I arrived about 20 minutes early so that I could wander in leisurely through the gardens to meet my colleague. No sign of the wildflowers yet but I did discover some lovely snowdrops sculptures.
Then I saw the wildflowers ahead...
I'd been expecting a much smaller patch - a little corner somewhere.
The sight was amazing!
I took lots of photos...
What a treat to see them all looking so lovely.
Activities on offer for Wildplay today included making clay animals / decorations, bug hunting, fairy wands or wizard sticks, making butterfly feeders and an animal trail laid out (ten pictures to find and identify) but it was fairly quiet, with only around 30 children attending between 11:30 and 4:00 - probably on account of the rain! There were some very heavy showers.
It didn't help that Trentham put us a bit out of the way - not near the cafe or the play areas where Wildplay has been done before and it's easy to attract children over! Even with a few trips over to the play area to drum up some business and let people know we were there, not many people wanted to come down and have some nature based fun with us today.
That did mean I could sneak away for ten minutes when it was very quiet to have a nosy in the sensory gardens area. I really liked this wildlife friendly garden! There was a good Jurassic themed garden too, with tree roots, ferns and a 'swamp'.
Later that night I watched a young badger in the garden. I saw it from an upstairs window at first then went downstairs and very quietly opened the back doors and crouched down a few feet away :)
Badgers are regular visitors in the garden but it has been three years since I last saw and photographed one. (There's badger poo in the garden quite often, or evidence of digging!).
The photos were taken with the flash and the badgers I've snapped like this in the garden have never bothered at all by it. They don't seem to even notice it!
So glad you got to see the wildflowers I'd been on about - they are wonderful aren't they? Good to see that they are still there and still so colourful. I love the wildlife and jurassic gardens in that smaller gardens section too. I like the layout of the pond and the bug hotels. Wow at your badger - we know we have some around here as we have holes dug in the garden and our next door neighbours have seen a large badger on their front garden - I've never seen one here - we had three foxes on the garden over the weekend all at the same time:)
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