Thankyou to David for this report …

Abingdon Naturalists Society’s Green Team have looked after Barton Fields Wildlife Site for the last 15 years.  During that time they have worked to enhanced the grassland by sowing and planting native flowering plants.  Last year as a trial, they sowed a small patch of ‘cornfield annuals’.  These are annual flowering plants which used to be found in cereal fields before the widespread use of herbicides.  The trial was successful and this year, helped greatly by a team from Sophos, they have sown four more patches of these annuals.  The Sophos staff can be seen working hard one day in March (C Graham Bateman)

and the resulting display this month (C David Guyoncourt).  The flowers benefit bees and other insects and the public seem to like them too. These plants self-seed, so we hope the display will be repeated each year, provided that encroaching grasses are removed by our team during the winter.