What's this plant invading my lawn?

Page may contain affiliate links. Please see terms for details.

Dave 123

Legendary Member
@User9609 and @MikeG

A little story about my father in law. He used to have a house building company, wildlife could bugger off. He now owns a caravan park, the grass used to be sprayed with Estemone (a selective turf herbicide) in the middle of the day, thousands of bees would die.
Come 20 years forward to now and his 'lawn' at home is full of clover, dandelion, daisies, self heal etc- he's now in to wildlife photography and he's worked out that flowers and seed attract the wildlife. The caravan park now has daisies etc too.
It's good that we now live in more enlightened times and that people can see things a little differently.

As you know, I'm responsible for a Striped monoculture lawn, but I actually weed it by hand, I won't used pesticides on it.


IMG_2694.JPG


We do get lots of pied wagtail on here and the sparrowhawks often rip pigeons apart on the lawn, and there is a strong population of blackbirds that help themselves to worms, so it's not totally barren!

As a little aside, we get lots of goldfinch perching on the stone buildings, the stone is Ketton stone, it's quite fine and sandy grit. I think the goldfinch nibble off bits to use as grist in their crop.
 

MikeG

Guru
Location
Suffolk
As a matter of interest, @Dave 123, how do you guide the mower in such straight lines?
 

Dave 123

Legendary Member
As a matter of interest, @Dave 123, how do you guide the mower in such straight lines?


It depends what mower Mike.
And by that I mean operative and machine! The one that did that cut is a Dennis FT cylinder mower. I can go full tilt or really slow and keep it bang on. We also have a Hayter Harrier 56 rotary mower that I struggle with as it's slow and ponderous and I have to concentrate to try to keep it in line.

The above lawn isn't square either. Along the right hand edge in the pic is where least people go, so that's where we stick the elongated triangle stripe. I suppose we could mow a wider headland, but that takes a bit too much time.

When we scarify I'll go diagonal both ways so we're not following how the grass lays.

At present the above lawn has 8 portakabin kitchens to the left until Jan 19, and the left side is about to get a massive marquee on it for 3 months. It gets rebuilt next year.
 
OP
OP
winjim

winjim

Smash the cistern
Well if anybody in the Sheffield area fancies some Ajuga then feel free to come and pick some up. I think what I'm going to do is cut that hedge back hard and try and chase it back to the edge of the garden whence it came.

As for the general state of the lawn and garden, I'll try and dig out the photos from when we moved in back in October and you'll see how much it's come on. For the time being we just need it to be clear and safe enough for the two year old to run around in and plant a few veggies and flowers which she has done. Mid to long term we'll be properly sorting it out and landscaping it. Hopefully we can get it nicely biodiverse and wildlife friendly.
 
OP
OP
winjim

winjim

Smash the cistern
Well I've given the hedge a bit of a trim and gained about a foot of extra garden in the process. I've also found what looks like the edge of the lawn with some stones marking it out. I can't tell if there was any planting underneath the hedge as it's all ivy now. I kind of like it like that, with all the old trimmings and stuff it looks like it might be a good habitat for insects at least. Still not entirely sure what to do with the Ajuga...

20180613_194547.jpg
 

Slick

Guru
I dug up 80 square metres of our lawn last year, stripped away much of the rich topsoil and replaced it with sharp sand, then sowed weed seeds all over it about 4 or 5 weeks ago. It will be mowed every 3 weeks, so it remains a lawn rather than a meadow, but I can't wait to have some colour and variety. I've kept an area of formal lawn, pristine and striped, and as paths through the weedy areas, too. Lawns, as you say, don't have to be a boring monoculture.

Having said that, the one in the OP needs some help!!
I have been thinking of doing the same thing. My compromise so far has been to hollow tine it and brush 2 ton of course sand into it. If it doesn't work I may just spread tons of sand over it and rotavate the whole thing to start again. Was the sand successful for you.
 

Slick

Guru
I'll let you know next year!

The bonus of stripping 3 or 4 inches of topsoil away was that we acquired 8 or 10 tons of gorgeous rich topsoil for use elsewhere in the garden.
Mines is rich but it's more like peat. I'm hoping the sand is going to change that.
 
Top Bottom