The campsites unusual edible orchard has just been undersown with a crop of sunflowers and Phacelia. Phacelia is a beautiful mauve flower that attracts the bees in their droves, all sorts come along bumble bees, mason bees, honeybees. The problem with sowing sunflowers is that it is like offering a free dinner at the The Ivy restaurant to the local crow and rook population who then flock over the site eating every last one of the seeds. Not wanting to have wasted three days worth of soil preparation, sowing and the raking in the sunflower seeds I have covered the whole plot with shade netting. This shade netting was left over from the old Chubbs nursery, famous across Sussex, that was here before we opened the Secret Campsite in 2012. This makes the seedbed rather ugly in the short term but, I think it will pay dividends in a few months time when the whole plot bursts into flower.
The sunflower heads will then rotate east to west as the sun tracks across the sky.
The other advantage to this crop is that it provides a mass of seedheads that most of the birds of sussex are going to bear down on in the autumn.
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