Another thought that a friend had showed me.

He let a few vegetables bolt and flower, rather than pick everything. He’s got some exotic looking flowers, amazing foliage and the wildlife love it. And it’s onions, carrots, broccoli and rhubard..

Look it up.

I don’t need to, it did not cause the clover to increase.

He let a few vegetables bolt and flower, rather than pick everything.

That’s a great idea, also leave the flowering heads over winter to provide seed resources.

He let a few vegetables bolt and flower, rather than pick everything. He’s got some exotic looking flowers, amazing foliage and the wildlife love it. And it’s onions, carrots, broccoli and rhubard..

He wants to keep an eye on it, some quite aggressive plants there, could be rubhard with a vengeance. Ahem.

We’ve got a 5*10m patch that I strim once at the back end of the year (nowish really) also leave wide margins at the edge by the beck. Done it for three years now and starting to diversify quite nicely, going help it it with some seeds in spring but don’t want to “overpower” the local stuff so will be sparing with it. The number of vole and field mouse “tracks” in it is quite astounding, loads of frogs and toads too. Been building hibernaculae bat and bird boxes with the kids too, really enjoying seeing the difference as it was just a bit of field with a hedge round it when we moved in. The side by side comparison with the bit we still mow (admittedly still not quite tennis court but pretty”rustic”) is stark.

We too leave our veg to bolt.

The best thing that I found for bees are the raspberry bushes, when they flower the bees are all over.

Please be careful when strimming the longer grass areas, as many hedgehogs get injured or even killed.

I accidentally chopped off a frogs leg once, it was awful, so I now carefully check hedges and long grass areas before clipping, chopping, trimming, cutting or strimming anything where a creature may dwell or take refuge.

We aim to start a bee year with pulmonaria and snow drops, spring flowers follow, eg native cranesbill geranium, flowering fruits, wild flowers, clover, valeria, scabious, lavender, plenty of purple and yellow flowering plants, mostly the type with an open flower head, later buddleia, heather and verbena and all some of the examples we’ve planted in the garden.
I took out anything that wasn’t helping the insects. The long grass seems to attract the beetles and give many smaller insects a resting place and refuge. One year I even had swallows and house martins flying low over the small lawn.

Every year I gather the fallen leaves and pop them under the hedge.
I’ve also planted another apple tree and a rowan.

I just wish the chap next door would stop using slug pellets.

I don’t need to, it did not cause the clover to increase.

Did, I put it down to the phosphorus and potassium in the wee mix, despite the nitrogen that you appear to think all consuming.

Join the wee revolution, embrace the piss.

I accidentally chopped off a frogs leg once

They survive it, I found one dragging a mouse trap, on closer inspection it had been dragging it about long enough to grow a bit of a leg back, like a new bit, not sure if they grow a whole new limb but it hopped off with it’s stump.

Did, I put it down to the phosphorus and potassium in the wee mix, despite the nitrogen that you appear to think all consuming.

Listen, there is no way that adding any kind of fertliser gives clover a competitive advantage over grasses. The fact that you stopped using fertliser before pissing on your lawn is the most likely cause of the effect you have seen.

Did, I put it down to the phosphorus and potassium in the wee mix

I’d heard somewhere that spreading wood ash led to good results because of the potassium content, but I’ve not been brave enough to try.

Dammit. I’ve been leaving some of the lawn long and sheared it down on Sunday. Today I raked up the “hay” and found half a slow worm. (edit to say yes it was properly sliced and not pulling the “drop the tail” trick)

Today I raked up the “hay” and found half a slow worm. (edit to say yes it was properly sliced 

One of the things you can do is a “two stage cut” where you cut the upper part of the grass cover but not down to ground, leave 150mm ish if unsure. Leave it overnight and it gives the animals which like more cover some time to move away by themselves. Also good to leave some of the arisings a short while before collecting, if you want some seed drop, so win-win. More time consuming though and hard to achieve with a normal lawnmower alone.

I’d heard somewhere that spreading wood ash led to good results because of the potassium content, but I’ve not been brave enough to try.

The ash from my woodstove used to go on the lawn so possibly the explanation for it being a clover sanctuary in the first place, if you are upwind and just sort of scatter it before rain you get a very light coverage, if you are downwind you choke and look like a snowman, but the coverage is very light as the wind carries it, before rain so it washes the lawn after, certainly no harm done.

Ash and wee, superfoods for plants and we bin and flush it then go out and buy chemicals.

I’m developing a serious obsession for composting at the minute, grass clippings and food waste mixed with bits of cardboard, 2 liter bottle of boiling water shoved down in, poly bag over the top, today it was too hot to put your hand in, the bin is visibly digesting, drops by two thirds a week.

today it was too hot to put your hand in,

A while back the brown bin hadn’t been collected for a while in the summer and was full of grass clippings. Visibly steaming first thing in the morning…

I can recommend this book:

Visibly steaming first thing in the morning…

Reminds me of a girl I used to know.

I’ll get my coat.

We have a fascinating system set up, the council takes our grass clippings and food waste away and turns it into compost, thousands of trucks, man power and facilities, some places they pay for this, then you can get free compost at the recycling center, effectively paying someone to take it away and compost it, some do this and then go to B+Q every spring and buy compost, the carbon footprint of compost must be through the roof.

And the whole time you could just dump it in a bin in the corner of the garden and do it yourself save the planet and get free compost.

And the whole time you could just dump it in a bin in the corner of the garden and do it yourself save the planet and get free compost.

On the other hand, the council anaerobic digester will deal with stuff that a garden compost bin won’t.

Not a reason not to be composting stuff that can be done at home, of course.

Composting garden waste is amazing. I find it fascinating that you can pop your veg/fruit peel, grass clipping and other green bits and bobs into a container (we use a wooden construction) and nature makes into something that you can grow tomatoes, veg, flowers or mulch with 6 months later.
I stress we never put cooked food, meat or potato peel in, the local cats rats and other creatures would be all over it.

I got it wrong last year, just too much grass clippings and not mixing it properly, result was food waste sitting on top and…a field mouse city, when I opened it up in spring there was a mouse waterfall and the compost was just stinky rotted grass, tomatoes and nasturtiums loved it but it was not matured properly and stank like a polecat for a few days…hence seeking advice and new regime.

Already this year the stuff at the bottom is getting composty, the heat is outrageous, food waste is digested in days and gone, I make a hole in the center and drop food waste down it and it cooks, got to keep it cooking I think that’s the secret.

While I’m here something I tried this maybe of use, I saved a load of used paper coffee cups last year at work and germinated the seeds from Tesco tomatoes that I just had/chuck out, basically one tomato gives enough seeds to grow way too many plants, squashed and spread out on a bit of kitchen towel and left to dry, then sat in a tray with a bit of damp and eventually…voila, baby tomato plants, pot on into the coffee cups and off and running.
I got a load of weird tomatoes, one turned out to be a commercial hanging bush..or something, I had to drape those over a wall, grew like grapes with big long strings of tiny tomatoes, the other ones turned out normal, all grown outside in Scotland no problem.
I ended up with enough tomato plants to supply the neighbourhood and enough to keep me going.

We have 2 elderly neighbours who have immaculate gardens, trimmed, pruned and mowed to within an inch of their lives. Unfortunately yesterday the chap got cross with me, as our hedge was looking messy over the top of his two fence panels. The other neighbour, a lady, a very good friend of his was also cross regarding her fence.
I just wonder can the older generation ‘let go’ and realise without our hedge, wild patch, no mow lawn, trees, pond, nettles etc, they wouldn’t have the moths, butterflies, bees, birds, amphibians and mammals that they enjoy watching.
It was a shock when he said he wanted our hedge pulling up and doesn’t give a toss about any of the above and only wants a neat garden that his visitors can look at.
Luckily both sets of neighbours are intelligent and we have managed to calm them down.
But, I do wonder how we can change this perception of having an incredibly neat garden to ‘letting go a little’.
He was out a few weeks ago spraying weedkiller over garlic mustard, a wild plant which is one of only a few which feed the orange tip butterfly.
We’ll have to replace the fence panels and chop the hedge to just below the top.
It was so upsetting for me, as we’ve been neighbours for 15 years and always got on.

My garden is really quite small. Lawn area is approx 4m x 3m with a narrow border I created around 3 sides – 4th side is the small patio against rear elevation of house. As an experiment I have cut the grass to the normal height around the edges of the lawn – approx 2 mower widths on all 4 sides, and left the grass in the middle to grow. Its growing tall in some bits and not others. 2 questions:
1. Is it worth attempting to grow wildflowers amongst the taller grass now, as its already growing longer?
2. At the end of the year do I need to do anything different with the long grass area or just leave it to keep growing?
TIA

@Bunnyhop if ever there was a candidate for the frozen sausages….

You folks need this site and resources.
We partner with them at work for some of our school projects.

http://www.wlgf.org/

It was a shock when he said he wanted our hedge pulling up and doesn’t give a toss about any of the above and only wants a neat garden that his visitors can look at.

I’m often quoted at work – “who said schools should look like a golf course?”. It’s poor environmentally, barren for learning, uninspiring for play.

Look around at the mown verges, flat grass instead of plants, flowers, shrubs and trees.

Look at the chemicals our councils merrily throw at schools, nurserys, parks and public spaces. All to what end? Something that looks neat, but is bereft of biodiversity, hotter, windier, colder and less welcoming.

It’s a deep seated culture of a couple of generations. And, like brexit, hard to fathom.

Edit: 97% of school outdoor space in Scotland is mown grass and flat tarmac. About the worst environment for climate change, biodiversity, learning and play. And school grounds, after forests, make up the largest proportion of local authority owned land up here.

I have no figures for England and Wales.

Can you tell I’m starting on a project to do with this?

To be fair if we’d have had any cover the teachers would have never seen us again

We’re just finishing redoing our garden. Unfortunately, it’s tiny and slopes a lot so in order to get some space we can actually use and be part of we need a terraced garden. It now has a lot of patio, a small lawn and tons of flower borders. We’ve stuffed the borders with as many native-like and bee-attractive plants as we can though, and whilst I’m not sure if numbers are up compared to the previous garden the variety of flying insects seems to be. Also lots more creepy crawlies in the soil which is now much richer.

@matt_outandabout I just discovered this thread, I’ve contributed to the No Mow May thread and also the STW Positivity thread with my experiences of helping wildlife. I am lucky enough to have a 1\2 acre plot. When we bought it, it was very overgrown with many very old fruit trees that gradually succumbed to honeydew fungus. I rescued lots of birch, willow and ash trees (in our 2CV) from “the most polluted site in Europe” across the road from us. They’re now well established at the top of the garden 40’ plus in height. Campion, wood anemone, celandine, bluebells and all sorts now well established. Brambles and nettles have to be controlled, not eradicated by mechanical means. Ladysmock came back this year and Matrinalis and evening primrose keep coming back. The biggest triumph though is the front where we have a shared triangle of grass. Some twenty years ago I spotted a violet and carefully mowed around it until it had seeded, they’re everywhere now! I also found an orchid even though it’s an acid soil. Carefully marked with a stick in case the neighbour does his once every two two years grass cut! I’ve left a strip this year and, another orchid! The verge next to the road I’ve encouraged is full of all sorts of wild stuff, the rest of the verge was as well until N.E.D.D.C. used some sort of Napalm on it.
It takes a while but cut the grass very late on and all sorts appear eventually!

I’m only mowing the lawn, the rest of the plot i’ve left this year, so of the 1200sqm of green space i’ve got, 400sqm is a lawn and flowerbeds of sorts, 400sqm is long grass, wild flowers, weeds etc and 400m is forest (which backs onto another couple of million sqm of forest).

Will have to cut back the long grass at the front as it’s riddled with mares tail and the grass is well over half a meter tall now. Will reseed with wildflowers when the time is right though.

We let a portion of our grass grow wild last year and have done the same this year, we have 15 orchids which great and lots of ox eyed daisies. Decided to weed out the thistles as they will take over, and keep the ragwort under control- otherwise it’s left to its own devices, my kind of gardening!! Oh and carpet of wild strawberries 😀

Our house plot is next to a nature reserve, so it’s as much about how we blend the two – we live amidst a herd of red deer, so we have had to fence off a couple of areas or we’d just have gorse bushes and bracken. We have a tumbledown drystone wall that is our rear boundary that is home to lots of amphibians and voles. We’ve also created a big brash pile along the back wall that provides cover for lots of creatures. I’ve built a big, 2-bay compost heap from pallets, each bay is a cubic metre. The chickens arrive in the next few weeks so a source of manure for the compost heap. We’ve got a few wild orchids growing in the garden – there are at least 4 species in the reserve so trying to encourage them and achieve SSSI status. Across the adjacent field and along the coast is some of Scotland’s temperate rainforest – there are a pair of nesting ravens in the tallest tree, a few buzzards and white tailed eagles regularly fly across. We’ve got 2 hedgehog feeding stations, also frequented by a small feral cat.

We’ve got a sizable garden, the bottom bit of it (about 1100sqm) I keep in reasonably neat condition (tho it’s more clover than grass) with fairly natural native hedges that I don’t trim. It’s absolutely rammed with birds (got a particularly cute pair of great spotted wood peckers at the moment). That then goes up to a row of beach trees which I use as a natural barrier between the more or less maintained bit to the ‘wild’ bit.

The top bit (maybe a shade under 1 acre) has lots of mature (ish) trees down each the side and a copsey hawthorn bit at the top, I mow a small patch which we use for tents, bbqs, and stuff at the very top, the rest of it (bar some paths i mow in it) is left to grow long. This bit I mow a couple of times over winter and then once in the late summer (then bale using a homemade bailer – pita).

Last autumn we rotovated a bit of the top bit and replanted with wild seed mix which has seen a bit more variety this year – quite a bit of yellow rattle which will hopefully spread. Also had a few orchids this year. I’ve also planted some native trees at the top this year, so hopefully they’ll provide a bit more habitat.

We bought the house at the start of last year and the previous owner had surrounded it with deer fence to keep their dogs in. I’ve taken that down in places it won’t annoy the neigbours and as a result we now get lots of muncjac (some of them seem to live permently in the top bit now), badgers, and foxes. I think I saw a fallow deer once but not 100%. I was working on the shed i’m building and saw a barn owl fly past about 20 feet away a couple of weeks ago which was cool. The muncjac often come down to the mown bit in the morning to eat from the hedges (see photo from the bedroom window below!). Last week we seemed to be getting a lot of swallows, and also we see quite a few bats (last week one of them flew into the house hid under my daughters toys, then bit her when she poked it in the face, and now she’s having the rabbies vaccine! Not ideal).

The only ‘anti’ nature thing i’m in the process of doing is thinning out the grey squirrels. They’ve killed a few of the trees this year by ringing their bark, so i’m not sure what option i’ve got (i’m not using posion – shooting and using this co2 trap thing) as we’ve not got an infinite supply of trees. Feel pretty bad about it so if anyone has any non lethal suggestions i’m all ears! Hopefully this is offset by the habitat we’ve created in the mean time. We’ve got a 18 month year old who really loves it (as do our cats – though one of them is a bit of a vole death machine, thankfully we have quite a few spare and both of them are useless at catching birds!)

Work in progress, but in spring, summer and autumn it’s lovely, tho quite hard work keeping on top of it (cutting the hay, composting leaves etc). In winter we’re on poorly drained clay soil, so it can be a bit grim, but it doesn’t last forever I guess.

Wow this thread has really cheered me up. Everyone is trying to make some sort of difference.
Amazingly just before the falling out with the neighbours (I cold hear him muttering from behind his fence/our hedge, that’s why I went round to his house to try and help) I spotted a hummingbird hawk moth on the self seeded valerian, I was ecstatic and then it all kicked off with next door.

Fazzini – I think it’s too late to plant a wildflower mini meadow as you need to take up the garden, wildflowers do not like fertile soil, also sow yellow rattle (which was sent to me years ago by fellow STWer slowoldman).
Cut the long grass in the autumn/end of summer. Our wildflower section didn’t take this year as the grass was too dominant, however we do have more clover, buttercups, daisies and dandelions.

If everyone just did a little something, even if it’s not pulling up a dandelion in spring (some of the first food for bees),putting in the tiniest of ponds, or planting a bug friendly plant, then its a start.

I had a few of my leafy green plants stripped of leaves a couple of years ago when we had an unseasonably early freeze and snowfall.

Bloody deer and moose took it all, even found hoof prints in the snow on the deck. It’s taken two years to even come close to recovery, and i reckon they’ll take the lot this autumn too.

Does anyone have insect hotels or bird/bat boxes?

I’ve got 4 bird boxes already and just ordered another dozen birdboxes to put in the forest around the place, and 4 bird feeders. Just researching bat boxes…

(also getting quite a few raptors turning up as well. Mostly see them in the tall trees though.)

I’ve got four or five bird boxes up and a few more to put up next winter. Also have a insect hotel which seems to have solitary bees in it. I’ve got a bat box but not put it up yet. I may make an owl box in the winter. We certainly get a lot of boxes, but i’m not sure where they nest (not my loft thankfully!).

We used to keep bees, but stopped when my wife became pregnant the first time, so we’ll start that again at some point.

Raptor wise, we get a lot of red kites and buzzards around/above the garden – the kites are not nesting in our trees but are nesting in next doors about 100m away (no idea where the buzzards nest). As above i’ve also now seen we have a barn owl that hunts in the top long grass in the evenings. I’ve heard lots of tawney owls (or maybe just one loud one!) but never seen them.

On a side note, there don’t seem to be many butterflies this year 🙁

New to this, great thread.  After some advice though about ‘no mow’. We are lucky to live in a very rural area at 900 ft elevation in the Shropshire hills.  My wife is the main gardener and we try very hard to be wildlife friendly.  Lots of borders and flower beds are allowed to go a bit wild. I don’t cut hedges until the winter, We have loads of bird and bat boxes, DIY insect ‘hotels’ etc.  Piles of brush and rotting wood are strategically placed for insects and hedgehogs. We keep honey bees, but the air is also full of wild bees and other pollinators.  We have swallows nesting in a couple of wooden outbuildings, as well as loads of other birds.  Overhead we are also lucky to have Curlews, Red Kites etc.

We regularly see Roe, Munjac, Badgers, Stoats, Weasels and Foxes.  Though the latter are a mixed blessing as we keep chickens and very occasionally lose one to them!  Foxes being foxes though, we can live with that and just try very hard to keep the chooks secure.

Anyhow, enough prattling on.  My questions. We have a rough paddock of just under an acre at the back of our garden and veg beds etc.  At the moment, I mow it but leave the clippings on it. It is home to a lot of moles! It is bordered by a rough hedge of Elder, Bramble, Holly, Blackthorn etc. with a few Oak trees and a few other trees we have planted.  There is an unmown strip 2-3m wide down one side, which is mostly nettles.  I would like to experiment with leaving the paddock, or perhaps just half of it initially, unmown.  We have a willow dome we planted right at the end which is an ace place to have a glass of wine on a summer evening, so will probably mow a wavy path to it.

As the hedges and border contain a lot of nettles and brambles and there are lots of large thistles in neighbouring fields, will these species just take over?

I realise I will need to cut it a couple of times  a year, how do people do this with grasses a few feet high?  I love the idea of learning to scythe, but realistically not enough to to put the time in learning and practising it.  Can I just strim it with my petrol strimmer/brushcutter?

What will I do with an acres worth of hay? We are avid composters but with 6 large compost bins struggling to keep up with the cuttings from our proper lawn, chicken bedding and kitchen waste – I wouldn’t be able to compost it.

I’m thinking I may have left it a little late this year, would I be best to leave it until next spring?

Regarding bat and bird, boxes remember they need to be fixed to certain locations facing a certain way as birds need cover without the baby birds frying in warm spring sun. The RSPB is a great place for info. We have 2 bird boxes and bats are behind some house tiles.

As someone who used to have land and kept horses, I’m sure the hay will get sold. Or you could get a local farmer to cut and bale the meadow for you.
Yes – certain plants, hog weed, ragwort, nettles, brambles etc will take over if not managed. But all these plants are absolutely vital as food sources and breeding places for many bugs, butterflies, moths (also in huge decline) and bees.
We also have a bug hotel but it needs upgrading from the 2* to 5* :0)

Yep we followed advice when siting the bird and bat boxes, they’ve never been empty and the bird boxes produce more than one brood a year.  I’m on good terms with the two farmers whose land borders us, but not sure it would be worth their while to bale an acre or less.  Access is also a bit difficult for a tractor/baler so I reckon I will have do it myself. Will horsey people still want it if it’s full of thistles, nettles etc? And surely not if there is any ragwort in it?

The only ‘anti’ nature thing i’m in the process of doing is thinning out the grey squirrels. They’ve killed a few of the trees this year by ringing their bark, so i’m not sure what option i’ve got (i’m not using posion – shooting and using this co2 trap thing) as we’ve not got an infinite supply of trees. Feel pretty bad about it so if anyone has any non lethal suggestions i’m all ears! Hopefully this is offset by the habitat we’ve created in the mean time. We’ve got a 18 month year old who really loves it (as do our cats – though one of them is a bit of a vole death machine, thankfully we have quite a few spare and both of them are useless at catching birds!)

Unfortunatley a high density of deer, and particularly Muntjac, is to the woodland understory what the squirrels are to the canopy – a major problem. They will basically carpet bomb a woodland floor and nothing will grow or get away except for grasses, sedges, plants that spread by runners and certain other things they’re not so keen on. The woods will become very thin and sparse and there will be a massive reduction in biodiversity. So my advice would be keep shooting squirrels and also apply for a firearms license so that you can manage the deer too. They might look cute but removing deer from the woods would be single best thing that could be done for the overall health of the ecosystem.

I realise I will need to cut it a couple of times a year, how do people do this with grasses a few feet high? I love the idea of learning to scythe, but realistically not enough to to put the time in learning and practising it. Can I just strim it with my petrol strimmer/brushcutter?

I can offer experience here! I’ve got a ride on, but realistically I would have to cut it very slowly with that or burn the belt out. Last year I hired a self propelled flail mower (i actually hired a self propelled sickle mower but that got broken by the previous hirers so they gave me the flail mower instead). It took me most of a day to mow about an acre of 3 ft tall grass. I think the ideal tool is a sickle mower tho, as the flail mower just bashes it all into submission (Along with any wildlife too stupid to get out of the way) whereas a sickle mower snips it neatly at the base making it easier to move around / bail. Hiring the machine cost about 70 quid for the weekend I think. One of these things:

https://www.earthtools.com/implements-mowing/cutterbarmowers/

I then raked it all into windrows using a hay rake – i think this was actually the wrong thing to do – I should have left it to dry out on the surface for a couple of days rather than raking straight away.

Then I was left with an acre of hay. Which is quite a bit (probably 3-4 T). My solution to this was to bale the majority of it using a hand bailer that i knocked up in an evening – one of these: https://www.caringforgodsacre.org.uk/resources/films/video-hand-hay-baler/ worked really well, but it was hard work making all the bales. I think I ended up with 40 – 50 of them. I don’t have good enough access to get a tractor and bailer in unfortunately. Get the string from ebay or mole country stories – bailing twine.

I then just put an ad on facebook market place and a woman that runs a donkey sanctuary was around in about 10 minutes! I suspect I could have sold them if I could have been arsed. Certainly no shortage of takers. She’s offered to come and help this year so I suspect she knows she’s on to a good thing.

My plan for this year is basically the same, but to use a sickle mower and i’ve been a bit more strategic in how i’ve mowed paths into the long bits – the bits that took longest were the straggly bits near the edges so i’ve put paths here. I still expect it’ll be a solid weekend of effort to cut it all and then several evenings in the week to bail.

The other thing i noted was that if you bale it when it is at all moist it’ll get pretty hot, esp if you stack the bales. I’d read that this was a thing, but i kinda just thought “yeah right whatever”. Def a thing tho. Solution is to let it dry for longer if you can or not to stack the bales too closely. I warned donkey lady some of them were a bit moist and she didn’t seem bothered – i think she’d seen worse. She wasn’t worried about nettles, but I guess ragwort wouldn’t be ideal – I yanked any that i saw out before i cut (it’s pretty obvious).

Don’t even think of trying to strim it all – you’d be there forever. An acre is 4000sqm – lets say it takes 15 seconds to properly strim a square meter with a brush cutter – that’s 17 hours of non stop strimming. And it’ll probably take longer than 15 seconds!