Bee Haven

At the beginning of the lockdown in March, a friend who is staying with us and I, were given permission to do something with a neglected nearby garden. We dug up all the grass and weeds- stinging nettles and bind weed, bottle tops and broken glass, and after much digging and preparing of the soil, sprinkled some packets of Wildflowers and Bee friendly flowers to try and sow a wildflower garden.

We then waited in anticipation to see what would appear, not knowing whether the green shoots that appeared were weeds or flowers. The result was amazing and delightful for us and all the surrounding neighbours, and the bees and insects were plentiful. There were enormous pink and purple cosmos, rich blue cornflowers, intricate tall borage, pink royal and purple musk mallow, sunny corn marigold, exquisite love-in-a-mist and amazing zinnias of many colours. Later in the summer I tried to capture some of their charm with watercolour...