On Sunday 26th April twenty members of the local community met to plant 400 wildflower plugs in the Community Garden at St Mark’s Church. These included Red and White Campion, Greater Stichwort, Foxgloves, Violets, native Bluebell, Sweet Woodruff, Red and White Deadnettle and Hedge Woundwort. Once established, this area will be managed as a spring meadow with the grass cut in July after flowering and seed has set. The cut grass will be cleared off, composted and used to mulch around the fruit trees in the newly established orchard adjacent to the wildflower planting. The new wildflowers will encourage pollinating insects to visit the garden and orchard.

You may also notice a ‘bug hotel’ in the grounds that was built by the church youth group “Adventurers”, which meets on Monday evenings. This hotel will further encourage a diversity of insect life into the garden.

Finally there is a flower bed near the Upper Hale Road entrance to St Mark’s with spring flowering bulbs that have given a wonderful show. The congregation of St Mark’s sowed, Cornflowers and Poppies in the flowerbed as part of their Patronal Festival celebrations on 26th April.

The project has been funded thanks to a generous donation of £1000 from the Farnham Institute.

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