[Closed] Sustainable non-monoculture lawn

not me personally, but a friend down the road from me did with those bee bomb things - looks awesome!

Not our whole lawn, but a part of the front lawn under and around a cherry blossom tree.

Just let it grow, and have sprinkled a few seeds in over the last couple of years.

Lots of clover, lost of interesting grasses, some big daisies, poppies, dandelions + something that looks like a dandelion, but isn't, and this year a couple of big flowering thistles popped up.

I tend to give it a trim on the autumn when everything has died down, but otherwise it's left alone.

Loads of bees - they love it!

I just cut mine a minimum of 4 weeks apart and leave a few parts where flowers grow around the edges. I'll pull up anything unwanted. I get loads of random flowers and bees love it, my neighbours either side cut their lawns very short and I think mine looks much nicer. I feel bad cutting it as I chop the flowers but I do it at the max height setting and new flowers will replace the old in no time.

we had our back garden raised 100mm by moving dirt around, (so had a bare dirt starting surface)
"She" bought a variety of meadow mixes. full of flower and interesting grasses. lots of Bees and butterflies
I worry that one mans wild flower meadown is his neighbors neglected garden.

Just ignore it all year and mow/strim it in September ish.
the grass is quite leggy mind, so if you do cut it short, it looks fine but its quite spikey and tough under foot. It wraps up around the strimmer a bit too.

I think it was one of these:
https://www.bostonseeds.com/products/wildflowers-seed/wildflower-seed-mixtures-100/

RE the clover, you would have to look into species succession. Clover smothers some stuff and is smothered by other things. The meadow mix we put down was FULL of this thick juicy leaved plantain thing for the first two years, apparently its really good for conditioning bare dirt, but then is overtaken by the desired grass (which is also in the mix) after a bit of time.
Clover is good nitrogen fixer i seem to recall?

Did you know you can get a Department of transport specific mix for verges and roadsides (resistant to road salt, and slow growing and also an airfield mix (nothing in it that attracts birds or insects that birds like to eat)

We have a big strip of lawn for wildflowers. Started off with a few packs of mixed seeds and with the help of Google lens, learned the names of what flowers we (a) liked, and (b) did well without taking over completely. Now we just selectively weed and top up with specific seed packs.

One cut in late Autumn (not collecting the cuttings) seems to work well.

I love it and so do insects (not just bees)

I sowed some wildflower seed in two patches of the lawn last year - scalped it, raked it to expose loads of bare soil etc but have hardly had anything new come up in those patches this year. I think the dry then cold spring didn't exactly help matters, but it still looks great with the contrast between mown and unmown areas, got some new bugs in there too. I think it's actually more work because mowing is a bit more intricate than just blatting over the whole lot. Might try another batch of wildflower seed on the same area this autumn.

Not really the same thing but I've done two areas of wildflowers.

One was bare earth after essentially being a building site, which I maintained weed free over the summer to minimise competition, then raked the surface and spread one of those wildflower packs from Boston seeds. I only seeded it last autumn but thus far it's stunning. All sorts of flowers and there seems to be something new every couple of weeks. Daisies, poppies, cornflowers, all sorts of things I haven't identified. The advice I have had is to wait for everything to have gone to seed into the autumn then strim it tight and rake off all the cuttings. It's important in this case to avoid all that organic matter adding fertility to the soil, which would enable grasses to mostly take over. I suspect over time I'll also add some specific seeds because I anticipate the daisies being a bit too successful, but I won't do this this year.

My other bits were pretty established with grasses and various other weeds and whatnot. I followed other advice re establishment for that, which was to strim it really tight to expose soil, rake off the cuttings then seed. This appears, thus far at least, not to have been particularly successful. However I'm going to continue the same management and see what happens over time.

Separately I've also thrown some Yellow Rattle seeds about on another patch of grass, intention being for that also to take on a more natural meadow type range of species.

That sounds awesome Luke, I've a big enough lawn that could at least have a nice shaped area, I'll have a go.

Just off the M25 is something that looks like a big lawn but is one of the worlds longest running experiments  - the Park Grass Experiment. It was really set up to look at how fertilisers would increase yield but the controls - parts of the site that have been un-tampered with since the inception of the experimen -  are perhaps more interesting. Better fertilised land became more monocultural - the untreated ground by comparison is much more diverse

So not just seeds - fertility - or rather lack of it - is a useful tool for making a lawn a more varied and lively ecosystem

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Grass_Experiment

My other bits were pretty established with grasses and various other weeds and whatnot. I followed other advice re establishment for that, which was to strim it really tight to expose soil, rake off the cuttings then seed. This appears, thus far at least, not to have been particularly successful. However I’m going to continue the same management and see what happens over time.

If you're looking to convert lawn to something more meadow like, ahead of sewing more general meadow mixes you can do a season with just mustard as its quite good of hoovering surplus fertility from the soil that overly competitive plants would rely on

If you’re looking to convert lawn to something more meadow like, ahead of sewing more general meadow mixes you can do a season with just mustard as its quite good of hoovering surplus fertility from the soil that overly competitive plants would rely on

Ooh now that sounds interesting. I presume you then need to cut it and remove the cuttings? Do you do anything else or just that and spread the wildflower seed?

Don't want to hijack a thread though. An up coming project for me is to try to create some diverse meadow out of a long fertilised then subsequently dug up for GSHP pipes field. I wonder whether this mustard idea might help with that.

I presume you then need to cut it and remove the cuttings?

thats the idea - its something that grows fast, hoovers up excess nutrients but won't subsequently out-compete other stuff

On a bit of a diversion - on Gardners World a few weeks back there was an item on Sid Hill's 'edible meadows' - might still be on iPlayer.

Once you've decided how far you want to go with prepping the ground to establish the new lawn (recommended),

Fill your boots with a mix you like (Emorsgate)

(But do try to match it to the conditions in your garden)

We’ve got a large area at the bottom of our garden (about 25m x 5m) that was converted in plastic until last year we pulled all the plastic out and planted a wild meadow mix.

Last year it looked awesome, this was it starting

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As per advice we strimmed it and raked it out last autumn but I think we should have also done it in spring. This year it’s a bit too grassy and not so many flowers. Hopefully we’ll be a bit more on it for next year. Also a bit of rain might help.

We had 3 or 4 bee nests last year and they loved it, I think we’ve only got 1 this year 😞

I've seen articles on creeping thyme lawns or sedum mat lawns. Both leftfield admittedly.

Good thread! Bookmarking. I've left a few unmown patches and got a few wildflowers but I want to try some seeds to get a bit more variety.

I’ve seen articles on creeping thyme lawns or sedum mat lawns.

I stayed at a campsite once where there was mint growing amongst the grass - smelled amazing when you walked  or sat on it

I planted two areas with wildflower seed mixes - one 'standard' and one low growing. Really windy for a couple of days afterwards, so I think it all got mixed..... Anyway - first year I left it to grow without cutting and it looked a mess with few flowers. Second year I experimented, cutting different sections at different times/heights. The best bits this year were those that were cut short in autumn and then left to end of May/early June (late spring/cool April here). I mowed it short again a couple of weeks ago and everything is starting to come through again, so hoping for a second bloom. 3 or 4 flowers this year, that weren't around last year - mainly low growing stuff. Lots of Buttercups everywhere to seems this last June. It's great experimenting and seeing what comes up. Mowing can be a slow job though as you have to keep stopping and encouraging all the 'winged things' to kindly move out of the way. Neighbour takes pride in his shaved monoculture, which looks crap.

Interesting thread; I'm in the process of buying some land which backs onto my garden from the council - about 30m x 5m.
Was thinking about a wildflower garden for upto half of it.
It gets full sun all day so, hopefully, will be a good site; hasn't been subject to much gardening for years.

Neighbour takes pride in his shaved monoculture, which looks crap.

Ha, do we have the same neighbours? Our behind the back fence have a perfectly maintained, very bland garden and last year when our wild flowers were coming through asked what we were doing with the area as it “looks a mess” 🤣
They only other time they’ve spoken to me was to moan about the tree surgeons that were taking a tree down along the fence, apparently they’d dropped a couple of branches in to their garden. Branches that they had already cleared up before they finished for the day.

Garden looks great Phil!.

I do like my 'shaved monoculture'! Lawn tbh, I'll be keeping a fair bit of it, I enjoy mowing and looking after it.

End of summer for planting then?.

I left mine for a month earlier this year. The hedge needed doing too and it looked like the place was abandoned. I trimmed the hedge, mowed a border round the edge of the lawn and ran a mazey path through the rest for the boys to run through. They love the running track, the mown edges make it look intentional, and there's a tonne of different flowers popping. 3 or 4 different clovers, loads of daisies and buttercup (the buttercups are getting a bit much in one area - they've taken over the grass.) there's another 10 things in there that I don't know the name of, and I missed mowing a ragged robin by about 4 inches when I was doing the border. I'd only learnt about them the day before, so it was especially nice to see in there!

the only thing I'd be glad to be rid of is the bloody soft rush. spikey underfoot, grows quicker than anything else so when I'm mowing all of it, it makes the lawn look like it needs mowing way sooner than it would without it.

If anyone's got any tips for getting rid, I'd be keen to hear them!

We've been dabbling with this. Mrs OTS does the research and I provide the labour.
If the lawn is too well established, it can be hard for wild flower mixes to push their way through. Raking and generally damaging it in the cooler months helps the wild flower seed to find the space, but a recognised less labour intensive solution is to sow yellow rattle

https://wildseed.co.uk/page/using-yellow-rattle-to-increase-species-diversity

It's an annual which sets seed about now (Late July). It's semi-parasitic and weakens the grass roots allowing other species more space to come through.

Great stuff here! I never even considered tailored seed mixes

I will contact Emorsgate Seeds for some advice. I think what I want is the meadow grass mix for clay soils for the majority of the lawn, then a mix for a wildflower section.

Our shaved monoculture has all sorts of crap coming through, loads of leafy bits obviously tunnelling and bloody brambles.

On the upside there is also plenty of hawkweed, clover patches and Welsh poppies, they at least look nice and attract bees. Need to go one way or another, I'd actually like a nice lawn but there is plenty of room around it for wild flowers.

I don't know how suited it is for those nutrient suckers, the front hardly grows at all whilst the back is massive after a week (probably thanks to the dog). Any thoughts? I just want to kill off the bramble and stupid leafy things although next door would have to clear the bit as well.

Ours has a lot self-heal, little purple flowers and leaves that crowd out the grass, and a bit of clover. One area also has a lot of moss and we're playing with the idea of helping the moss take over that bit entirely.

We decided to go meadow last year. Stopped mowing it in about May, strimmed it as far as we could in ?September, then scarified it with a hired scarifier, then sowed yellowrattle.

This year the yellowrattle has come up really well, along with a few other wild flowers. But apparently next year we ought to start to see more. The yellowrattle have now gone to seed (and started rattling like their name). We are going to harvest some seed and then give it a mow. Not sure what we are going to do with the hay.