Woodland Summer Flowers

Tarvin Community Woodland Trust.

Summer flowers of woodland, hedgerow and meadow.

The early Summer this year has been truly wonderful. Now that the dandelions (much loved by early insects, if loathed by gardeners) have finished their first flush of flowers, the stage has been cleared for the buttercups. And what a show there has been! Roadside verges have benefitted from a reduction in the frequency of cutting, so that the grass has become flecked with yellow, parts of the woodland verges are cloaked in yellow and the meadow beyond the woodland fence at Townfield Lane seems like a yellow sea! What a joy it is to be able to walk through the woodland in the sunshine and have the sunshine reflected back at you!

However, while the buttercups may predominate at the moment, there are also many other flowers brightening the woodland. Where there are buttercups, can daisies be far away? It is easy to spot them at a distance – tiny white stars shining from a bed of green grass. White flowers are also very much in evidence on the cow parsley. A relative of the more mundane (but edible!) carrot, it produces a mass of tiny white flowers held in a tall and delicate tracery so that the effect is rather like looking at a cloud. Set around Jim’s stone, the effect is beautiful. There are white flowers, too, on the Guelder Rose bushes in the woodland hedges. These will ultimately produce berries to help feed our birds.

Red campion (which, I think, is actually pink) gives eye-catching spots of colour amidst a sea of green leaves and grass. Even more eye-catching (and only just beginning to flower) are the flag iris. These are another yellow flower – but what a flower! And then, hiding in the hedgerows are the forget-me-not blue flowers of Green Alconet or Evergreen Bugloss. One of the Borrage family, it is exceptionally popular with bees and helps to fill gaps when other flowers are absent.

There are so many beautiful flowers around that Doreen de Cani has set herself a challenge with them. Doreen does the Chapel flowers for Tarvin Methodist Church services and she has decided to see whether she is able to provide the flowers, week in and week out, without buying any. Instead, she plans to use flowers from “woodland, hedgerow, field and garden”. As you can see, the display that they made last Sunday was in no sense second-rate!

The early Summer this year has produced a host of beautiful flowers – all within easy walking distance of anywhere in the village. If you can, do find the time to go for a walk and take in the woodland. The beauties of nature that you see will impress you, they will calm you, they will make you feel better about everything generally. And, if the sun shines for you, then, WOW!