New plants spring up at Orchid Meadows

Summer 2026 will surely remain in our minds as a giant bête noire for the natural world, food production and gardens in general but some unexpected bonuses have also arisen. The grass at Orchid Meadows has received a real hammering over the past two months, leaving it brown with bare patches. Despite the drought, we have had some days of light rain in West Wales and the colonisers within the plant kingdom – or weeds to put it less kindly – have been springing up to take advantage of the opening up of the ground cover.

We’re now seeing four plants we haven’t seen here before. From top left going clockwise, they are pineapple weed (yes, it really does smell of pineapple), red bartsia, marsh cudweed (not really a marsh plant at all) and pale flax. All of them are growing around our farm buildings where the grass is mowed short anyway and is also well-trodden and eroded by footfall.

It’s tempting to say that every cloud has a silver lining but, at the moment, we’re hoping every cloud just has a damn lot of rain in it.