Lawn to wildflowers

arbrighton

My mum and I went on a local wildlife trust course about establishing wildflower areas where there had previously been 'amenity' grass, e.g. on council estates/ roundabouts and really, unfortunately the advice is to remove the grass as it will outcompete wildflowers. This can be done with weedkiller or a dig over (you can just dig chunks and flip them rather than actually weed out all the grass)

They've used a native flower mix suited to their clay soil in patches in the garden at home as their main focus is improving the garden for wildlife, particularly insects.

They've also planted a 'hedge'- we bought bare root whips about 3 years ago. It's not actually to do anything other than benefit wildlife so the fact it isn't keeping things in/out is unimportant.

Mum and I are currently working with a primary school to create more wildlife habitat in their grounds and so we are digging the grass out of an area for wildflowers, adding a bug hotel etc.

Still need to do more work on my own though

johnboyinsole

Do you know what types of grasses you originally had before trying to establish wildflowers?
The grass I have is Slender Creeping Red Fescue and Chewings Fescue and after doing some reading seems to compliment wildflowers OK. Some companies use it as a grass in their wildflower turf too. Therefore I'm going to take a risk and try putting plugs in for a season in a part of the lawn.
However, I appreciate the past experiences from you so I'm also going to completely remove a quarter of the grass too and try to establish wildflowers from a blank canvas.
One thing I'm not doing though is sewing wildflowers from seed. I'd rather spend a bit more money and use plugs, and just use seed for the grass.
Has anyone got any pictures of their experiences?

johnboyinsole

I_have_spoken wrote: »

Rather than going 100%, could you leave sections of the lawn unmown for flowers and keep walkways/section mown to see how things work out?

Is this your garden?

I_have_spoken

Is this your garden?

This is mine. But I like that design of the double-V in the lawn, have been considering it for my front lawn.

johnboyinsole

I love seeing the steps of how you changed your garden. What a transformation! If you do change the front, I'd love to see that.
I have a photo somewhere of how the garden looked when I first moved in. I haven't got a 'now' photo but I'll take on in the spring and show you what I've managed so far.
It's really nice to see gardens that are full of colour and plants. Now I'm a little more interested in gardening and wildlife, it makes me sad to see gardens that are just all decking and block paving. My next door neighbour has a great sized garden but wanted low maintenance so had the whole things paved for £14k. Can you imagine what kind of amazing garden you could have for that kind of money. It's slightly backfired as every year he's on his hands and knees scraping the weeds out of the joints.

johnboyinsole

https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=D8EC21F48412758D!419&authkey=!AA6kakOJ3zDMsiY&v=3&ithint=photo%2cjpg


The 'before' garden