Mowing my meadow has increased biodiversity

A hay meadow in Norfolk ready for cutting
most of the flowers have already set seed

It's never easy to attack a lovely wild flower meadow with a sharp instrument that will take away the flowers and the vegetation and leave what looks like a shaggy, weedy lawn, but sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.

I was late giving my Meadowmat its annual trim this year.  Two reasons, one I've injured my neck and needed to persuade my husband to do the deed (never easy, he hates gardening as much as I hate ironing); plus, I couldn't bring myself to chop the flowers off the yarrow, clover and vetch.  Nevertheless, the deed was done a couple of weeks ago.  The hay has been removed and used to fill the nest boxes in the chicken coop and I've had a pleasant surprise.

My Meadowmat was installed in spring 2011.  In the first summer, it was quite grassy but managed to supply the local bees with some yellow rattle, some clover flowers, a couple of oxeye daisies and a yarrow or two.   It was allowed to grow unchecked until July 2011 and then it was cut back and all the clippings made into hay.  From september last year until the end of march this year, I periodically zoomed over the Meadowmat with my rotary mower on its highest setting and took away all of the clippings for composting.

Meadowmat in it's second summer

This summer I was rewarded with a beautiful floral display.  Yellow rattle, clover, birdsfoot trefoil, vetch, yarrow, wild carrot, sorrell, plantain and knapweed were the main contenders AND there was a lot less grass than in the previous summer, especially in the two patches where the yellow rattle was doing well.  Sadly, there weren't enough bees to enjoy the meadow to the full.  But heyho, that's the British weather for you.

Oh dear, my newly cut Meadowmat looks awful
(happily it's recovered a bit since this photo was taken)

Leaving the mowing/strimming until mid august perhaps wasn't a good move though.  The grass had been battered by rainstorms, fallen over and looked as though it had smothered some of the plants beneath it.  But, once again, Nature triumphed over adversity as two weeks on, I can see that the floral plants are regenerating nicely...there are even a few different leaf shapes in the mix, so maybe some surprises next year...but the grasses are still thinking about re-growing.

I am convinced that mowing the meadow increases it's biodiversity.  On the Meadowmat production field,
Robert regularly mows the grass .... it's easier to roll up and despatch if the vegetation is short...and he tells me that after each cut, he sees less grass and more flowering species.

I've heard tell that it takes seven years to establish a species rich meadow from seed. I would like to think that by using Meadowmat I fast forwarded the process by at least one or two years, but that does still mean that things can only get better.  Whoohoo can't wait to see what next summer has in store.

How to have more flowers in your meadow

I was chatting with a lovely lady this morning, a keen gardener with a lot of common sense.  She installed some Meadowmat last autumn in some poor-ish soil that tends to be dry.  The wild flower mat established well and has looked incredibly healthy, but after its first season, there is more grass in it than she’d like and fewer flowers.

pink campion appeared in my Meadowmat for the 1st time this year

The Meadowmat in my own garden has just finished its second season of flowering and I have to be honest, it’s not the same as last year.  I have less grass, more flowers and indeed, more species visible than there were in that first summer.

The theory is that after a year of careful management, there are now fewer plant nutrients in the soil beneath my Meadowmat and so the grasses are less vigorous giving the flowering plants a better chance of survival.  I also think that Yellow Rattle has played a big part in the process, so I’ll be sowing some more of that this autumn.

yellow rattle - the meadow makers' superhero

I’ve been told that it takes seven years to establish a species rich meadow from seed.  Some of our native species are slow to germinate and won’t appear for two or three years; some need cold winters to help wake the seeds up, some need warm summers, some of the plants need to grow on for a while before they bloom.  As Meadowmat is grown from seed on our farm in Norfolk, I can only suppose that I’m not going to see all of the flowering species in the first season and that it’s just going to get better and better.

So, for all of you first-year meadow growers out there, take comfort.  Provided you follow a sensible management regime (hay cut in the summer then mowing through the autumn and winter removing ALL of the clippings every time) you can expect your wild flower patch to get better and better as the years go by.  Mine has.

Maintaining a wildflower meadow - part 1

Way back when, before the advent of herbicides, chemical fertilisers and intensive farming, traditional species rich meadows were managed with one thing in mind…..animal feed.  Modern meadows are still managed for animal feed…but today’s farmer usually wants to feed more animals per acre of land and so he (or she) spends lots of money ensuring that the land grows grass, just grass, and as much of it as possible.  But that’s by the by.

So, before Fisons 57 became an essential ingredient, this is what would have happened in the four seasons of farming:

highland cow taking a break from munching through
all that vegetation

In late summer/early autumn cattle, sheep and probably some of the horses would be out at pasture most of the time, grazing on the grasses and other herbaceous plants and having very little in the way of supplementary feed…no need for it, there is still plenty of nourishment in leafy plants at this time of year.  Whilst grazing, they would trample and churn parts of the ground with their feet, thus creating small bare areas where wild flower seeds could germinate without too much competition from the grass.

As autumn draws into winter and the nights get longer, most creatures…especially the hardy old-fashioned breeds, will still be living out of doors but they may have be given extra hay or sugar beet pulp to supplement their diets because not only have the perennial wild flower plants “gone to ground”, most of the grass will have been grazed quite short.

In midwinter, some of the creatures will be brought into sheds – the grass has next to no nourishment in it so supplementary feeding is a must. Plus, the farmer likes to keep a close eye on youngstock and on pregnant ewes and cows.

Come the spring, there’ll be a flurry of activity with calving, lambing, foaling and the like.  Plants begin to grow again and so most of the beasts will be kept in the farmyard so they can be cared for whilst they’re still vulnerable.

early spring flowers in a traditionally managed meadow

In the meadow, with all the beasts safely out of the way, various wildflowers will be germinating, early blooms such as cowslips will be out to welcome the bees and of course the grasses….which is what the farmer is interested in, will be growing strongly.

As spring rolls into summer, various species of wildflower will bloom in succession providing a whole season’s worth of nectar and pollen for butterflies and bees

Some meadows may be grazed…it’s impossible to keep every animal indoors for all spring and summer, others would be encouraged to grow long.

By the end of July, the meadow grasses will be setting seed and at exactly the right stage of growth to make the hay that will feed the beasts in winter.  Hopefully, too, the weather will be kind and so the farmer is able to mow the whole meadow, grasses, flowers, herbs and all; let the clippings dry in the sun and then bale them up and take them away for storage.

A couple of weeks later, the grasses will be growing strongly again and the beasts can come in to graze.  Which of course means that the meadows they were scoffing in spring can have a bit of a recovery period and maybe even pop up a few flowers?  Certainly clover is happy to be grazed (or mown) and will flower again in next to no time.

And so the cycle begins again.

Meadowmat has been designed to emulate a species rich meadow and so if you take all the above waffle, swap grazing for mowing, and translate it into a management program for Meadowmat, it looks a bit like this…..

Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sept	Oct	Nov	Dec
Growing						Mowing	Growing	Mowing

BUT

Us gardeners aren’t so interested in feeding our cattle, we want Meadowmat to support wildlife and look pretty for as long as possible.  So…..we need to tweak that management programme a little…

More details in a future blog post, but in the meantime, if you need advice on managing a wild flower meadow, please don’t hesitate to drop me an email angelal@qlawns.co.uk or drop a comment on this blog.............look forward to hearing from you