Wildflower area maintenance

[Doug Tait]

A friend has sown wildflower seeds on an area of rough ground along the side of their driveway. There's some young straggly grass growing there already that is maybe 10" long but not very established, never been mown before.

 

My feeling from what little I know is to mow before the grass seeds itself to stop the grass dominating but could anyone give some pointers or suggest the bullet points of looking after this area in the best way please.

[tree-fancier123]

https://meadows.plantlife.org.uk/making-meadows/yellow-rattle/

[Doug Tait]

Thanks, very helpful.

[coppice cutter]

Also bear in mind that yellow-rattle is highly invasive and if you let it stray over a boundary in to neighbouring managed grassland you will have an extremely irate neighbouring farmer to deal with.

[Doug Tait]

10 minutes ago, coppice cutter said:

Also bear in mind that yellow-rattle is highly invasive and if you let it stray over a boundary in to neighbouring managed grassland you will have an extremely irate neighbouring farmer to deal with.

 

It's a long strip of ground with a tarmac driveway along one side and a river on the other, closest boundary is with a field 30m away. Is that likely to cause a problem?

[daveatdave]

about 20 years ago i put some wildflower seeds on about half a acre after the farmer had rotavated it, think it was too fertile never really worked, i was surprised at the cost of the yellow rattle seed it worked out more expensive than gold   

[Paul in the woods]

I thought the general rule is to cut the grass once the seeds from the wild flowers have set and had a chance to fall. Then remove all the clippings to gradually reduce fertility. The time of the cut will depend on the wild flowers youre growing, your location and the year - many things seem to be a week or two late this year. Obviously don't add any fertiliser. 

 

The RHS has a useful guide: https://www.rhs.org.uk/lawns/wildflower-meadow-maintenance

[Doug Tait]

Thanks for that link Paul. Mow and collect at the right time seems like the easiest approach until she sees if it works.

I don't think the area will be too fertile as she had work done to shore up the eroding riverbank with boulders and the banking was left with this patch of quite rough, stoney, clay based bare soil.

[coppice cutter]

16 hours ago, Doug Tait said:

 

It's a long strip of ground with a tarmac driveway along one side and a river on the other, closest boundary is with a field 30m away. Is that likely to cause a problem?

I'm guessing that should be OK, in the short term anyway.

 

Seems to be that most problems arise when yellow rattle has been sown in an area directly beside managed grassland without even a ditch or dyke as a physical boundary and then creeps over.

 

The whole yellow rattle 'thing' is something I'm not that comfortable with as it's generally used in an attempt to make wild flowers viable in an area where they aren't, another human inspired "quick fix" if you like.

 

Six or seven years after I stopped using chemical fertiliser, a little white flower started appearing on hay ground. After a bit of hunting for info I eventually figured out that it was Cardamine Pratensis, otherwise known as Cuckoo Flower or Mayflower. All the usually places will tell you what you have to do to establish it, moist loam, a bit of sun but some shade, wetlands, river banks, etc, etc. But I now have it all over the place, everywhere that isn't being grazed at flowering time, indeed it's probably there too only the sheep eat it.

 

I haven't sown it, I haven't tried to establish it, most of my ground is very free draining, but it was plainly there in the seed bank going back many decades despite ploughing and cultivation, and as soon as the soil was given the opportunity to return to a more natural balance, this was a result of that process.

 

So I'd tend to lean more towards Paul's advice, skip the yellow rattle, and give it time instead.

[coppice cutter]

Further to this, there is some good info out there with regards to the establishment of wildflower/natural areas, the pitfalls and failures.

 

But it tends to be increasingly swamped by the "quick fix" approach of wildlife groups and gardening organisations as it becomes more to the fore with our 're-wilding' (🤨) agenda.

 

It's a bit deep in places but I've gotten some useful information in the past from the "Lowland Grassland Management Handbook".

 

I downloaded it and printed it as I found it more suitable for browsing that way, but then I'm old and still like a physical book.

 

Well worth a look in whatever format!

 

Lowland Grassland Management Handbook (Second edition) - GRASSLAND

PUBLICATIONS.NATURALENGLAND.ORG.UK

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The handbook covers topics such as grazing, mowing, scrub management, grassland creation, weed control and...