IN THE GARDEN
The wildflower hub
A native Jersey wildflower hub has been created at Samarès Manor. By its managing director, Caryl Kemp
This was the enquiry from the Environment Department in late autumn 2019. They also wanted to know if we could harvest the seed from the crop in the autumn, as this could then be sold on to local landowners.
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Team Samarès’ are very tight knit and multi-talented, so we all put our heads together to design the layout of the newly named ‘The Jersey Wildflower Hub’
I was delighted by this enquiry, as there is presently nowhere in Jersey where seed can be purchased in reasonable quantities. There has been a general concern that UK seed mixes could potentially contain varieties of plants that might then become non-indigenous invasive species. My own history was that I was a head propagator for at least a decade in the1990s, collecting from stock beds of vegetative material and from seed beds. So it seemed obvious to me that if individual varieties of wildflowers were sown in a single bed and the bed was weeded to only allow the emergence of that single variety, the person harvesting seed from a labelled bed could be 100% certain that what they were harvesting was specific. I also felt that this would be a good way of educating the public as they wandered around pathways across the lawns, to learn about the individual species. ‘Team Samarès’ are very tight knit and multi-talented, so we all put our heads together to design the layout of the newly named ‘The Jersey Wildflower Hub’. The Manor’s owners, Vincent and Gillie Obbard, offered half of their grazing field and the Environment Department agreed to the change of use.
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Team Samarès
C
ould Samarès Manor offer space in a field to sow native Jersey wildflower seed?
To date I am delighted to report that, despite some setbacks with the deliveries of the wood for the Hub structure itself, we were ready to go in early spring with the sowing of the 45 different wildflower species, collected and provided so far by the Botany section of the Société Jersiaise. In 2020 we came across Yolanda Mitchell, a young Jersey- born botanical illustrator, who is designing all the signage for the Hub and beds. We chose Yolanda for her simplistic, yet stunning illustrations as we were very keen to allow the wildflowers themselves to ‘sing’. All the signs will have both the Latin and common names.
