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I have read with interest some of the posts of people trying out meadows in their gardens, but when I tried it 10 years ago, it wasnt a success. I have a small back garden, 25ft by 50 ft, with less than half being lawn. I bought 2 packets of wildflower/meadow seed,grew some on in pots and scattered some over my lawn, while stopping mowing. Scattering the seed was a total failure. The pot plants didnt produce as many varieties as the seed packets suggested, and when they were planted in the grass, only afew types took well, such as oxeye daisy and burnett. The flowering was fine in summer, with bulbs planted for sprlng. however,there were 2 main problems - the long grass in a small plot, near the house just looked so scruffy ,and being a small garden, the lawn was our sitting area, and now we couldnt really use it for this anymore. Dont get me wrong ,I think the idea is great, I just think people should think twice before giving over a large section of their garden that they use for other things.
Hi Mal gray, I think that your comments are valid and growing a 'meadow' can be a problem in a small garden especially if it is used for other things. However you don't need to use the whole lawn sometimes just putting a 'wild flower' strip around the edge of the lawn can look effective or mowing paths into it which could then maybe lead to a mown seating area in the middle?...just a couple of ideas?
My own experience has been really positive this year with a wealth of insects and butterfly species constantly flitting about around it. Like you I found that seed wasn't as succesful as plug planting and to help the plants I dug a hole quite a bit bigger than the plug back filled it with soil and planted the plugs into this giving them space to grow and so that they didn't get 'bullied' out by the grasses. I also found that my attempts last year of just letting the lawn grass grow long wasn't as good as sowing proper 'meadow' grass species which worked much better for me this year?
As you say this hasn't worked for you but I would still encourage others to have a go on any scale that is practicable in their garden. As stated above it doesn't have to be one block of meadow it can be different areas with or without paths and the size to suit the particular plot...
Higgy is spot on there! If you want to keep the main area of lawn as a recreation/seating area then it would be best to focus the wildflower element to swathes around the edges. Scattering seed into an established lawn rarely works as any seedlings that do shoot will be outcompeted by the established lawn grasses that are in place already. However, leaving at least a section of long-grass, with or without wildflowers, through the winter is beneficial to wildlife on a number of levels, so identifying a strip that would be suitable to leave uncut is a major plus point for a wildlife garden.
Wild flower plugs should stand a better chance of establishing as they are already well grown and when added to the lawn should hold their own. You can find out more about this and cutting regimes to get the best from it via the links here. In order to give some spring colour and nectar for bees i've experimented with adding some crocusses to parts of lawns that need to be kept short but are not used in the spring. As its a good time to be planting spring bulbs, why not have a try with this in small area of the lawn you have and see if the bees find them come the spring time. Lots of garden centres do good special offers which would be worth checking out!
As for a suppliers of wildflower plugs, check out Flora Locale's supplier list linked here.
Warden Intern at Otmoor.
I don't think the idea of a wildflower meadow is to give up your garden to it - they are more for un-used areas of the garden unless you have a large enough garden to incorperate a meadow. My wildflower meadow for example is where the greenhouse used to stand - the ground is pretty much unsuitable for anything else as it is all little stones and rubbish (which ruled it out as a veg plot - too much work digging it out lol) so a wildflower meadow was ideal, though I didn't cut it often enough (i.e. at all!)! That meant a lot of work a couple of months ago!
You can though add low-growing wildflowers to your lawn - things like clover and daisies can cope with the more frequent/lower mowing that a leisure lawn needs so you can have wildflowers and a lawn, not one or the other.
Since you have a very small garden though, if you would like to have wildflower "areas" your best bet will probably be to use containers and have a container meadow. For attractiveness, you're best off going for packets of a single type of seeds - poppys, cornflowers, ragged robin etc rather than the standard mix many of which also contain a lot of grass seed as well rather than the nice looking flowers.
Millie & Fly the Border Collies