Nearly all the wildflower meadows in the UK have been lost through agriculture. And the pursuit of neat trimmed grass leaves very little habitat that would otherwise be a hum of life and colour. Meadow lawns provide the perfect opportunity to create something beautiful that will also be great for wildlife! We, through my own error, tried the two ways you can make a meadow lawn. Firstly, you can create meadow lawns from seed. The second way using plug plants you can read about in part two.
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Need convincing?
Why should you have a meadow lawn? Because they’re ace that’s why. Need more convincing? Okay.
With a meadow lawn you will cut it at most twice a year. You don’t need to feed it – in fact they do best on what would be considered rubbish soil. I’d only water it if you have a super dry spell while you were getting it established. With a meadow lawn – weeds are good. and with a range of species it’s going to be more robust to environmental changes. So when it comes to low maintenance, they’re pretty good!
So they’re easy, but they’re also great for wildlife, throwing up a firework display of flowers through the year they will provide food for all sorts of bugs, especially bees (our daughters favourite). Some plant species will support over 21 different species of bug. It will also do your soil loads of good, helping pull up and lock in nutrients that will support yet more life.
Lastly, a meadow lawn can bring a lot of joy. Whether it’s the colourful flowers through the year, or the sound of grasshoppers in the evening, a meadow lawn can bring the peace of the wild to your front door.
That’s the dream anyway.
Where we began
When we moved into the house we had a barren wasteland of slab and decking. Nothing grew. On top of that with layers of sandstone, concrete and clay we had some flooding issues where the water couldn’t drain quick enough!
And on top of that, there was no wildlife. Nothing even stopped by to visit. I pretty quickly set about building some planters but the big aim was to put a lawn in. We then had the idea of the meadow lawn. We were going to be starting from bare earth so I decided we would grow a meadow lawn from seed.
We started by pulling up the slabs and breaking up the concrete. Unless you can borrow a jackhammer a good sledgehammer, pickaxe, lump hammer and cold chisel will do the job just fine depending on your weapon of choice. We saved the rubble and dug some drainage channels half a metre down running the length of the lawn towards two soak away pits (30 centimetres square and a metre deep in the corner with the most flooding) which we then filled with the rubble we had created. This was then filled and levelled using top soil.
Meadow lawn from seed
Because we have clay soil we got the clay soil mix from Habitat Aid, you might need to check your soil type to get the right mix for your area. We mixed the seed with some sand a sprinkled it evenly across the lawn area and raked it over to cover the seed. There is a great guide from Habitat Aid here:
If you are creating a meadow from bare soil that is all you need to do – wait to see what comes through! Dumbass here laid turf over the top. But that also means I can tell you how to create a meadow lawn with an existing grass lawn!
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