Thursday 2 June 2022

Counting the Buttercups in my Lawn for Citizen Science

Here's some buttercups in my lawn as I took part in the citizen science survey Every Flower Counts, run by conservation charity Plantlife. The idea is you randomly select a patch of grass in your garden by throwing a ball and seeing where it lands. Then you mark out a square metre and count the flowers in it. Plantlife's website has a handy recognition chart which you can also see in the photo - not that I needed it to recognise buttercups, but it might have been handy if I'd found some unusual orchid. 

After counting your flowers, you enter the results on the website and it tells you how many bees your garden would support for how long. I also took part in Plantlife's No Mow May campaign, meaning I didn't cut my grass all month. The idea is that if more people leave their garden a bit wild then plants will grow that bees, butterflies and other insects need to survive. 

As I've blogged about in the past, these days I feel helping nature is just as valid as a modern pagan activity as doing spells and rituals. In fact, I genuinely believe that doing practical things to care for the environment can be an act of worship, honouring Mother Earth and the spirits of place wherever you are.

Other previous related posts
http://www.badwitch.co.uk/2022/04/review-practically-pagan-planet.html
http://www.badwitch.co.uk/2021/03/when-to-leave-wildflowers-and-when-to.html
http://www.badwitch.co.uk/2021/03/book-extract-druid-garden-by-luke.html
http://www.badwitch.co.uk/2020/07/pagan-eye-bee-on-flowering-lavender.html

1 comment:

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