How To Turn Your LAWN into A WILDFLOWER MEADOW

Well hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Wild You Garden and in today's a little bit dreary video I am in Gloucestershire where I am back to show you guys another way in which you can improve your grassland if you like, your lawn area or your existing wildflower meadow to try and increase the floral diversity and therefore increase the biodiversity as well. So stick around as I show you now exactly how I'm going to achieve this on this wildflower meadow that I created a few years ago now which is, it's cracking ground around here, it's absolutely a horticulturalist nightmare. It's almost solid limestone when you get down just a few inches and it's absolutely horrific if you want to grow any vegetables or anything like that but it is wonderful if you want to grow some wildflowers. So let's go and have a look at the site and see what we can find. So before I go any further guys I ought to say if you haven't subscribed to the channel already please feel free to do so. Obviously it costs you nothing and by hitting the notification bell as well you will get a notification sent directly to you every time I post a new video so you don't miss a thing. On all the tips that I'll bring you I'll be uploading new videos every Sunday at 6pm and hopefully in the week moving forwards as well so I'm aiming for two videos a week so stick around and I'm sure you will learn lots about all the existing wildlife in your garden and indeed how you can encourage more wildlife into your garden in videos to come. Anyway without further ado here I am on the site. This was a site that was stripped off. I used an excavator to strip all the topsoil and you can see these banks around the back which are slightly more fertile which there's a gap there through to the existing orchard which is at the moment alive with field fairs and redwings visiting from Scandinavia. We've got another bank here as well which is full of wildflowers but this is the more fertile soil so obviously there's more things like a few nettles and the vegetation is generally denser and longer here because there is more fertility albeit not a lot more and in the middle it's almost pure limestone so this thing has taken three or four years maybe even five years now to fill in because it's so poor but that's great there's a lot of orchid species here and it really is fantastic but the area stopped about there as you can see from this very slight indicator of the fertility as we go this way everything is a little bit more lush a little bit more green and there's a lot more growth and the client is trying to encourage more wildflowers into this area so the way we're going to do this is by introducing seed now for there's all sorts of ways you can include improve a meadow improve your grassland in your existing garden but on this one we're going to add seed i've already done a previous video on how you can plant plants into your lawn which if you've not got a huge area is quite a cost effective way and almost a surefire way of getting more wildflowers established in your grass because it is tricky to establish new wildflowers in existing grassward because the those grasses and those plants have already got their roots established so when you're sowing this area usually in autumn the seeds are trying to germinate amongst existing grasses and get their roots down into an already rooty soil structure so it's a little bit more tricky from seed but hopefully by achieving well by adding seed to this area we can increase the diversity now i'm going to come on to exactly how we're going to do that in a second so stay tuned so luckily the client's just come out and said to me oh i've got a little chain harrow if you want to use it which will absolutely save my back when it comes to raking off this entire area of thatch so uh let's give it a whirl see what it's like and then i'll explain exactly what we're going to sow so as you can see behind me now the chain harrows have done a fantastic job of just pulling through that sword just to open it up just to what's known as dethatch it basically because where an existing sword is very thick it just means that there is less potential for a lot of golden plover sorry there's a field full of golden plover just on the other side of the road here the client said there's been up to 200 each day which at the moment which is their overwintering ground which is really nice anyway yes so slight distraction so the dethatching is to open up the sword to expose some bare earth if you like so the fresh seed that we're going to sow in this area can really bed down and get established as best it can without the trick is to not obviously dethatch it too much you don't want to disturb too many of the existing wildflowers which have obviously been here a long time there's a lot of good stuff in here a lot of oxide daisies lesser knapweed a common knapweed things like that red clover so we don't want to completely tear it all apart but we want to open it up as much as we can and the reason being we want to get down to that soil like i say to open that up so the seed can drop in so things like the yellow rattle which is a key component component if you're looking to achieve this the yellow rattle is something that i would strongly recommend you add to your wildflower meadow and of course if you're looking for any seeds at this point i should say you know check out the wildgergarden.com online shop where we do sell all the local and native locally sourced native wildflowers such as the yellow rattle and other seed mixes that will help you and individual seeds to get a meadow like this established or improve your existing meadow shall we say so the yellow rattle is great because it's a parasitic plant it's one that attaches itself to the roots of other grasses and sometimes other plants and it weakens them so where you've got lots of thick dense grass it really can be a great ally to try and combat that to knock the grasses back it is an annual so you'll need to sow it kind of year on year for the first two or three years then it will kind of migrate its way through a meadow which will then leave in its wake lots of open areas and less dense vegetation for new wildflower seeds to drop into to germinate so it is amazing i cannot sing the praises of yellow rattle enough it really is a fantastic plant so do get some if you can guys i think we do have some available on the online shop at the moment but keep checking the stock and of course do drop us a line if you are looking for anything particular we have a team of people who are always happy to help out so thanks very much indeed for any business you throw our way and of course for supporting the wilder garden online shop for the last 18 months or so now so yes thank you very much for that but let's take a look now at the now it's important i should say uh not to be too disheartened and think well i haven't got a ride on my area's not massive and i don't have a chain harrow well you don't need any of that all you need is one of these a metal rake which you can see has these metal teeth on it which is really good it's very hard work i'm not going to lie uh but a metal rake is all you really need to actually just physically rake through the area to get the thatch out which is all this is really this is just a terrible rake so if i drop that we'll have a look at the chain harrows and you can see they have these curved blunt spikes just a big version of the rake really which then dig in the ground and as it goes forward it then pulls the thatch out of the ground and well you can see this is the sort of thing you get you know these kind of clumps which then as it moves along the time moves along they sort of drop off and go behind the tines and it just carries on raking through so it's just a continuous action of driving around with the ride on mower which hooks onto so the chains hook onto the back of the ride on mower and then they leave this fantastic finish so all i have to do now i say all is go over and rake that up which i tend to find it's a lot easier with something like this this is my favorite rake in the whole world this is a plastic landscaping rake which we're hoping to add to the online shop soon so do get if you're looking to buy anything like this but the plastic landscaping rake is great because it's just lighter and because it's so light the teeth don't stick into the ground as much so it's really good for removing the top layer of thatch if you like that's been dethatched and just getting it into piles so you know it's very very light you can see one hand it's it almost weighs nothing it's fantastic and i use these rakes all the time when i'm carrying out my hay cuts in the autumn months as well so really really good because again it doesn't have the weight of the metal rake so it doesn't stick in and drag everything out or more make everything more efforts all about as little effort as possible in this game guys as you probably already know with gardening so yes plastic rake and a metal rake if you can it's not the end of the world if you don't have one of these a metal spring rake a lot of you will probably have like their spring time leaf rakes that will just rake up the thatch just as easy it'll just take you a little while to get it into piles which is what i'm going to do now collect this into piles then go around and put the findings if you like into there's a little handy trailer with this ride on mower which we can put it into put the findings into which i can then take to where is it that monstrous grass heap over there which is where all the hay cuttings go it's another great habitat for grass snakes and slow worms so yeah another good addition to the site so i'm going to get on now rake this whole area up stick around and then we'll have a look at what we're going to sow in terms of the wildflowers well that's all just about see all this area raked up into piles so it's easier to collect i should say in this guys it's important if you can to cut and collect all the hay and as much vegetation as you can prior to carrying out any of these works just because it really makes it easier to get that thatch if it's all still standing you're never going to get to the bottom of it shall we say so yeah if you can cut and collect not necessarily with a ride on mower um you can obviously scythe it um you can trim it although i tend to try and not use trimmers really because they can be so detrimental by the time you've found a frog it's too late hate to be a bit gruesome but uh it's the reality so yeah if you can use a scythe or just walk it first make sure there's no amphibians reptiles as little life as possible in your meadow before you cut and for the best time of year to cut do check out one of my more recent videos on when is the best time of year to cut your wildflower meadow which i'll put a link at the end of this video so i'm going to jump on the lawnmower with the trailer in tow and go around and pick up this hay and then we'll get some seeding done well that's all the piles now cleared up and put on the compost heap if you like as you've just seen so now it's time for the application of the seed which is great and i should say if you're to create a new wildflower meadow or you're looking to do any sowing works by far the best time is september and october well i mean we are technically now into november but as you can see here at the moment it's very clear it's lovely weather and it's very mild it's exceedingly mild for the end of october and into november we're still 14 15 16 17 degrees during the day at the moment so plenty of warmth to help try and get that seed germinated now the yellow rattle which looks a bit like this um is called the yellow rattle because when you effectively rattle it in the uh in the summer months in july and august time when it's still in the field you can hear it physically sort of like a tick tick tick which is the seed still inside the seed pods before it then obviously drops onto the ground so but the yellow rattle looks a little bit like this and uh it's really good stuff and obviously if you want to get any yellow rattle guys do check out the wilder garden online shop i'll of course put a link in the description below but the yellow rattle is fine to be sown actually up until christmas traditionally because it requires um like a frost to sort of break down the husk of the seed if you like so it's not the end of the world if you're not sowing this until december time the rest of the seeds um they'll probably want to be in like i say by kind of end of october probably latest but a bit into november if we've got weather like this is fine it's the only thing that stops you sowing it is the frost once the seeds start to germinate and then obviously the the shoots start coming up out of the ground if they get hit by a hard frost when they're so tender when they're so young it can really knock them back and kill them off so the last thing you want to do is spend a load of money on seed for it to then fail so yes any time of year really like i say between september and october and you can sow again in the in the springtime when you're sort of getting past the frost so march and april time usually that's better for cornfield annuals but again you can sow your general wildflower seed mixes i've sown some of the best wildflower meadows that i've made in the spring months it just can be a bit of a delayed germination until the autumn if you get a dry spell in the spring so what else are we sowing with this cornfield not we are sowing cornfield annuals with the yellow rattle we're sowing some cornfield annuals which look a little bit like this which are a mix of poppies corn marigold corn chamomile corn cockle cornflower what a corn um so they are obviously all your annual species about five different species that are going in this area they will cope better with more fertile ground so yes that is a consideration when you are sowing your cornfield annual mixture and of course you can just rotovate a piece of ground and chuck your cornfield annuals on it for those of you that have seen me make videos about how to make a wildflower matter before when i've spoken about removing the tops or removing the fertility to get down to the porous upsoil layers you don't need to do that so much with cornfield annuals because they germinate and grow so quickly they can compete with a lot of the other sort of i hate saying it but inverted commas weed species things such as nettles thistles stocks but they are annual so you will need to seed year on year if you want them to proliferate again available on the online shop and that is your cornfield annuals we've also then got a few seeds that i'm going to chuck in which are a bit of a mixture to try and increase the floral diversity here so we've got things like the clustered bellflower here which is just a small amount but will go a long way there's a lot of seeds in there and we've also got some kidney vetch viper's bugloss and what are we there hang on wild basil so these are all kind of chalk limestone specialists they do really well on poor stony ground so some more species that we're hoping to encourage into this area so i've got my trusty even spread cedar which i'm going to apply the seed with of course you can do it by hand and if you've got a big area to cover and a small amount of seed the last thing you want to do is get your seed and go oh that's that then so the best thing you can do is mix your seed in with some sand some sharp sand building sand tends to sort of clump together too much but building sand is very good for that because sorry sharp sand because it's more gritty and that way you can see where you've been and it's just a kind of a loose shaking of the hand just to apply the seed you know as you would expect people to sort of you know sow seeds whenever you see a documentary of people doing it back in the olden days before we had tractors so yes the application is quite simple and as i say add some sand to that so let's get this seed in the cedar and get it sown so once you've got your seed in your bucket guys it's very important to mix it all up you don't want to drop all of one species in one area so be really good going through to make sure it's nice and mixed before you spread it likewise if you're adding sharp sand into a bucket make sure it is all thoroughly thoroughly mixed before you apply any to the area well guys that's me set time to get some seeds sown well that's that hopefully this area will soon start germinating and we can expect some good results next year for a sowing rate i should say you should aim for two to four grams a square meter depending on the sort of coverage that you want depending on how much density you want and obviously expect there's going to be some casualties if you like not everything will germinate because it's growing in an existing sward so fingers crossed it all works out for you any questions drop them in the comments below obviously if you're looking for any products check out the wild you garden online shop as i say and do check out the previous videos on the channel if you are interested in how to make a wildflower meadow i'll put a link to that one at the end of and of course all the ways you can help wildlife in your own garden stick around lots more to come thanks for watching guys i'll see you soon