Wandering through the wildflowers

There is nothing quite like wandering with a small group of people each of whom shares your delight in wildflowers. This years wildflower wander was in mid-June a little earlier than in the past.  Leaving St Michaels car park we crossed Goulburn Green admiring the wildflower strip by the red garden wall, that sown by Re-Betchworth in 2022. A symbol of the care for nature shown by our community. This year the oxeye daisies were the dominant flower with red campion, knapweed, birds-foot- trefoil, meadow buttercup, teasel and red sorrel. We spotted many pollinators but the highlight was the red admiral sunning itself on the wall.

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Next stop was the Common Field where the Hamilton Estate has sown a 250m long x 15m wide strip along the field margin. This is the largest wildflower cultivation anywhere in the 4Bs The biodiversity of this corridor is incredible with over 30 species identified in surveys. We spotted, oxeye daisy, rutabaga, red and white campion, clumps of pink mallow birds-foot-trefoil, hawks beard, meadow buttercup, purple & white clover, sainfoin, cornflower, poppy, teasel and red sorrel.

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Next stop was the beautiful cultivated meadow at Potters Farm. Tended since 2011 there is no doubt that it is the best cultivation of knapweed in the whole of the 4Bs. Knapweed does not sound exciting but it is ranked among the top nectar-producing plants for bees, butterflies, and beetles. It’s a favourite of all kinds of butterflies, including common blues, marbled whites and meadow browns, and is sometimes covered in these species.

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​Crossing the A25 we encountered one of the biodiversity hot spots of Betchworth. The grass verge by the side of the roundabout. Actually, its more accurate to say by the woodland that was here well before the roundabout and the drainage ditch that separates it from the woodland. Spend a few minutes here and you can find over 20 species of plant and a profusion of wildflowers including oxeye daisy, red campion, rough hawksbeard, birds-foot-trefoil, hedge bedstraw, meadow buttercup, red clover, ragwort, spear thistle, knapweed, red sorrel and teasel. Not to mention the nettle, bramble, giant hog weed and great burdock. Walking quickly past as most people do you would think it’s a tangled mess, but go slowly or stop and you will be amazed at the diversity of plants and the number and variety of insects feeding off them.

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Next stop the beautiful natural meadow below the railway. Sometimes all we have to do with nature is leave it alone to perform itself. We see an expanse of grass and immediately want to cut it, or destroy the plants that are not grass to make a perfect lawn. This garden abandoned the idea of a lawn nearly a decade ago and decided to cut the grass only once a year to enable the wildflowers in the seed bank to grow. The result is a stunning wildflower meadow from May to September. It begins with a dazzling display of 50cm high oxeye daisies with a ground cover of creeping buttercup, birds-foot-trefoil and purple clover. Then come the orchids – pyramid, common spotted and bee orchids together with purple self heal. Covering several acres it provides a food source for a diverse population of insects which in turn feed birds, dragonflies and bats.

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Our final stop was Betchworth Station’s goods yard. It used to be full of coal but now its owners have embarked on a labour of love to restore nature. It’s a managed project and it has involved a lot of effort to clear the site, create pathways through the woodland, add topsoil to tarmac, dig some ponds, plant bulbs, seed and trees. And through a combination of self-seeding and new introductions of plants the tarmac is slowly being replaced by nature.
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We took only 2 hours out of our busy lives. We walked and stopped and looked, really looked, and what we saw was beautiful and wholesome and free and we felt good in ourselves for having seen nature and each other.

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