Field Trials- Creeping Thyme and Irish Moss. And Bee Paper

The field trials for my new lawn substitute plants are going well.  I have the whole of my front garden now covered in chamomile plants and not wanting to rest on my laurels I thought I’d diversify into other ground cover plants.

I chose the Irish Moss plants (Sagina Subulata) and the creeping thyme as my next challenge and started building up a collection of plugs a couple of months ago. I found the 3cm – 20  plug trays far too large for the cuttings so have invested in some smaller 1cmx180 square ones. These will be easier to work with especially if I am posting them out.

Irish Moss

The Irish Moss is quite fiddly to divide and I have found that the longer stems don’t take as well but I’d say there’s an 80% success rate in propagating the cuttings.  This plant isn’t Irish and isn’t actually a moss but does make for a great evergreen ground cover for both the lawn and rockery. Like all lawn substitutes it’s best to start off with a small patch to see if the plant suits the location and if you suit the extra work that these types of plants pose. For example my small lawn at the front of the house used to take 2 minutes every fortnight to maintain and cut but now the grass has gone I’m out there every few days on my hands and knees keeping the weeds down. 

Creeping Thyme

The creeping thyme is doing really well with about a 95% success rate for rooting. I did do a batch earlier in the year but what with the heatwave and the fact the plants were in flower meant I failed big time as most of them shrivelled. 

Now the flowers have gone and the temperature has dropped, the small, fine cuttings are concentrating their energy on growing roots.  There are quite a few varieties of creeping thyme but I have propagated the smallest, lowest growing variety on the market. It is the same variety that was used extensively as a lawn in the 18^th/19^th century. Creeping thyme it wasn’t even classed as a ‘lawn substitute’ back then as lawns were only used by people who owned both stately homes and loads of sheep or cows to keep the grass short so Joe public had to wait until the invention of the lawnmower until grass came to them.

I’m going to carry on the field trials and then post some to myself to see if they travel well before releasing them to the public. 

Most thyme plants have the added benefit of being an attraction to bees as their flowers are nectar rich. Something else to attract bees will be appearing on the market in the very near future too, bee paper.

Bee Paper

After a century of rapid industrialisation and unprecedented urban development, bees have to fly much further in search of the plants they need. Long distances exhaust them. This is putting them on the verge of extinction.

That’s why the Warsaw branch of Saatchi & Saatchi and bee charity City Bees  created Bee Saving Paper - an innovative, biodegradable material that can be used for many purposes and works like an energy drink for bees to help them fly further.

Glucose - Energy drink

The paper contains energy-rich glucose that is appetizing for bees for but doesn’t make the paper sticky. This is thanks to a sugar mix, which can be dissolved into water from a food known as “fondant for bees”. This food is used by beekeepers during the winter. There is no need to dissolve large quantities because 0.5 kg of this paste is enough to feed several thousand bees

That’s not all; the paper contains seeds from the honey plant Lacy Phacelia which is one of bees’ favourite plants. 

Why does it work?

Bee Saving Paper is covered with water-based UV paint, with a pattern full of circles visible only to bees. They chose red circles because that mimics what a bee sees in a flower meadow.

These ultraviolet patterns often outline “landing zones” for bees, pointing them towards the parts of plants that contain nectar and pollen. 

Saatchi & Saatchi believes the biodegradable paper is ideal for writing on and could be used to make coffee cup sleeves, tote bags, car-park tickets and picnic plates, giving these disposable items a second life and even making it useful to drop litter.