30 Days Wild day 20- Harlow Carr

Today was my mum's birthday, so Mum and Dad came up to Yorkshire for the day and we went to RHS Harlow Carr garden in Harrogate. It's a lovely place to visit, and there is some great inspiration for wildlife gardening. So many of the flower beds were full of bees- they seemed to particularly like the catmint and salvias which were dotted around the garden.

But we didn't only see insects. There are lots of areas within the gardens where wildflowers grow. Large stretches of grassland were interspersed with yellow rattle, which weakens the grass and allows wildflower species to grow without being out-competed. Wild orchids were dotted around: I think I saw common spotted orchids and pyramidal orchids, although my orchid identification skills need a lot of work! And there were others which I didn't recognise at all.