Wild Flowers
The bleak economic climate and the nation’s spiralling debt has led to much publicised cuts in Government spending, forcing all of the local authorities in Britain to take steps to reduce their expenditure and save money.
In Cornwall, council gardeners have sought help from nature to prune their budgets – replacing expensive cultivated flower beds with wild flowers, and the effect is as stunning as the savings.
Truro Council, like many other authorities, spends a considerable amount of money planting flowers on pavement verges and roadsides, and keeping weeds under control. Although this keeps the city looking tidy and attractive it does require a lot of man hours and the purchase of lots of bulbs and gardening equipment.
As an alternative to going to all this hassle and expense, the council has instead decided to sow wild flowers around Truro – including cornflowers, marigolds, poppies and other flower varieties more often seen in meadows.
Using wild flowers like this eliminates the need for potting and weeding, and the resultant au naturale verges are also much better for wildlife such as bees.
The unusual approach did raise a few eyebrows from residents; particulary before the flowers had bloomed and it looked as though the council had simply left the verges to be overgrown with weeds.
“When the flowers first started coming up, I had a few letters coming in to ask why weren’t we weeding the beds. People didn’t believe that they were wild flower seeds that we’d sown,” explained Richard Budge of Truro Council.
“People started to get excited about them when they just started to flower three weeks ago, just as the Britain in Bloom judges came,” he continued.
The use of wild flowers isn’t the only initiative the council has been trying – one of the plant beds has been seeded with lettuce, turning the roadside into a mini allotment.
