New Year’s resolutions
26th December 2007, WednesdayAre you looking for a New Year’s resolution that benefits wildlife? Does your lawn look like this in the summer? In which case read on……..
Urban areas cover a significant area of south-east England, and a lot of that is covered in regularly mown lawn that offers little to wildlife. Yet there are numerous species that could benefit by changing lawn management, and add a splash of colour to your garden. You could try to give the lawn a flowery break - missing a cut or two during the summer. If there is a lot of white clover in the lawn it becomes very desirable to red-tailed bumblebees.
It will attract bumblebees and other insects that use the pollen and nectar. These insects are suffering from a lack of these flowers in the modern countryside and the garden lawn is an easy way to supply them. Furthermore in high summer the lawn does not grow too fast and is easily restored.
If you want to go one step further you can add extra interest. Try collecting seed from roadside verges. Scatter them over the chosen bits of newly mown lawn in late summer and trample them in. This has worked for me with red clover, an even better bumblebee foodplant, and ox-eye daisy which attract a different range of insects. Common knapweed is another plant that will seed in this way. This is the same lawn about two years after the seed was introduced - red clover has largely replaced the white and daisies produce a colourful show.
Now in some gardens you could allow whole blocks of lawn to grow a hay crop in the summer. Where tidiness is important try leaving small circles uncut and leave a further strip unmown each week around the taller grass. That way you get a controlled tall grass effect that tapers down to the regularly mown areas and looks tidier. Further plants were added to this lawn by growing seeds in pots and planting in the seedlings, with bird’s foot trefoil for instance.
Species that will benefit, other than insects, include house sparrow, who need insect protein to feed to their young at this time of year, slow worm which live in the long grass, and of course the wild flowers. When you come to cut the lawn as the flowers fade its amazing how much biodiversity is associated with the long grass. The lawn will look brown for a week or two after it is cut, but it rapidly recovers after a bit of rain, and before that the wild flowers produce a superb splash of colour. If sufficient people made this change to lawn management what a difference we could make to our urban biodiversity.