Convert your lawn into a meadow!
3 September 2014
We have another guest blog this week, from Bumblebee Conservation Trust supporter Eric Homer. Read on to find out what he did and see his results…
My wife and I are keen on helping wildlife and enjoy encouraging wildlife into our garden. We get a lot of pleasure seeing the birds, bees, butterflies, frogs, newts and insects in the garden, so last year we decided that we’d like to make the garden more bee friendly by converting the back garden lawn into a wildflower meadow, hopefully attracting more wildlife into the garden and helping the bees and other species. Our suburban garden is not large and the lawn only covered a small area, approximately 20m². We wondered if a small area like this would have any effect, but we were not disappointed.
I had a look on the internet for guidance and there were different opinions and ways of going about the conversion. Not sure how to approach the project I sought guidance and advice from the BBCT on the best/easiest way to convert the lawn into a wildflower meadow. Anthony McCluskey from BBCT responded to my enquiry with good advice and guidance.
The most important thing to do when planting a wildflower meadow is to remove as much grass as you can from the area. Some people use herbicide or dig it up, or you can cover it with plastic sheeting for as long as possible. This will destroy any grass underneath, and give you a blank canvas to work from. This is important because grasses will compete with wildflowers, and are the main reason why wildflower areas don’t work.
After that, the seeds can be sown. Do this in autumn or spring, after raking the soil so that it’s fine. You should then cover gently (e.g. by raking again) and water well. You’ll need to keep watering them to make sure they germinate, and after the seedlings come up they should be fine. He provided me with this link to Habitataid where I found more information and links to other resources including seed suppliers, sowing rates etc. which was very useful. This site also has a video to explore the different ways it can be done.
We took the plunge in September 2013. We were only converting a small area so we decided to dig up the turf, still a major job and hard work, and then prepared the ground. We then sowed our seedbed. Preparing the ground and sowing in the autumn can help some wildflowers as some of the seeds fair better if they can germinate over the winter. We thought that this would hopefully give us quicker results.
As it was a small area we decided to go for wildflowers only rather than a wildflower/grass mixture. We used seed sent to us by the BBCT when we joined, some we’d collected ourselves on our walks and bought some from one of the suppliers recommended by habitat aid. I don’t think it stopped raining since we sowed so watering wasn’t an issue.
October was relatively mild and wet and we had shoots coming up in November which we hoped were wildflowers and not rogue grasses. Anthony’s advice was that at this stage the most important thing to do is to make sure that there is no disturbance of the seedlings (just in case you have dogs or cats that like to dig!). Over the winter we seemed to have nothing but rain and the newly seeded meadow was flooded on several occasions giving us concern over germination.
In early spring we decided to plant some plant plugs to add some species not contained in the seed packs that we’d sown. We bought some wildflower plants from the garden centre, split them and distributed them over the meadow. We also added some wildflower plants that were in a friend’s garden.
Slowly but surely the meadow started to develop, they say patience is a virtue. It took eight months from sowing to seeing significant results but the wait was worth it. The photographs to the right below show the early progress.
The meadow, although in the infancy of its first season, has attracted greater numbers and varieties of hoverflies, moths and butterflies. The goldfinches and sparrows have also taken a liking to the cornflowers. The numbers of bees in the garden has also increased dramatically. They seem particularly attracted to the cornflowers, scabious and bird’s foot trefoil.
Two hoverflies that we have not seen in the garden before that were easier to identify are the Large pied or Pellucid Hoverfly (Volucella pellucens) and a hornet mimic hoverfly (Volucella zonaria). Butterflies new to the garden are the Common Blue, Meadow Brown, Ringlet and Small Skipper, all seen on the meadow. We’ve also had our first 6 spotted Burnet moth in the meadow.
We are very pleased with the results so far, we are enjoying the experience immensely and excited to see what else might spring up next year or be attracted into the garden.
Check out more planting guides and resources with our Bee the change campaign here.
