The day in which I went out to take the photos for this post was beautiful; sunny and relatively warm for the middle of winter. As we as a family aren't particularly good at regularly weeding the garden, we get all sorts of grasses come up. As we are used to these, I thought I would "celebrate" their existance. You may think, "why on earth is Joe so interested in grass". Well, I asked myself this same question earlier, but hopefully this posting should be ok by the end :-)
Ok, first up, as I was looking around the garden, the most obvious form of the green stuff is on our lawns. While we take this for granted, just imagine what our gardens would look like without it. More to the point, just think that almost every garden in the country has some form of grass. Grass is great for animals too-especially if you grow it long. But mammals like Badgers are known for liking lawns (or is this just me?) as long as they are near some form of suitable woodland habitat. Admittedly the lawn in our garden isn't always overgrown... especially with 2 grazing pet rabbits!
In my wildlife patch, there are some more interesting grasses than the one above that are even better for wildlife. The long pale grasses provide great cover for reptiles such as lizards. Again, they are possibly not the most beautiful features in a garden, but they do give it a bit of character. Just think about what you are helping when you leave a space of grass to go a bit overgrown-you will be amazed. An example of this is in the photo below.
With Blue Tits showing great interest in our camera nestbox at the moment, I thought it would be a good idea to talk about the importance of moss in gardens. Birds really need this material in order to build their nests. We have some of this in our garden, but because we don't have a particularly damp area in the garden, we don't tend to get much of it. The stuff in the photo below was found near my Dad's veg plot. I think it also looks great in a garden.
Click here for camera nestbox blog
All photos taken in my garden earlier this month.
4 comments:
Great post Joe, and love the pictures. If you love grass then hopefully you also love worms. Take a look at my latest post on a national survey everyone can take part in - counting worms in a small patch of your grass!
I allow the grass to stay long - it's also better for the grass in the long run too. Growing clover in the lawn puts nutrients back into it, which in turn also helps keep the grass healthy.
However, I'd rather not have grass in the conventional sense anyway, I'm far more into the decorative, wild grasses. One which sway in the wind, so as a result I allowed wild grasses to grow whereever they sprung up last summer, some were absolutely beautiful
Hi Joe,
What an interesting post, I have always been ashamed to call our grass a lawn as there are more 'weeds' in it than actual grass! We have never used weed killers as we have a dog and of course it is not wild life friendly to do so.
Because of this we are very pleased to have Cowslips growing in our 'lawn'. I don't know whether the birds seeded them or if they were in the turf when it was laid originally but they look beautiful when they are in flower. We are always careful to mow around them until they have died right down.
All good wishes for your exams.
Hi Jane, Liz and Shysongbird:
Jane- Thank you! Glad you liked the photos. I looked at your worm posting. Sounds very fun. I have left a comment on that post about that. Good luck with the counting! It should be great fun.
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Liz- Hmm... you know a lot more about grass than I do even by just reading the first sentence of your comment. Interesting to hear about what other people know about plants, condsidering I don't really know much myself.
Good to hear that you also let your grasses grow! Some do look fantastic in the sun, don't you think?
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Shysongbird- We don't use weedkillers either. The chemicals are horrible, and the lawn doesn't look too bad with a few weeds either. I wish we also had cowslips at home. They are so beautiful. They probably were seeded by the birds in your garden.
Thanks again
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