple of weeks ago I planted out some tufted vetch - which had only reached the size of small plugs so are struggling a bit - this week it's the turn of some potentilla which I've grown using some saved seed from my back garden. Before you say anything I know they're not a wild flower and they won't come true from seed either but it hardly matters. And besides, I stole the idea after reading about how someone had done it in Gardens Illustrated, and if it's good enough for them then it's good enough for me.

I know I know this should be done in autumn but the ground is sodden at the moment and the plants are fairly beefy so I reckon they'll be right.