Suburban living and the need for neat, well-integrated outside spaces initially led to lawns as we know them today – square, short, and green. But, as great as a square of luscious green grass can be, many homeowners are now finding that this boxed-in idea of garden design just isn’t cutting it anymore.
Recent years especially have seen a significant uptake in what experts have termed the ‘wildflower lawn’ which, as the name suggests, involves a much more flower-based wilderness approach that’s more summer meadow than suburban chic. Environmentalists have praised this change because it’s vast biodiversity benefits, but we’re going to consider how exactly a wildflower lawn could benefit you personally.
Benefit 1 – A much more forgiving garden design
Short-cut lawns have always left entire outdoor spaces exposed, and have highlighted every nook and cranny of a garden, including the overgrown corner you would rather keep hidden or the shed at the back of your lawn. By naturally growing longer and providing more coverage in general, wildflower lawns can not only keep hidden corners hidden, but can also provide coverage that ensures your sheds, washing lines, and even unevenly pathed side path blend perfectly into a space that makes it difficult to determine where the flowers end and the garden additions start. This provides a natural flow and a finish that, even if your design isn’t that great is guaranteed to look like something fresh out of a fairytale.
Benefit 2 – An outdoor space that takes care of itself
To say that a natural lawn is entirely maintenance-free would be an exaggeration. Deweeding is still essential to encourage the right kinds of flowers to grow, while for usability purposes, it’s also often worth keeping a mown path down the middle of a wild lawn. Still, a garden design like this most definitely doesn’t require the same weekly mowing, weeding, and pruning as a short lawn. Instead, the joy of a wild lawn is that it does largely take care of itself, and any work that you do need to do will likely be a ten-minute, once monthly affair, rather than taking up an entire day of each weekend.
Benefit 3 – More beauty than the eye can see
If you’re looking for beauty on a budget then it doesn’t get better than a natural lawn, which provides in-depth layers of beauty that are guaranteed to surprise you every single day. As well as attracting a whole host of wildlife including vast arrays of butterflies and bees, a wild lawn that’s already seeded attracts pollination that sees all manner of unexpected flowers popping up daily all summer long, providing you with a living lawn that you could literally spend hours lost in, and that offers beauty below the surface that you might not even be aware of!
While it might involve a little work to begin with, wildflower lawns are a simple gardening go-to that’s catching like wildfire for a good reason. Are you ready to start enjoying the benefits they can bring?
