Top meadow lawn mistakes and problems + mini meadow lawn update

Like many people I've converted a bit of my lawn to a mini meadow. It's two patches in the front garden which I did last year and I did that because it looks really pretty and it supports wildlife and I'd also hope that we'd save ourselves a bit of time on mowing but it hasn't quite turned out the way I hoped and I think I've made a few mistakes and they're probably quite common mistakes you might be making too. So I'm here with Joel Ashton who has a YouTube channel called and whose company Hazelwood Landscapes creates wildflower meadows and wildlife ponds and wildlife habitats both for large landscapes and for small domestic gardens. So he's going to explain to me some of the typical mistakes that we might make and what we can do about it. I'll put links to Hazelwood Landscapes and to Wild Your Garden with Joel Ashton YouTube channel in the description below and if you're new here the Middlesized Garden uploads weekly with tips ideas and inspiration for your garden so if you'd like to see the videos when you open up YouTube click the subscribe button they're free and if you'd like YouTube to tell you when a new video is uploaded then tap the notifications bell. So Joel briefly how do we create a mini meadow lawn? How do we turn a patch of our lawn into a mini meadow particularly if we've got a small garden or town? Well there's a few ways you can do it. I mean obviously on a larger scale you can strip the turf and so and obviously you know mechanically it's a big job but in of course a lawn in a back garden you might have you know fruit trees and things in the middle so you don't want to disturb the roots of any existing you know kind of trees or shrubs that you might have dotted throughout the garden. So then you want to retain and of course you've said about having lots of bees in your lawn later on in the summer which is which is great and of course you don't want to disturb the ground for for those purposes. So you can actually plant individual kind of nine centimeter potted plants into the lawn itself which is a very good way of doing it. Some people use plugs but I find particularly with established lawns the plugs can sometimes be swamped you know in their establishment because of course the grasses are already there so even if you plant in the dormant season say now by the time the spring comes those grasses are already rooted and they're often they're taking over the plugs but a nine centimeter potted plant has a much bigger root structure so it's got a much better chance of establishing itself within the lawn and surviving and competing with those grasses. So potted plants is one way and it's probably the best way I would say. You can of course scarify a lot of people say well you know I haven't got the money to put pots over 200 square meters you know can I just scarify and sow the seed? Yes you can and it can be it can be a very successful method but again because those grasses are there and they're already established they can therefore you know become a bit of a problem when it comes to the seed you know trying to germinate and establish itself once the weather warms up and the grasses are already starting to grow. So they're kind of on the back foot so seed can be a bit of an issue. The other way to do it of course is to if you've got particularly vigorous grasses you can sow yellow rattle scarify really hard at the end of summer you know if you've got an existing long grass area scarify really hard and cut it really low before you scarify obviously and then sow yellow rattle into that area then the yellow rattle is a parasitic plant that will attach itself to those existing grasses and kind of move its way through the area over the next year. Obviously it's an annual so it will be in one place one year and then it'll kind of drift through the meadow over the next two or three years but what that does is it then leaves you know very weakened grasses in its wake so then that therefore leaves patches and obviously a less vigorous grass behind it so then the wildflowers have a lot better chance of establishing so if you're going to use seed my recommendation would be to cut the area hard scarify hard and then sow yellow rattle let that work its way through the course of a season and then sow the seed the following autumn. As I was saying to you earlier the great thing about my mini meadow lawn is it seems to have a lot of ground nesting bees in it and they come out in very late in the season August September which is of late summer for us in the UK and having looked up what those could be I think ivy mining bees is the only thing they're the last bees to come out I think and they then whizz around and then they bury themselves in the earth and then of course I have become absolutely terrified of disturbing them in any way so I'm absolutely terrified of digging it up or anything so I mean it seems to me madness to have a wild flower wildlife meadow lawn which disturbs the wildlife that's already there of course how would you suggest I balance out this fear of disturbing what's already there and creating a nice mini meadow lawn I think it is very difficult particularly on the larger scale projects I do I find it's very difficult almost playing god you know because you're going in to try and create these habitats but in the process there's obviously some kind of destruction and you know you're an and inevitably there will be casualties even if they're kind of minuscule you know so it's very very difficult and as you know human beings just existing we're interfering with nature so so I think you've really got to accept the fact you've you've got to crack an egg to make an omelette and I think in many senses you know the wildlife in the long run will benefit from that short-term disturbance and one of the problems that's hit my mini meadow is that of course the perennial weeds the ground elder which is really difficult to get rid of and is in the borders has got into the meadow because we're not cutting it so what's your advice there should I just be digging up those perennial ground elder weeds individually well as many of your viewers will know ground elder is a bit of a pernicious thug and unfortunately really you know and I don't advocate the use of chemicals so you know I think you've really got to just sort of get in there and dig it out with a fork because otherwise as you know it will just kind of slowly rampage through the meadow and I've got a friend who's turned quite a swathe of a lawn she's got a much bigger garden than I have actually and she's turned quite a swathe of it into a bit of meadow and she's found that it's all got very floppy it's just very green and very floppy it's not looking like a sort of wildflower meadow so what do you think's gone wrong there well that's probably because of the fertility in the ground that is existing which means that obviously there's a lot and there will be a lot of growth early on in the season April May time and into June grasses generally tend to slow down a lot by the time we get to July and August so one thing you can do to combat that is to almost see it as a kind of a late summer meadow so if you were to for example mow for the first part of the year say up until the end of May or even into early June you're going to knock back the vigor of the grass that when it does come up it doesn't get so long and flop over the downside to that of course is you lose your spring flowers you know your primroses cowships whatever may be in there and your bulbs then you'll still get all your oxide daisies come up your knapweeds your wild carrots and everything else so you'll still have that summer meadow I had a friend in Peterborough who had the same thing because it was quite a lush area that he turned into meadow and actually that that worked very well mowing there's a surprising amount of wildflowers obviously you know in July in the summer meadow of course so it does work for sure what do you think about choosing native plants for meadow lawns well I think it's key really because obviously all the insects that are the majority of insects today of course as you say with migration we've got things like hummingbird hawk moths becoming more of an occurrence now particularly in the south where we are but they are spreading further north and migration and climate change are a big part of that you know they go hand in hand the warmer it's getting the more insect species and birds and everything else are moving north of course so I think it is very important even given that to plant native because that's what our native fauna are used to they're used to the kind of indigenous species the the wild carrot the birdsfoot trefoils of the UK because that's what they have been nectaring on for a long long time so if we're introducing you know for example cosmos into a meadow then yes that's fine and you know it might attract certain species that will nectar on it for sure but I think in terms of a lot of the species of insects they will be used to those indigenous plants and therefore it's key to kind of repeat that particularly since we've lost 97% of our wildflower meadows throughout the in the last 100 years which is a staggering statistic however in a herbaceous border you know I'm a big advocate for using non-native plants because things of course like verbena benariensis, nepetas, salvias absolutely covered with bees and butterflies and moths and hoverflies and everything else in the summer months so you know that's where I think we can have our you know tweaks if you like and bring kind of formality and structure into the garden where it's a slightly different situation to a wildflower meadow. So in terms of maintaining our little patch of mini meadow lawn what's your advice? Carry on doing what you're doing let it grow throughout the summer months and then cut it back probably sort of into September if you can obviously traditionally farmers will cut hay for silage and things in June July which is of course when flowers are at their peak which is great for the cattle you know but less great for the the wildlife of course so the later you can cut the meadow the better but before it starts folding over and then kind of you know swamping all those early wildflowers things like your primroses and calypsos which put on a lot of growth in the second half of the summer they'll get smothered by the grasses once they start folding over in October so really September is usually when I'm carrying out most of my hay cuts and that's obviously cutting it down to ground level to within about two to three inches so you're still leaving some habitat for all the larvae all the caterpillars and things like that that might be in those grasses waiting for the spring time to start coming out and feeding again and then you don't cut it again after that you don't do any cuts during the winter or early spring you shouldn't need to I mean depends if our winters get much warmer really but they seem to be don't they so I would say you should be fine just let it go it might get back up to six inches over the winter time you could then cut down you know kind of March if you wanted to but obviously if you've got bulbs I'd just recommend leaving it if it's not too too high and it's in its final sort of growth spurt if you like in the summer so I would just leave it through the summer one cut in September and that's all you need to do really and in terms of adding these plants the nine centimeter plants I have to say I think it's a very exciting idea can I do that now we're now really in late winter it's the end of January in the UK in many other places it will be a lot colder is that something we can plant at any time or do I need to wait really until early spring before I put these nine centimeter plants in my meadow I think it depends where the the plants are grown and where they've you know been propagated etc if they have been outside all winter because they've been in a nine centimeter pot for the last year for example then that's fine they'll be frost hardy if they're particularly if they're native species and you can plant them this time of year no problem I just planted a pond last week and it was flipping cold on my hands but they'll be fine because they were they've been outside and they're used to the colder weather and of course they're all still mostly dormant now anyway so it's not fresh germinating growth that's coming up and being zapped by the frost so this should be fine this time of year is there anything else we need to know about turning our lawns into a mini meadow the best thing to do is put your mower away that's what I say put the mower in the shed see what comes up because it's astonishing how many wildflowers are actually already in an existing lawn you know a lawn that's been mown for 40 years for example is probably full of birdsfoot trefoil self-heal oxide daisies and many other species clover in particular that are very beneficial for bees and my advice if you don't want to go the whole hog and let your meadow go up to knee height I would leave it as a what I would call a flowering lawn so I would lift the mower height to as higher higher possible cut as you can so sort of you know two to three inches if possible and just trim on a very kind of seldom basis if you like maybe once every two to three weeks therefore you're going to get a bit of growth but you can just still keep that slight formality particularly if it's nearer the house and you want that to be the more formal area but that way the wildflowers will will adapt to flower at a very short height actually which is of course a lot more beneficial for our pollinating insects do check out Joel's YouTube channel Wild Your Garden with Joel Ashton it's at the end of this video and let me know if you've had any experiences with turning your lawn into a meadow and thank you for watching goodbye