Behind the Scenes of our Flower Festival
20th Aug 2024
The Flower Festival remains one of the best (and certainly most colourful) events in our calendar, filling some of the fields on the outskirts of the Farm Park with wildflowers, sunflowers, and maize.
And whether you head straight to the maze of maize, stop for a coffee, or take your camera into the depths of the wildflower fields to snap a few photos, one thing you won’t be able to ignore are the second most-important guests to our Flower Festival.
While we love opening the Flower Festival to all of our human (and four-legged) friends over the summer, we are just as excited to see a rise in number of insects who visit the Farm Park during this colourful season. And here’s why…
Why Understanding the Role of Pollinators is Important
Did you know that pollinators are responsible for, on average, one in every three bites of food on our plates?
And it doesn’t end there. If you love seeing the colourful blooms around the Farm Park and in green spaces around your own home, you should also know that it’s pollinators who help wildflower seeds to spread, resulting in an increase in flowers year on year.
How the Flower Fields Support Insects
Our insect visitors are known as pollinators – and they play a vital role in helping our Flower Festival to thrive and grow. A huge percentage of wildflowers need pollinators in order to grow, with the wildflowers in turn providing food and habitats to countless other creatures in our ecosystem.
By planting the flowers that we know our local pollinators love, we are not only able to produce the floral explosions that add colour to your Farm Park visit, but we are also able to give back to the environment and support our own crops as well as those of local farmer.
Just some of the flowers that you will find in our Flower Fields include sunflowers, orchids, cowslips, wood anemone, columbine, and more. All of these play an integral role in supporting our pollinators, who in turn make it possible for us to productively grow around 75% of our crops.
What You Can Do at Home
Aside from visiting the Cotswold Farm Park to see these pollinators in action and to pick up inspiration for your own garden, one of the best things you can do is opt to take home a pack of our Wildscape seed mixes.
Shop Wildflower Seeds
Packed with British seeds and designed to thrive in all manner of different outdoor settings (from contained planters to vast expanses of green space), our various Wildscape seed mixes can turn your garden into your very own haven for pollinators.
Visitors to our Flower Festival will receive a pack of Wildscape seeds or a bunch of sunflowers to take home with them. And why not make a weekend of it, by exploring our holidays and caravan pitches, granting you access to both the Farm Park attractions and the Flower Festival throughout your entire stay.