Time to Scythe Paul Ritchie

We encourage people to let their gardens ‘grow wild’ so that wildflowers flourish, mature and set seed. Grassland habitats in gardens help provide cover and food for insects, and enable insects to complete key parts of their life cycle. This is a practice we have embraced in our own garden for or ARK.

Such habitats need to be managed and every year the time comes to decide when to cut the grass. Cutting too early before wildflowers set seed reduces the biodiversity of lawns and grassland areas. Cutting too late results in a thatch of dead plants that also reduces floral diversity. But not cutting at all is the worse option, almost as bad as constant mowing, with vigorous ‘thugs’ such as bramble taking over.

When I cut our grass is guided by the weather. This year, with the hot dry spring and summer, many wildflowers have gone to seed early. But we're also playing catch up as last year we failed to cut the grassland areas because of family commitments. I will cut different areas of the garden each week or so through August and into September, but areas intending for sowing wildflower seed should be started now.

I’ve been scything and mowing our grassland areas today and I thought I’d share some photos which illustrate the approach we take in case it is of interest to others. Scything is good method for not eradicating insects or other wildlife and if you cut late summer and autumn the adult butterflies and grasshoppers can escape and you don't kill over wintering eggs, larvae or pupae (photo A below).

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I use an Austrian scythe, a grass rake, hay fork and a small lawn mower that has seven settings for the height of cut.

I begin by scything areas of long grass and pull excess nettles and dead-head vigorous wildflowers I don't want to cast seed everywhere e.g. hogweed & ragwort (photo A).
After scything the next step is raking up (photo B). I would normally leave cuttings on the ground for a few days to allow seeds to drop in patches with lots of wildflowers. But in this part of the garden, we will spread yellow rattle to reduce the vigour of the grasses and a meadow wildflower seed mix to enhance biodiversity.

We rake up all the long grass cuttings and pitchfork into our home-made 'hayricks' formed using 3 hazel poles cut from our hedge last winter (photo C). As well as being a great way to dispose of cuttings these mini hay ricks provide a habitat for slow worms, grass snakes, small mammals & insects.

The final step is to mow a short sward close to the footpath with a lawn mower (photo D). I collect and remove cuttings, which go into our compost bins, so that wildflowers such as dandelion and daisy can flourish too. During August I will cut again and scarify before sowing wildflower seed. It is always best to sow seeds in autumn.

In the final photo (E) you can see how I've cut alternating patches along the edge of the footpath so that I retain long grass habitat down length of the garden for wildlife. This is important cover for grassland species of insect, slow worm, grass snake, field vole, newt & toads... all of which inhabit our wildlife friendly garden.

I don't cut all the long grass and meadow areas at the same time because we have lots of grassland butterfly and grasshopper species in our garden.

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