Making a meadow.

To the front of the house, between the front garden and the shore, there’s a field of around one and a half acres. In the days when this was a working croft it would have been summer grazing or hay, once full of wildflowers and life. As the land was decrofted and left unworked the field fell into disuse. Not mown or grazed within living memory it had over time rewilded itself into two main species, rush and common bent. There were also patches of brambles here and there and a bright pink honeysuckle, a garden variety, planted against a long collapsed shed, that had woven a web of twining stems across an area of the field. Despite not being touched for at least sixty years there were no trees or saplings to be seen. The only silver lining was the common bent, the farmers “poverty grass”, an indicator of poor soil. A good sign for a perennial meadow where low fertility generally aids wildflowers and hinders stronger growing grasses.

The first task was to cut and clear it. The growth was waist high, walking across the field was akin to walking on a trampoline, so thick was the bouncy mattress of light stealing thatch that had built up over the years. We borrowed a power scythe, a walk behind machine that has a wide ground level cutter bar, a reciprocating blade that scissors off everything in its path. Once cut we cleared the field, raking and forking the grass and rush into long winrows. They snaked across the field. So tall they looked like berms, ready to repel a sea born invasion. 

In the first year, while the winrows rotted down to a volume that could be taken away, we ran a mower over  the meadow every two weeks or so, keeping new growth short and giving the meadows seed bank a chance to spring to life. The result was better than expected, different grasses appeared along with a wide variety of wildflower seedlings. In the second year we mowed until early may and then left the meadow be. That summer for the first time in decades the ground was lit gold with the yellows of cats ear and buttercup. In a wet spot sorrels flowered, from a distance the flowers of the closely packed plants giving the look of a haze of crimson smoke. Close to the shore a patch of meadowsweet came into its own, abundant with creamy white flower heads.

In addition to the species that have appeared naturally, other natives have been added, thousands of home grown plugs, ox-eye, yarrow, bedstraw, knapweeds and many more. Wood cranesbill, that, despite its name, is a plant of northern meadows, is a new addition for this year. There’s a line in the sometimes controversial Christopher Lloyds book on the meadows at Great Dixter and beyond where he writes of “perfect lawn nutters”, with tongue firmly in cheek we refuse to be perfect meadow nutters, a not so native succisella, frosted pearls, that had proved to be a failure in the garden was given a second chance in the meadow, now happily thriving among the grasses its pin cushion heads are bumblebee magnets.

Non natives that have turned up uninvited are also tolerated. Orange flowered montbretia, a plant that grows feral here, has a toe hold in places, as does alchamilla mollis. Lupins, once grown as a crop in Orkney, pop up now and then. Close to a boundary fence there’s a patch of sweet rocket. All are kept under control by early spring and late autumn mowing. Ditto the rushes, weakened by regular cutting they no longer grow in thick green knitting needle clumps. Ragged robin, water avens and other damp lovers have space now to grow and flower.

The meadow is still evolving. Trees have been added in small groups, alder, rowan, whitebeam and others. A sloping bank is dressed with young gorse. Close to the shore two ponds have been dug, there’s a coppice of grey leaved willow. More life has arrived, greylags nest in a quiet corner, last summer a pair of curlew were seen with fluff-ball chicks in tow. In winter snipe and oystercatcher arrive to prod and poke the earth. The grass from autumns annual mowing and clearing is piled in low haycocks close to the shore, left to dry and eventually rot. New homes for wood mice and fungi, somewhere for queen bumblebees to slumber away the winter.