How many plants can you see

Outside our front door there is an attenuation pond into which 'storm' water is pumped in times of heavy rain.
The management company have said although they had the area strimmed in the past, they are now going to allow the growth to develop rather than strim or tidy it as there are a large number of 'plants' to attract wildlife.
As far as we, and our neighbours, are concerned it is just an untidy area overgrown with weeds.

Can anyone identify any plants worth keeping in any of these pics?

 

Weeds are wild plants and wild plants tend to attract more insects and wildlife.

I think that is where they are coming from regarding not cutting back.

 

Just think of all the plants we grow in our gardens that are not Cultivars......... my garden is full of Fuchsia Species, Dianthus Species, Iris Species, they are all wild plants therefore weeds somewhere in the World.

A weed is just a plant in the wrong place.

 

@KFF you beat me to it. I was just about to say the same thing myself!

 

I agree with KFF and Sandy ground...

Specifically, even from your very general photos (which I presume you thought would show nothing), I see lady’s smock, creeping buttercup, field thistle and stinging nettles. All important food plants for bees, butterflies and caterpillars.

 

I know for a fact far too much land around my area is often classed as "waste ground ".
An over used term for a piece of land that nature has taken back.
If it isn't under concrete or looking totally pretty it tends to get that tag.

 

Even wild areas can look nice at the right time of year

 

I much prefer a wild area to a housing estate.

 

Some housing estates are wild areas

 

I have to disagree with the idea that wild areas attract more insect life. Insofar as single flowers attract more than doubles, OK, but a well-well-planted, tidy garden can be just as much of a haven. Sounds to me as though it's just a 'get-out' by the management Co. to save money.

 

I see where you are coming from, @noisette47 . My garden isn’t knee-high with weeds, but has many different flowers. I select single forms, rather than doubles, and often species over hybrids. But wild flowers allowed to be wild definitely attract more wildlife than an area of unkempt ground, that is regularly trimmed/weed-killed to the ground.
Yes, probably the money-saving makes this bit of “wildlife management” very appealing, but I think that sometimes cost-saving goes hand-in-hand with allowing wildlife to flourish. Certainly, as I drive to my mum’s home along the M4, A417 and A40, I am seeing far more drifts of cowslips, now there is less money spent on verge maintenance.

 

I agree with much that noisette and Sian have said.....I sense it is more to do with the management company saving money! Down here too the Council allows road side hedges to flourish by cutting them back just once a year and, yes, cowslips and the like are flourishing now.
Agree too with growing single flowers where possible.....dahlias for example like Yellow Honka, Twynings After Eight with their single flowers attract lots of bees, more so than the doubles.
I once had to call on someone who decided he would “grow only for wildlife”. It made for an overgrown, weed infested patch creating all sorts of difficulties for his neighbours. Neither his house nor his car were cared for thus completing the picture. I gleaned after conversation he cared not a jot for nature but was content not to make any sort of effort to maintain his plot.
Here I have wildlife of every sort....hedgehogs, foxes, birds, butterflies etc etc.....yet I maintain my garden pretty well. Room for wildlife and human life.
I have added a wildflower patch, I don’t use chemicals if I can avoid them, avoid slug pellets, grow tagetes in and around my veg patch but grow plants I enjoy and think are attractive.
No, I don’t grow nettles or a daisy lawn....like my manicured lawns too much.

 

Nice weeds.

Most councils have joined this bandwagon, bringing back nature, namely too skint to cut the grass. Ours cut the cemetries every 3 weeks now after the poop hitbthe fan when they let it "go back to nature" last year.

Get yourself a few packets of wild flower seed to jazz it up a bit.

 

Sorry to disappoint you, @pewe, but there appears to be a general consensus that what you have there is worth keeping as a wildlife area.

The only thing I might be tempted to do is a little surreptitious help. If you have a buddleia bush in your garden, due a trim, push a few of the trimmed stems along the back near the fence. It is always eager to take as a cutting. Or as someone suggested, scatter some wildflower seeds on the area. You don’t even have to spend money. For example- if you are growing foxgloves, let one spike mature to seed-stage, then cut the stem and carefully carry it across and tap the stem over the area. Each flower spike can produce many hundreds of seeds. I’m sure a forest of flowering foxgloves, with a backdrop of butterflies fluttering around some buddleias, should raise your spirits?

 

Just a thought, but isnt it illegal in the UK to cut down vegetative matter on ground that belongs to someone else?

Only asking, as I've completely lost touch with existing UK law.