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Making Hay

Published in Organic Gardening Magazine - September 2003

It is early September and I am lying on my back listening to the twitter of young swallows as they swoop down around me to catch tiny insects.  Above me the sun is slipping between small white clouds.  On either side I can see a haze of mauve – field scabious still in full flower with small tortoiseshell butterflies jostling for a space to drink the sweet nectar.  Am I in the Yorkshire dales or somewhere in the Cotswolds perhaps?  Well actually I am in my back garden, where the summer meadow needs cutting and the swallows will soon be abandoning me for the warmer climate of Africa.  In the meantime however I can take advantage of the late summer sun and the wildflowers still in full bloom, and imagine I am in the countryside forty years ago.

Wildflower meadows have become so popular over the last fifteen years that many gardens at the Chelsea Flower Show last May had something approximating a meadow or at least long wild grass ‘for wildlife’.  It is heartening to see this trend coupled with a greater concern amongst the garden designers for our native wildlife, and the garden meadow is now appreciated for its natural relaxed beauty as well as its value to butterflies and other creatures.  But sadly, it is time to cut all my summer meadows.  I leave them until September to allow the field scabious and greater knapweed to flower into the early autumn.  Traditionally hay meadows are cut at the end of June, but in a garden situation this really is too early unless you need the space for summer picnics.  But September is also the ideal time to start a new meadow from scratch.  Many of our native wildflowers have seeds that require frost to trigger germination, so preparing and sowing a meadow now means that next year your new meadow could be a step ahead of those sown in spring-time.

The larger the space you have the more impressive your meadow will be, as well as attracting and sheltering a greater variety of wildlife.  But even the smallest corner can be a valuable meadow habitat, as long as it is in full sun.  More shady spaces can be sown with native grasses and wildflowers but in general they will not attract the widest range of creatures.  If provision of a habitat for butterflies is your main interest, a sunny spot is essential.  If possible, choose a spot where the soil is not too fertile.  If high nitrogen soil is present, your meadow plans may have to be delayed while the situation is remedied.  Growing a nutrient hungry crop such as potatoes for a couple of seasons can work well, or removing a foot or so of the top soil and replacing it with poorer subsoil (perhaps from the hole where a new pond is planned) will also benefit your fledgling meadow.  Over time, the fertility of the soil will drop naturally and the meadow, with correct management, will settle into a balance between grasses and wildflowers.

Once the spot is identified, it must be thoroughly cleared of all existing vegetation.  If there is turf, this must be removed and the underlying soil turned over and raked to a tilth and germinating weed seedlings can be hoed out as they appear.   If the meadow site is a weed patch, all perennial problems such as couch grass, nettles or ground elder must be dug out completely, or covered with black polythene to exclude light until the weedy species have died off completely.  This can be a headache!  Choose a turf area if you can, as your new meadow will begin its life with far fewer problems.  After preparation and removal of all perennial weeds (annuals do not matter as much, as they will die out once the grass has established) it is time to measure your area in order to calculate the quantity of seed you require.  Four grams per square meter is the usual sowing rate, although even a little less will work well enough.  If you are unsure of your soil type, choose a general purpose seed mixture which will contain wildflowers that will thrive on any type of soil.  Most wildflower seed producers have a good range of meadow mixes for different kinds of soil – if you know you have clay, a mixture for this soil will exclude species that require a well-drained situation.  Native grasses too have their preferences so take advantage of the growers’ expertise and let them do the selection for you.  Make sure that ‘British provenance native’ wildflowers and grasses are specified.

Now choose a suitable day and sow your mix.  Avoid very windy conditions – it’s a bit alarming to see all your precious seed blowing away as you scatter!  You may wish to mix your seed with silver sand as this bulks it up making it easier to see and sow evenly.  Walk up and down scattering as you go until the whole area has been covered.  Don’t worry too much if the seed lies more thickly in some areas than others.  Once it has germinated and the grasses and wildflowers begin to spread the gaps will soon fill up.  When all your seed has gone, walk over the area methodically and push it into the soil with your feet.  It is not necessary to rake or cover the seed – indeed this can delay or even prevent germination of some of the species that require light to get them going.  Pressing the seed in (you can use a garden roller in a larger area) is enough to ensure that the seed makes good contact with the soil.  Now water gently if the weather has been dry or no rain is forecast.  Protect your seed from birds in what ever is your usual way.  I find that old shiny CDs hung around the area work well enough at keeping the finches at bay.

All that remains now is to sit back and wait.  Many things will appear quickly, including whatever weedy species exist in the seed-bank in your soil.  Don’t worry too much about these, but if there are masses of annual weeds, you can cut them back if you wish with a mower on a very high cut with the grass box in place.  At this stage you will not damage your new meadow.  The grasses will germinate quite quickly along with a few of the wildflowers. After this, it is a long wait until spring when ox-eye daisy – a happy coloniser – will usually appear first in some profusion. It soon settles down to a more subdued existence and more wildflower species will appear and spread over time.  A meadow and its attendant wildlife weave themselves into a balanced ecosystem as long as the area is well maintained.  This means cutting and raking off all the hay every year in late summer.  For larger areas a motorised scythe is useful for this, or even an old-fashioned hand held scythe for the energetic.  Ordinary mowers, especially the hover types, are not suitable for this operation, as they chop up the meadow cuttings too finely to enable effective removal of the clippings.  This annual cutting and raking is essential and must be carried out every year to keep your meadow flowery and diverse, so do consider this work before you embark on a meadow area.

Shrews and voles, grasshoppers and bumblebees, meadow butterflies such as ringlet, gatekeeper and meadow brown, are just a few of the creatures that benefit from this beautiful habitat.  We can never recreate wild hay meadows in our gardens, but we can produce an approximation that shelters and provides food for a huge range of creatures from those tiny insects that the swallows feed on to the small tortoiseshell butterflies on my field scabious.