You need a little patience if you want to go wild, writes Jane Powers
Several years ago we attempted to create a mini-meadow at the end of the garden. Until then, this area had been occupied by the scrag-end of a fourth-rate lawn waiting for a better idea to come along. That idea arrived when I was getting rid of Spanish bluebells in the various borders. Being too parsimonious to throw out all these perfectly good plants, I decided to naturalise them in the neglected bit of lawn, in holes trowelled randomly here and there. Then, I laid a hose on the ground in what I hoped was a graceful curve, and mowed the grass outside of this boundary (well, my husband mowed, while I "directed").
In time, the bluebells flowered, and for a few brief weeks made a pretty, if somewhat crude, picture. The pale and beefy Spanish bluebell (Hyacinthoides hispanica), it must be said, is much less elegant than our native H. non-scriptus - a fragile and romantic thing, with azure flowers hanging mournfully from one side of an arching stem. The natural habitat of this melancholic Pre-Raphaelite is in woodland and under bracken. It can hybridise with its fat, southern European relative, which is why people, however well-meaning, should not re-home their surplus garden bluebells (invariably Spaniards) in public woods - as has happened on Killiney Hill, for instance.
My urban meadow also produced a healthy crop of cheery dandelions. Sure, they're lovely to see, but hell to uproot when you tire of them. We also had plenty of creeping buttercup (another crowd-pleaser), bobble-headed plantain, and broad-leaved dock - about which not much good can be said, except that it is the food plant for the caterpillar of the Small Copper butterfly (which I've never seen in my garden). Oh, and it is also supposed to be good for nettle stings.
We gave up on our not-very-flowery meadow after a year or two. The coarse-leaved species were too many, and the bluebells were too fleeting - when they weren't laid low by dogs and footballs which didn't understand the aesthetics of this patch of unkempt growth.
I have to admit that the management was a bit hit-and-miss: we should have mowed it more, or perhaps less, or at different times. Or maybe, despite its being old, dry, town soil, it was too fertile. And, foolishly (and lazily), I never thought of adding any species other than the bluebells.
Nonetheless, I have to believe Christopher Lloyd, who tells us in his handsome new book, Meadows (Cassell Illustrated, £25 in UK), that the easiest way to create a meadow is to transform an existing lawn. At Great Dixter in East Sussex, which his parents bought in 1910, there are several meadows made on existing grassland, including one recently established on his late father's putting green.
To convert a lawn, Christopher Lloyd advises, stop using fertiliser and weedkiller, let the broad-leaved plants reproduce, and introduce wildflowers as seed or plugs. If your soil is fertile, you must scrape off the top layer of sod, and sow a meadow mixture into the less fertile and less weedy soil underneath.
Irish meadow and wildflower expert Sandro Cafolla says you can also turn your lawn into a wildflower meadow by sowing seed directly into it. His company, Design by Nature, has just formulated two "Cut and Sow" mixes - for dry and moist soil - specifically for this purpose. Before sowing, the grass must be cut extremely short to expose as much soil as possible. Sow the seed, and rake or roll it in. A precise programme of mowing must be followed in the beginning, to allow the different species to germinate and grow successfully.
Sandro says there'll be little blooming in the first year, but after that you will have a flower-speckled sward. The seed mix for moist soil includes ragged robin, meadowsweet and purple loosestrife, while that for dry soil contains cowslip, scabious and yellow rattle.
Yellow rattle (Rhinanthus minor), incidentally, is a hemiparasitic species, feeding partially on the roots of grass. It thus reduces its host's vigour, a useful facility in a meadow with aggressive grasses.
If you're sowing a meadow from scratch, Design by Nature (see below) has native flora seed mixes for all kinds of soils, including top soil, clay and gley, subsoil, sandy and stony soil and a rake of other soil-types. Or you can sow a mixture specially formulated for gravel and gravesides, for stone walls and green roofs, for seasides, for esker ridges, for drumlins and so on.
Meadow and wildflower seeds from Design By Nature, Crettyard, Carlow. 056-4442526, www.allgowild.com, www.wildflowers.ie. Wildflower seed mats and shakers to attract birds and butterflies from Willow Design and Publishing, Cootehall, Boyle, Co Roscommon. For stockists: 079-67315, www.willowireland.com
DIARY DATES: May 1st: "Propagating Perennials" workshop with Assumpta Broomfield; May 2nd: "Container Growing" with Eva Holmes. Both at Lavistown House, Kilkenny, €60. Booking: 056-7765145; www.lavistownhouse.ie