Planting for wildlife at Strawberry Field

As we move forward with the turn of the wheel to Autumn and beyond, we wanted to look back to how our green spaces have changed over the past season, and what we’re planning next. 

With a focus on improving our spaces for non-human guests at Strawberry Field, we set out the year with the goal of increasing the flora and fauna diversity, and the availability of food plants for pollinating insects. 

Across our lawns, we’ve planted a substantial amount of mixed crocus over the years. We’ve had limited success with previous planting schemes, but this year we had a good performance of the crocus in our carpark lawn space! We hope to continue with our successes from last season and increase the turnout for our winter and early spring flower pollinators. 

We’ve also increased our spring bulb display in the front of the site – with mixed varieties of tulips springing up along Strawberry Lane and daffodils dancing behind the replica gates. 

As we look forward to next year’s display, the Green Team has been outreaching to local suppliers and wholesalers for assistance and advice. We have been blessed with some generous donations this year as a result.  A big thank you to our local Sainsbury’s, Thompson and Morgan, and Farmer Gracy for helping us increase the biodiversity of the Strawberry Field gardens! In tandem with these donations, we will also be investing in more perennial plants to increase the availability of early-season pollinator food plants and increase the density of our current spring bulb display. 

Other investments we’ve made over the last season include our ‘Pollinator Pots’. These have been placed along the veranda of the Imagine More café, planted with alliums, snapdragons and dahlias aplenty. In the coming year, we aim to upgrade our current offering and expand to improve our provisions for local wildlife. 

Following the structural developments in the grounds of the 23-24 seasons, our goal was to give back more to repay what has been removed for these projects. Throughout the year, we’ve planted a collection of flowering shrubs, including hydrangeas and, of course, ‘Strawberry Fields’ Deutzia, behind the Bandstand. On the patio of the Imagine More café, we’ve planted more hardy varieties of shrubs and flowers, such as lavenders and wild geraniums. 

If you’ve been following along on our socials, you may have seen our wildflower lawn trial during No Mow May this year. We plan to continue this into next year, with a greater length of time and space devoted to it. We’re also planning to expand this venture to other areas of the grounds to increase the overall effectiveness of the project. 

If you would like to help us increase biodiversity in our gardens, we are happy to accept donations of spring bulbs, UK wildflower plants/seeds, or funding towards our endeavors. We’re also happy to receive any expert knowledge to help us on our way! If this is something you’d be interested in, please get in touch with one of the team.

We’re all excited to share the big plans we have in store for the coming year!