Wildflower meadow strimming mistake!

[ProfessorPlumInTheLibrary]

I’m a novice gardener, and have sown a wildflower meadow area in my garden for the first time. It’s a mixture of meadow perennials and cornfield annuals, some seeds sown last autumn and some early this spring. It looks like it’s coming along nicely. However, today, for reasons best known to himself, my partner has taken the strimmer and decapitated about 50+ corncockles (“It looked like there were too many”). They had grown quite tall and have been chopped off just above the first or second pair of leaves. Does anyone know whether these will grow back, or are they done for? The answer will help me determine how angry to be with him🙂

Hi, I don't think they'll come back as they are annuals and grow from the seed each year?

Why on earth did he do that?!?

LTB

Oh dear - that was what I feared 😔

I really don’t understand what he was thinking!

People have LTB for less...

I have a fairly huge garden. DH takes very little interest in it. Parts of it are laid to lawn (we have an area of very closely cropped lawn big enough to practice cricket on) as he like that sort of thing. I have an orchard underplanted with bulbs, and the cricket lawn border has a 10’ strip of wildflower border around it. Every so often (at leat once a year) he takes it upon himself to strim everything. Daffodils, oxeye daisies, fritillaries, and especially the lovely cow parsley I try to sneak into neglected corners, the lot. I explain to him what he has done, and he just shrugs and says it looks a bit like it needed a trim.

I have concluded men and wildflower meadows are not compatible. But I keep trying.

They’ll probably have a second go at flowering as it’s their whole raison d’être, but with depleted energy reserves, so nota patch on what they would have been.

Some men have a thing about lawns and straight edges. It’s a control thing. Maybe associated with a liking for dogs. Best to choose a cat man.

So maybe there’s some hope, then? The funny thing is my DP is not usually like this. He has a degree in ecology! Apparently he thought they were rosebay willowherb, and therefore a weed, and he wanted to encourage a better mix of plants? But in fact I think when he gets a strimmer in his hands he just goes a bit mad and can’t help himself! I should add he hasn’t mown down all of them, so there’s still some hope for the meadow regardless.

Can you sow some more seeds? I did some yesterday

You can take consolation that you have sown perennial seeds and the annual seeds were saving their place and stopping the weeds while the perennials grow. So they would have done their job - still annoying though but still time to sow more! Good luck!

They might manage to re-shoot, but I would be very angry just to be on the safe side.

He has a degree in ecology! Apparently he thought they were rosebay willowherb, and therefore a weed, and he wanted to encourage a better mix of plants? That’s the result of plant identification no longer being taught at school or at university. There is one university in the whole country which does a Master’s including identification skills. So we have a whole generation of newly graduated ecologists lecturing us on land management, unable to recognise the plant they are standing on.

Fortunately, most of them go on to take courses at the Field Studies Council and fill in the gaps.