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Hello Timbo, I have a very untidy, but very wildlife friendly garden and started a corner for wild flowers. It was the end of the lawn, I don't use weed killer I just took off the top "sods" left them to dry in the sun and then used this soil as a base, howed the area and sprinkled with a packet of mixed wildflower seeds and they came up fine in the Spring. Yellow rattle I believe is fundamental to a meadow. The red and white clover, plaintain and dandelions are also standard meadow flowers. I have just taken a picture of a Meadow Grasshopper on plaintain in a local coastal meadow and bees love the clover so I would encourage those "weeds". Here is a link for other hints, you can also find out about wildflower seeds here. It is also worth looking for butterfly books as these will specify the "food"plants for specific butterflies giving you an idea of what to plant. Hope that helps Pat
www.rspb.org.uk/.../gardening
Pat Adams - Flickr - BLOG
Hi Timbo, thanks for posting, Pat has already given you some top pointers I see and a link to our garden advice pages where we have some lawn management hints.
I would agree with the swerving of weedkillers and try to encourage clover and plantain in a meadow, they are popular with bees and other beneficial insects. Yellow rattle is a great addition to the meadow as it basically supresses grass growth allowing for more meadow flowers to proliferate. So to your questions, overseeding with grass probablyy won't deliver much success however you could cut back the lawn hard in spring, scarify the area and add in some meadow wildflowers from plugs into the hard cut sward. Alternatively do as Pat suggested by removing the turf and adding wildflower seed.
The simplest way to make lawn more bee friendly is to cut it less often, avoid weedkillers and leave at least some swathes uncut through the summer. You can even make a difference to the wildlife by simply raising the blade height on the mower. Some of our giving nature a home campaign projects are focussed on lawns have a look here for some more info' - http://homes.rspb.org.uk/
Warden Intern at Otmoor.
Hi Timbo and welcome,
I'm afraid your first mistake was spraying your lawn with weed-killer as your dandelions and clover were a superb source of nectar for bees and other pollinators.
You can rake out the lawn and sow some seed over the top or you can take off the turf and re-sow completely. I have tried both methods but found the start from scratch method gave the best results. However this again depends on whether you intend to grow an annual or perennial wild flower meadow?
If you are going to have a serious go at this it's advised not to use chemicals such as weed-killer or pesticide but to allow nature find a balance. This is quite a difficult thing to do and you will inevitably lose some plants along the way! However when you start seeing results with different types of wildlife doing the jobs for you it makes it all worth while...
1. Aphid attack on honeysuckle earlier this summer...
2. When gardening without chemicals the wildlife will clean up this sort of attack, like this Bluetit cleaning off the aphids to feed to it's young that were in one of our garden nesting boxes...
3. You will also see an increase in other predators such as ladybirds....
4. Slugs will be controlled by thrushes, other birds and amphibians such as toads...
5. if you are really lucky you may find birds of prey looking for mice and voles like this Buzzard over my garden...
6. Experimenting with 'companion' or 'sacrificial' planting can even help species that we would otherwise destroy such as the caterpillars of the large white and small white butterflies(cabbage butterflies). These caterpillars are feeding on Nasturtium planted for this reason...
7. don't use weed killer on those dandelions and other wild flowers as they are an invaluable source of nectar for pollinators at a time of year when they struggle to find enough pollen and can quite literally become a lifeline for them!!!...
I hope that the above gives you the idea that if you get it right and with a little time you can garden for wildlife and never have to use chemicals again which are so harmful to wildlife and it's habitat. Yes you will have some casualties along the way but the end results WILL out weigh these by big margin!
We moved into our current house in Feb 2010 and started a project to garden for wildlife, already in such a short time we have all of the above and much much more in the garden. Our garden butterfly count reached 20 species this summer and our bird list is now at 36 species proving that you can make a massive difference in a short time.
If you would like to see how we have achieved these results and get some ideas about gardening for wildlife and what I've done take a look at my blog http://higgysgardenproject.blogspot.com/ and feel free to ask anything you want as I will be happy to help where I can?...
Best
Higgy
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