Biodiversity Northern Ireland

Blooming Marvellous!

Blooming marvellous!

The centre of a grassy field near Garnerville Road in East Belfast is being transformed by Conservation Volunteers Northern Ireland (CVNI) into a blaze of summer colour that will hum with the sound of insects.

Over the last few weeks, volunteers have been digging over a part of the grassy field by the side of the Holywood Road heading into Belfast.

Last week they took along a group of schoolchildren from Knocknagoney Primary School to sow a mixture of ‘cornfield annual’ seeds on the now carefully raked and prepared seedbed. Cornfield annuals are the ‘weeds’ that used to colonise fields of corn. Farmers tend to use chemicals to control these weeds nowadays.

By the end of August the place will be transformed! Corn Chamomile, Cornflower, Corn Cockle and Corn Marigold (spot the connection here?) will be flowering in profusion. The previously grassy field will be a riot of yellow, white, mauve and blue and full of dancing hoverflies and bees.

CVNI created the same splash of colour here last year, and local people commented how much they liked the new addition to their neighbourhood.  To keep these plants flowering, the ground needs to be dug each year to simulate the ploughing of the land by the farmer and sown again.