Now that the kids have returned to school, life is back to being ‘normal’. That means helping out with my daughters football team, cooking and grabbing an evening meal before a taxi-run with them to the next club.
I’m finding time in my garden is being limited only to the weekends now. Trying to garden when our lives are time-starved is a common problem.
Time to garden
We spend the week with our heads down getting on with the jobs to help pay the ever increasing cost of living bills.
As the weekend gets closer we look forward to spending time outdoors in the fresh air, ideally with a touch of late summer sun on our backs, getting on with jobs in the garden.
Even at this time of year there is still plenty to be getting on with.
However, despite the summer we had, we’re realistic enough to know this is Scotland and rain is never too far away. More often than not it will spoil the plans for the two days we have to ourselves.
That’s exactly what happened to me the other week.
At my home I’m lucky enough to have two lawned areas. We have a large area at the side of the house, which for all the time we have lived here has been used as a football pitch.
To cut this grass takes the best part of an hour. To make sure I was spending as much quality time as I could with my young family, rather than cutting the grass, I looked to find a more creative solution.
I’d read that reducing grass cutting from weekly to once every three weeks could double the amount of wildlife, through allowing the wildflowers the opportunity to flower and the habitat created by longer grass.
I liked the idea of this.
Careful of the neighbours…
You have to be careful as neighbours could mistake this for garden abandonment, so I still run the mower around the edge of the lawn. This allows me access to the flower beds without the bottom of my troosers getting wet, but more importantly acts as a frame, defining the long grass as an actual feature.
The final touch was a simple meandering path through the meadow-like lawn that my daughter, when she was wee, loved to run through.
We all have different gardening tastes but I would thoroughly recommend this if you would like to try something different with your lawned areas.
You don’t have to go all in like I have, it’s possible to do something similar in a little corner at the bottom of your garden or underneath trees.
Spring bulbs such as daffodils, crocus and bluebells work very well in these situations too, brightening up the space underneath the branches before the fresh leaves of the new season unfurl.
After bulbs finish flowering they need a period left to die down naturally during which time they are feeding themselves, getting geared up for flowering the following season.
The dying foliage can look unattractive but it is disguised amongst the long grass.
Plan your bulbs
Garden centres and bulb specialists online are full of bulbs ready for planting now, in this early autumn period.
To achieve a natural look I like to gently throw the bulbs up in the air in the area I intend to plant, getting them into ground in the spot where they fall, using a specific bulb planting tool.
This method isn’t the best if you are a dog owner as many bulbs are toxic to them. If you use this method the last thing you want is to leave any bulbs unplanted, to be eaten by your family pet.
The weather caught me out the other week when I was trying to carry out seasonal maintenance of my meadow area.
I was hoping to get my main summer cut carried out, also known as the ‘hay cut’, but was scuppered by a battering of rain. That’s not really problem for a mower but if it had just held off one day more then my scythe, which is a new toy I have treated to myself to, would’ve gone through this long grass like a knife through butter.
Just have to get on with it
The way this rain is coming down just now I doubt I’m ever going to get another perfect dry spell, so I will just have to get on with it.
I’m wanting to cut, then leave, the meadow grass in situ until the next weekend, to allow any seeds the chance to fall out. If I’m lucky they will germinate next summer, producing more wildflowers and enriching my wee front garden wildflower plot.
After this, the next task is to rake off the hay and dispose of it the way you would your normal grass clippings.
This is important as the decomposing material will increase the soil fertility which we’re wanting to avoid, as strong growing grass which will out-compete the wildflowers.
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