Letting the grass grow

Britannia12345

We've left out garden to grow wild this year for the birds and bees and we've found all sorts of new wild flowers on the 'lawn'. 
What do we do come the autumn? Do we buy a scythe and lop it all down or leave the grass to die off over the winter? 😊

Farway

According to the "rules" you scythe it down come autumn after any seeds have dropped and before it becomes a mess

I let mine grow this year but just finished up with long grass, which by coincidence was mown down yesterday

Soot2006

I leave large patches of lawn to go to seed and wildflowers  with little tracks mowed through them  ... I use my hedge trimmer to cut down the longer sections after the wildflowers have gone to seed, then I usually rake it all together a few days later and pop it in the compost. I run a good hot compost so the seeds aren't a problem, but they're pretty anyway, so I don't mind random wildflowers in my veg beds.  The longer section will have more yellow roots where they haven't seen the light, so I do a final mow of the year with everything at the same height in late autumn and by the end of winter you'd never have known there was a little meadow there. I find that if I leave the longer section to die over, then it leaves me with a much wetter lawn and I struggle to scarify in spring. I also have horses, and for them I let the longer grasses die naturally and they eat that over winter as foggage (standing hay) but I don't find that look suitable for the garden! Hope that helps; just my experiences, not an expert./

Davesnave

Farway said:

According to the "rules" you scythe it down come autumn after any seeds have dropped and before it becomes a mess

I let mine grow this year but just finished up with long grass, which by coincidence was mown down yesterday

My 'long grass' is waiting to be cut and turned into hay, but I noticed yesterday that most of the wild flowers in it have seeded already.

25_Years_On

It's vital to cut and remove. Otherwise the grass will be become dense and coarse and any flowers will be swamped. When to cut is another matter. For many species it's not vital for seeds to fall as the expand vegetatively. Species like ox eye daisy will respond well to earlier cutting. I cut once my yellow rattle has set seed; as it's an annual seeding is vital. That is usually at this time of year. However I leave areas with later flowering species uncut until the end of summer. Once cut I mow the areas with the highest cut a few times.

More typical lawn species won't do so well in a hay meadow type environment. These include daisies and things like speedwells. In a farmland context these are more adapted to grazed pastures. The grassland around my hay meadow area is cut high every few weeks depending on quickly it's growing.

Although cutting is important leaving some rougher areas is also useful if you can.