There are three different ways to manage a lawn: traditional green velvet, wildflower meadow and wildflower lawn.

The traditional way to keep a lawn is to mow regularly, apply lawn fertiliser at least once or twice a year and spray for weeds every two or three years.

The idea is to have green grass, growing well and kept nice and tight, less than 5cm tall. Mowing is a significant effort, carried out weekly and even more often during the early summer peak of grass growth. This can involve mowing 25 or 30 times a year. This is time-consuming and a good deal of work, together with dumping mowings and trimming lawn edges where they meet flower borders or footpaths.

Feeding the grass takes time too and costs money. The best lawns are fed several times a year, as well as being sprayed for weeds or using two-in-one weed and feed products. Moss control is another requirement of a high-quality lawn.

There has been a gathering movement towards more natural gardening in recent decades. This is driven by a better appreciation and understanding of nature in the garden and to reduce inputs of fertiliser, fuel and other lawn-care products.

This change of approach has created interest in wildflower meadows. There is a lot of confusion about what a wildflower meadow is. What is often taken as a wildflower meadow is really more accurately described as a wildflower cornfield with red poppies, blue cornflower, yellow corn marigold and purple corn cockle.

All of these are plants, formerly weeds, of cornfields, which are cultivated ground. These do not persist in the undisturbed soil of a meadow.

A true meadow is a hay meadow, closed for grazing and mown for hay. Meadows are mostly of grasses with some wild flowers growing in them.

Old meadows, long-established and not improved with high-yielding rye-grasses, contain a wide range of broad-leaf wild plants, including daisies, white and red clover, buttercups, dandelions, self-heal, hawkweed and bird’s foot trefoil, on dry soil, and ragged robin, meadow sweet, purple loosestrife and yellow flag iris in wet meadows. Docks, ragwort, nettles and thistles commonly appear in meadows too, in fertile ground.

This kind of true wildflower meadow is suited only for large areas that can be cut for hay. It is not suitable for small gardens and just looks messy. But it might suit a large rural garden very well, especially if it is easy to mow and bale off the cut grass.

Removing the hay reduces the fertility of the soil – and that encourages the wildflowers to increase. Rough weed species must be controlled directly, but gradually a flowery hay meadow develops.

After hay is taken off in summer, the grass can be mown at a high level a couple of times into autumn. New species, suitable to the site, can be raised in celltrays from seed and planted out in early winter.

It is next to useless to simply scatter wildflower seeds over established meadow. However, it is possible to harrow-cut meadow in early autumn and sow seeds to take root in the disturbed soil.

Introducing the semi-parasitic plant yellow rattle helps to reduce grass growth. There is obviously less effort with a wildflower meadow, but it is limited in its use to large areas, say 1,000m2, minimum.

If a wildflower meadow is like grass managed for hay, wildflower lawn is the equivalent of permanent, unimproved old pasture, set-stocked and grazed as it grows.

A wildflower lawn is mown, rather than grazed. Little or no feeding is done and no weedkiller is used. The grass is mown right through the year but half as often – sometimes not for a few weeks – to let wildflowers flower.

The cut grass should be taken off to impoverish rich soil and encourage wildflowers at the expense of grass. This is a labour-saving and low-input, low-cost way of managing grass areas.

It is not only easier but looks well, especially in a rural garden, an informal garden or one managed for wildlife.

To convert an existing traditional green lawn, simply mow less often, apply no fertiliser and no weedkiller. Plant in some species if you like, but the wildflower lawn will develop by itself – just as traditional hay meadow, or wildflower meadow does.

Many lawns are already half-way there.

Apple stores

If you store ‘Bramley’s Seedling’ apples in winter, it is a good idea to check through them now to remove rotting fruit. Brown rot is the main rot that affects stored apples and it can progress through a container of apples with ease, rotting previously good fruit. If rotten and deteriorating fruit is removed, this can be halted.

Apples are stored best in smallish polythene bags of three or five kilogrammes of fruit. Change these singly into new bags, removing bad fruit. The bags can then be folded over, but not tied tight, at the top. Fruit stored in a layer on a tray is easier to pick over for rotten fruit, but the fruit tends to dry prematurely.

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Trees, shrubs and roses

The ground has been ideal for planting for good periods. But if the weather turns and small trees have been purchased, they can be kept for weeks before planting by being heeled in after opening out the bundles, as they tend to dry out or to overheat by being packed tightly. Roses can be pruned at any time now.

Fruit, vegetables and herbs

Seed potatoes of early varieties can be put in to sprout, as this gives two or three weeks’ earlier harvest. There is still time to sow seeds of early varieties of cabbage, cauliflower, carrots, lettuce and onions in warm conditions indoors, and grown on in a greenhouse or tunnel. Rhubarb for forcing indoors can be lifted now.

Flowers

Perennial flowers can be lifted and divided, if necessary, but not if the ground is sticky and they have to be mucked in, but there has been a fair deal of good weather. Perennial flowers can be planted at this time too. Seeds of geraniums, lobelia, busy lizzie and bedding begonias can be sown in a heated propagator.

Lawns

Lawns are looking well and even growing a bit in mild spells. Mowing should be carried out, but lawns should be allowed to dry out a little before they are mown. If a lawn area is being prepared for sowing in the spring, it cannot be cultivated until the ground dries. The soil is soft now and it is easy to cut new edges to beds.

Greenhouse and house plants

Greenhouse grape vines and peach trees will soon break bud as the temperature warms up. Prune grape vines before the sap rises in the coming weeks. A heavy soak watering is often beneficial in bringing on these plants, especially if the greenhouse soil tends to have been kept dry to reduce rotting and frost damage.