Karen Williams
With 30 Days WIld taking place during the Covid-19 pandemic, many people are at home more often, whether they are working or spending time with their families.
We were delighted to hear from our Operations Manager, Karen Williams, and her daughter, Eve, when they let us know what they had been up to so far, enjoying time in their garden.
Karen and Eve ready for the big count
"As a family, we took part in 'No Mow May', so we let our lawn grow for a full 31 days to allow wildflowers to bloom and to bring as many bees and butterflies into our garden as possible, by increasing the amount of nectar available to them.
"At the end of May, we followed instructions from Plant Life to find the nectar score from our garden.
"Eve decided we should count two 1mx1m quadrants so we chose two random areas in order to keep the count accurate."
Eve sitting proudly with the quadrant of flowers
"It took us a while to count them all, but as the weather was so lovely, we were happy to be outside soaking up the vitamin D.
"In total we counted around 1,200 flowers which is amazing considering we were only counting two squares! Imagine how many flowers there would be if we let whole fields grow without mowing them!"
"Our findings were mainly daisies (870) and creeping buttercups (250), but we also found some germander speedwell and common mouse ear."
We were really pleased with our nectar score
"Once we had done the difficult (but really fun) job, it was then time to see what a difference not mowing our lawn had had on the nectar in our garden.
"We were amazed with the results. Considering we only have quite a small the garden, the results showed that by just not mowing our garden for one month, our lawn supported 145 bees with the amount of nectar our flowers had produced.
"This really fun and easy exercise made us realise how simple it can be to look after wildlife, especially bees, which we need to look after now more than ever."
Our website and social media channels and brimming with ideas for you to get involved with 30 Days Wild. If you need a little helping hand on what Random Act of Wildness to do every day, why not download the 30 Days Wild app for your smart phone or tablet?
