Wednesday 11 May 2011

bee friendly Welsh poppies

I forgot to place Welsh poppies on my list of annual plants that are good for bees.


We collected seed from Newstead Abbey (Lord Byron's home) when our children were young and they self seeded across our former garden.


When we moved plants to the allotment, we took seeds in the soil and now find that poppies are flowering there.


Always a favourite, here it is flowering among chives.

Postscript: as if to emphasise the point about poppies' use for bees, Linda talks about their black pollen.

2 comments:

Will said...

Those a beautiful poppies for sure. Interesting that use of the word allotment. I came across that on another site a while ago and had to Google what was meant. I remember finding this:

Allotment (gardening), a small area of land, let out at a nominal yearly rent by local government or independent allotment associations, for individuals to grow their own food.

Here we have community gardens in some towns. Vandals can sometimes be an issue though. Sad.

Rob said...

Hi Will
Our allotment tradition goes back centuries. The oldest allotments are here, in Nottingham, England on a site with the evocative name of Hungerhills.
I know someone on that site with an eighteenth century pear tree grown at the time when pickling pears was in vogue.
Rob