My Wild Garden

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Sorry RJ.....I know nothing about meadow flowers so I'm not off to a good start for you.

Low flowering lawn.....If you plant grape hyacinths they will eventually take over and they are difficult to eradicate. Do you want to keep the lawn, or dig it up to plant flowers?

It sounds like your hedge has mostly deciduous plants in it so I would wait until they are dormant (leafless) in the winter months and prune them then.

If you are referring to the plant in the second from last picture as a rowan (Sorbus), I don't think it is and I can't think for the life of me what it is as the moment, if it comes to me I'll let you know.

Sorry, I've not been much help.

 

I too am struggling to find a rowan tree in the pics, sorry.

 

Thank you for looking, Sheal and Clueless. Yes I was referring to the tree in the centre of the grass in the second to last pic, It's a lot bigger than it looks - about 7 feet - and was sold to me as a rowan tree but I have had it there about 3 years now and never had a berry on it having bought it specifically for food for the birds. The wildflower patch was created for the bees.

I had intended to keep the grass but have it flowering. Perhaps I should put the grape hyacinths at the side bit then, they won't have far to spread then.

It has been mostly winter when I was pruning the hawthorn, when it was without leaves, but it had been suggested to me that hawthorns only produce blossom on new growth from the previous season so I thought maybe that was why I wasn't getting any?

 

RJ if you put the picture of the tree in the 'Plant ID' forum somebody will identify it for you, I still can't remember what it is, sorry!

You could plant primroses in the grass, they would flower in spring, also bulbs like snowdrops and crocus but this depends of course on whether you will need to mow it. Aquilegias will also grow in grass late spring/early summer, they are tall plants and will self seed. Perhaps I'm suggesting the wrong things.

Try leaving the hawthorn until it flowers next year and prune it when it's finished. My neighbours hawthorn tree hangs over my garden and I prune that when necessary, it doesn't seem to affect the flowering.

What sort of plants would you like in the side plot, shrubs, perennial flowers etc? Does it get the sun there during the course of the day?

 

Ooh I very much like the idea of primroses in the grass, Sheal. Will need to mow sometimes though, think a couple of times a year might be enough though. I will put tree in id forum then. Can't find any info on a tree called rhus, MF, google search is returning stuff about poison ivy when I put that in. Am thinking that whatever it is I had better move it as it is only about 5 feet from the house wall!

 

The grass will rapidly block out the primroses unless you cut the grass and careful trim round the primroses.

Apparently you can weaken the grass to allow the flowers to have a chance by adding yellow rattle, which is parasitic on grass roots, but I have no experience of that.

On my land, primroses thrive in the grass, but there are about a billion rabbits up there regularly grazing the grass so the grass is always short. For some reason the leave the primroses so they thrive. In my front garden I put primroses in the borders. The grass leaked in and the primroses pretty do nothing.

You can get wildflower meadow seed mixes which contain less competitive wild grasses (the stuff that lawns are made of are usually bred to be competitive). They often contain yellow rattle among other things.

 

Ah, don't know that primroses would work so well then, it is a very small patch of grass and very difficult to manoeuvre the mower around as it is so to have to mow round primroses wouldn't be possible, esp with the tree in the way. Perhaps they would grow ok under the hedge? The other front plot has yellow rattle to weaken the grass as I said in first post. Just hoping it is still there after being swamped by the rosebay willowherb, grasses and daisies. I plan to strimmer the plot then add more mixed seeds in the Autumn and hopefully it will look a bit better next year.

 

Hi Rj

The pink flower you refer to is Rosebay Willowherb
http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/organicweeds/weed_information/weed.php?id=116

 

RJ.....Rhus is also known as Sumach.