Creating a Buzz at your local!
We're quite frankly buzzing that you've made it here!
We guess you're currently enjoying the pub garden at the Spotted Cow in Bristol. Or you may have found your way here without the help of a QR code.. either way, Welcome! We encourage you to please read on and understand a bit around what we at Navas are trying to do and find out how you can potentially get involved!
The overall aim is to plant as many native, pollinator friendly wildflowers as possible, while at the same time try to teach and inspire others to do the same.
As a collective, we are all doing what we can to find solutions to the scarcity of wildlife in cities and town centres. We think a perfect place to start is with the BEES! Solitary bees, bumble bees, honey bees.. they're not only cute and fuzzy.. but bees, alongside butterflies, moths, a number of different flies and even some beetles, perform the task which is essential to all life on earth.. Pollination!
Since conception, Navas has been in partnership with The Eden Project, who receive 2% of all Navas’s annual revenue. This acts as a direct investment into all of the wonderful and inspiring projects undertaken by Eden.
The Eden Project started as a devoid of life, disused china clay quarry near St Austell, in Cornwall. What was essentially a giant, broken hole in the ground, has been transformed over the past 25 years, into one of the worlds biggest indoor rainforests. In the best possible way, Eden celebrate plants and the natural world, with the main aim being to re-connect people to planet.
The team at The Spotted Cow in Bedminster have very kindly agreed to be the pilot pub garden, for our activation alongside Eden and the National Wildflower Centre.
The flower bed you can find below the sign in the Cow's back garden, has been sown with a mix of native wildflower seeds provided by the National Wildflower Centre.
Alex, who lives in Bristol and looks after all of Navas’s sales outside Cornwall and Devon, worked alongside Dan the gardener at The Spotted Cow to prepare the bed, sow the seeds and tend to their every needs!
They began by cutting and flipping the turf and then Dan built the wooden bed running along the length of the wall.
Once the bed was installed and sturdy, a 3cm deep layer of sand was applied to the now upside down turf. Devoid of nutrients, the sand acts as a perfect nursery for the wildflower seeds, who thrive in low nutrient rich soil, due to the lack of competition from grasses and other plants.
The team then spread the seeds at a rate of roughly 2g’s / square meter, watered them in and let nature do the rest.
The 'National Wildflower Centre meadow mix' packet contains a mix of corncockle, corn chamomile, corn marigold, corn poppy and corn flowers.
You can buy the seeds we used following this link.
We then got some plug plants from the wonderful ‘Grow Wilder, in Bristol. A deeply valued, urban wildlife site, community hub and education centre, home to an extensive wildflower nursery, just next door to the M32 motorway!
These plug plants, alongside the seeds and seedlings, offer the space some slightly further established plants, some of which should give a bloom in the first year!
If this pilot flower bed is successful, we aim to roll out the activation into other gardens all over the South West.. please keep your fingers and toes crossed for a successful bloom at the Cow!
If you feel inspired to give a section of your garden to our pollinator friends, follow this link to see an easy to follow set of guidelines, showing how you can turn an area of your garden or window sill at home, into a beeeee-autiful and beeeee-neficial wildflower patch.
Finally, Please follow our page on instagram and share your photos - we’d love to see your plans and patches take shape!
Thank you for reading :)
The Navas Team
