Lawns

Rain? Please send some but preferably overnight.

Callistemon My wildflower garden is not hard work. It's cut once a year although paths are cut through it at intervals. This year's cut is booked for mid October. At the moment it does look a mess but it doesn't bother me. During the year we have over 100 varieties of wild flowers, starting with violets, cowslips and early purple orchids and ending up with wild carrot which has the most beautiful delicate flowers followed by intricate seed heads.

Here's a link to an article about pristine lawns in America but the same applies in the UK.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/21/lawn-environment-drought-tolerant-native-plants

Thanks for all your lovely comments. A chamomile lawn sounds great and wild flowers etc. I expect you own your homes. Four times a year, mine is obliterated by machinery sent by a HA. Someone mentioned blades too low means brownish lawn after cutting. Must be HA employees doing it with their ride on mowers

Callistemon We’re in the west of Scotland. Loads of the stuff!

User7777

Thanks for all your lovely comments. A chamomile lawn sounds great and wild flowers etc. I expect you own your homes. Four times a year, mine is obliterated by machinery sent by a HA. Someone mentioned blades too low means brownish lawn after cutting. Must be HA employees doing it with their ride on mowers

The one thing about lawns is that they always green up again ' remember 1976?!

tidyskatemum blow the wind southerly please (preferably about 2:00 am)

I never feed my lawn, I live near our recreation ground and no matter what we do our lawns are coved in various wildflowers or weeds depending on your point of view. Lexisgranny My garden is full of creeping wood sorrel too, no matter what I do it's always there, I'd actually be happy to have the whole front lawn of the thing as it's so pretty, but it grows everywhere except the lawn.

I’ve just fed my lawn for the first time ever, and only because my daughter gave me some feed in one if those spray attachments that fits into the hose. I never usually water it either, it’s just an irresponsible waste if water in my opinion. However my lawn is very small so I’ve done it this once just to see if there’s any difference. It’s usually quite mossy but I don’t mind that, I love the moss, so green and springy.

I am sure keen gardeners do feed their lawns, but not being a keen gardener I have absolutely no idea what that entails.

I mow mine once a month or so from April to the end of September and that is the outside limit of the time I am prepared to spend on anything as boring as a a lawn - I have three, plus a grass verge outside our front fence which is also my reponsiblility and a driveway to mow.

I feed the hedgehogs and anyone else who might care for a little cat food now and then, as I am far more interested in animals than the meadow grass known as our lawns.

A chacun son goût!

We have a neighbour who is forever doing something to his front lawn - he is nicknamed Mr Fussy (this goes back decades) and not just because of the lawn.
To be fair it does usually look like a beautiful green carpet. I don’t think he goes quite as far as the real Mr Fussy, measuring the blades of grass with a ruler and cutting it with nail scissors, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

Our small back lawn is now known in the family as a wildflower meadow, since after all, weeds are wild flowers too. But it still looks nice and green after cutting. I had to tell dh yesterday to be sure to leave the two little cyclamen that have seeded themselves in it, ditto violets and buttercups at other times of the year.

I can't understand why people want to get rid of daisies and clover. Is it all about wanting people to admire a piece of grass? I would admire wild flowers growing. I would admire the fact that people understand about what wild life needs. So sad that people actually want to get rid of daisies and clover.

One of the things we liked about our new house was the big green lawn at the back. However last winter, our second here every morning we woke to find deep holes dug in the grass - we have loads of squirrels so thought it must be them. We had to go out daily to fill the holes in - our beautiful lawn was starting to resemble a ploughed field. In the spring we had some lawn experts in - they diagnosed chafer grubs which the birds and foxes etc can smell and dig up to eat. Apparently the chemicals that was used to eradicate them was banned years ago as it killed the bees too so they have recently spread live nematodes (?!) on the lawn and we have had to wash them into the earth by daily watering for three weeks - no sign of rain here unfortunately. The hope is that the these nematodes get washed into the earth and eat the chafer grubs but we’re told the treatment is not likely to be a complete success. On the plus side the lawn recovered well this summer because of the treatments they used to feed the grass but here’s to spending another winter filling in the holes again ?.

We have about a third of an acre of 'lawn', we just call it grass! We cut it about once a month, we never water it, and DH treats the moss occasionally - not with great success. We hired a scarifyer once but it made such a mess of it we never bothered again. But the grass is a healthy green colour and I'm happy to keep the daisies, our GC like to make daisy chains. It's just grass! Probably the most prolific weed in the world, it will recover and survive whatever we do, or don't do, to it.

Years ago we had a neighbour who regularly crawled around on his small front lawn cutting it with little scissors, and the back lawn so I heard. Even is wife was not allowed to tread on the back lawn. He was absolutely livid when a new postman took a shortcut across his lawn to get to his neighbours door leaving footprints! He even contacted the post office demanding he be fired.

If anyone has a problem with Moles, try burying pickled onions in the ground near the mole hills. It works for us, we haven't had moles for the last 4 years.

All I do is mow the lawn grass and I never cut it really short. It's survived all the hot spells we get and stayed a lush green colour. Love the daisies and clover. I even mow around the daisies.

My neighbour is always scalping his lawn. He obviously doesn’t like cutting it so goes mad about once every 6 weeks. We cut ours every other week and have never had the mower on the lowest setting, so far it looks OK, a bit brown due to lack of rain, but we know it will recover.

I was loving our lawn full of clover, daisies, ajuga etc, then OH decided it needed to be just grass. He put a weed and feed on and has spent weeks raking out the dead bits and re-seeding it. So much work, and the weeds will be back. Madness.

We allowed our small back lawn to run wild this year. Not mowing it produced some really lovely wild flowers and it was such a joy to watch the butterflies, bees and other insects. It didn't get too overgrown either because some areas are used to access the veg patches and therefore get naturally trodden down.

missdeke

I never feed my lawn, I live near our recreation ground and no matter what we do our lawns are coved in various wildflowers or weeds depending on your point of view. Lexisgranny My garden is full of creeping wood sorrel too, no matter what I do it's always there, I'd actually be happy to have the whole front lawn of the thing as it's so pretty, but it grows everywhere except the lawn.

I looked up creeping wood sorrel and realise that we have that growing in borders and pots too.
I always called it oxalis but I think cialis is a cultivated version.

Autocorrect persistently changed oxalis to cialis!!

We have a specialist lawn company come 4 times a year to feed and weed (using safe chemicals) our lawn. All we have to do is mow and water it in dry spells for it to look good. It’s actually cheaper than buying the stuff and doing it ourselves! Costs £13 a time.

Perhaps I should add, that I’m very into growing flowers and a bit of veg in the summer. I deliberately choose to plant flowers that attract wildlife (bees, butterflies etc) and have also given over part of the garden to wildflowers. In addition, we have a dark area with with logs, twigs and leaves for hedgehogs and crawlies. We keep some lawn as, for me, it’s a lovely frame for the flower beds.

I am another with flowering things instead of a sterilised lawn as far as the eye can see,
I draw the line at docks, ragweed, and briar seedlings but I love dandelions, buttercups, and daisies.

Have both lawns professionally treated. Some of the problem about lawns going brown other than lack of water is due to people cutting them too short.

Caleo

I am another with flowering things instead of a sterilised lawn as far as the eye can see,
I draw the line at docks, ragweed, and briar seedlings but I love dandelions, buttercups, and daisies.

We started with grass but it's interesting to see what has emerged over the years.

Some I do regard as weeds and used to sit and pull them out eg lesser trefoil but gave up as they die back anyway.
We get masses of celandines in the spring then they just disappear again until next year..

The best my lawn ever looked was when I brushed it with a proper witches broom on a regular. The lawn rake was never as good. It was a sad day when it eventually fell apart. I must get a new one. I also scatter new seed down on a regular basis, something I only used to do if there was a bare patch.