I like your ideas and will try to talk my wife into letting me raise the lawn mower blade on selected portions of our already quite small lawn. However, creeping buttercup is proving to be a terrible bully. It not only takes over the lawn but pushes aggressively into my native perennial beds. I only wish clover and dandelions could compete.
Here in the southern US it really should be No Mow March, because by the time May rolls around things are quite tall if you let it go that long. There's a lot of pushback for No Mow May or any iteration of it here, though I am seeing some alternatives being Low Mow Summer, which just means mowing every 3ish weeks or so. It's been interesting to see how this UK campaign ended up in the US and how we're all adapting it!
I think you're absolutely right about the difference between meadow and lawn and I've been thinking of introducing plug plants in a discrete area near our pond.
I'd love to have the space to create a separate meadow, but to be honest, the garden we have takes up enough of our time as it is.
We've allowed our grass to grow during the summer months for the last few years and I've been disappointed with how few wild flowers have self seeded on the whole. I've yet to see a daisy or self heal etc. Also, we end up with long stalky grass dotted all over, which is very unpleasant to walk on barefoot and so it eventually gets mown as a consequence. Not sure what we can do about this?
Re allowing lawn edges to merge with perennial beds. Beware couch grass! We've sometimes allowed our grass edges to grow long in places and they've grown into the beds. We've found this can lead to couch grass coming up, which is so difficult to get rid of....
This is exactly how our lawn looks. The reason was mostly because the area is big (5000sqm) and we can't keep up with mowing it too often. So the bulk of it gets mowed once a month and some small areas once every 2-3 weeks. Dandelions and clover are really happy, and so are the bees in the area :)
I like your ideas and will try to talk my wife into letting me raise the lawn mower blade on selected portions of our already quite small lawn. However, creeping buttercup is proving to be a terrible bully. It not only takes over the lawn but pushes aggressively into my native perennial beds. I only wish clover and dandelions could compete.
I have what looks like a dandelion lawn at the moment (amongst other things growing in it) and I love it 🙂 thank you for your inspiration and advice.
Here in the southern US it really should be No Mow March, because by the time May rolls around things are quite tall if you let it go that long. There's a lot of pushback for No Mow May or any iteration of it here, though I am seeing some alternatives being Low Mow Summer, which just means mowing every 3ish weeks or so. It's been interesting to see how this UK campaign ended up in the US and how we're all adapting it!
I think you're absolutely right about the difference between meadow and lawn and I've been thinking of introducing plug plants in a discrete area near our pond.
I'd love to have the space to create a separate meadow, but to be honest, the garden we have takes up enough of our time as it is.
We've allowed our grass to grow during the summer months for the last few years and I've been disappointed with how few wild flowers have self seeded on the whole. I've yet to see a daisy or self heal etc. Also, we end up with long stalky grass dotted all over, which is very unpleasant to walk on barefoot and so it eventually gets mown as a consequence. Not sure what we can do about this?
Re allowing lawn edges to merge with perennial beds. Beware couch grass! We've sometimes allowed our grass edges to grow long in places and they've grown into the beds. We've found this can lead to couch grass coming up, which is so difficult to get rid of....
This is exactly how our lawn looks. The reason was mostly because the area is big (5000sqm) and we can't keep up with mowing it too often. So the bulk of it gets mowed once a month and some small areas once every 2-3 weeks. Dandelions and clover are really happy, and so are the bees in the area :)
I do hope "ornamental daffodils" does mean species daffodils and not cultivars.