Greetings,
This is the opening page of the journal of our attempt to create a tiny patch of 'meadow' in the backgarden of a little house in Cambridge, UK. It's over a year and a half into the project now and i have only just got around to typing this up. I think it will take a while to fill in the gaps and to work out how blogging works. Bear with me please :o)
So, what will we be sharing with you? Well mainly the ups, downs and sideways of our attempt to make a meadow from nothing but a weed infested (mainly Bindweed) patch of lawn. Bit of a problem there since we've done most of the work already! Duh! So it will actually be the piecing together of our recollections of what happened and when, with the enormous pile of pictures which we have amassed and a few designs which formed the basis of what we have done. But the meadow is an ongoing project and as such new developments will also be dropped in. And finally the meadow is part of a larger garden (please note though, it isn't a large garden!Well not large enough...) so we will also drop in other details where they are relevant to set it in context.
So, why a meadow? Isn't that just a way to avoid mowing the lawn? It could well be, if you have a lawn with grasses which will not be too aggressive (like fescues) in which case it is probably a high quality bowling green which you will not want to ruin by not cutting it enough. But like most people we didn't, and in our case we had a lawn partly infested with very aggressive grasses including Couch Grass and Hedge Bindweed (Calystegia sepium). So why do we want to make a meadow?
Well, since I learnt about habitat creation at university I have been itching to have a go. Sadly I now run a factory which gives me fairly limited opportunities for this sort of thing and my partner is a very talented and able translator whose professional life does not currently include many opportunities for creating habitats. Then we bought a house together. My dreams of domination in the meadow were at last attainable. I just had to convince the missus. Actually that is very unfair, she was well up for from the beginning. But I did need some reasons, which included:
- it's the easiest (hah! how little did i know then!)way of dealing with a reampant infestation of bindweed across half the garden other than by just having a really close trimmed lawn, which neither of us wanted.
- it's good for wildlife, providing a habitat for all sorts of beasties which would otherwise be homeless. This would include possibly some Bumblebees which was the winning argument. Also lots of predators which would help the adjacent organic veggie plot.
- it's pretty, including a variety of attractive grasses and wildflowers as well attracting gorgeous butterflies and BUMBLEBEES.
- it's a more sustainable method of gardening in the long run, which should not require watering (especially important in drought ridden East Anglia), fertilisers and pesticides and will need minimal management.
- it's less work, only needing a few cuts per year. Apparantly. And you get hay as well!
- it's FUN!Maybe...
So lots of very good reasons there I'm sure you will agree. How to go about it then? Way back when I was initially studying it, wildflower meadow creation was, while not in it's infancy, generally restricted to professional landscape architects and ecologists. In recent years meadow creation has become fairly mainstream and there is a wealth of information available through such works as Christopher Lloyd's books and at websites like:
http://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profiles0600/wildflower.asp
http://www.english-nature.org.uk/pubs/publication/PDF/Wildflowermeadows.pdf
As well as those of the many seed suppliers who have sprung into existence.
Right well that'll do for the time being, when I've got time to fill in more, there'll be more!
Cheers, & tot ziens!