Is creating a meadow garden really worth the hassle?

For the last twenty years we’ve seen the fashion for creating meadows explode. Once the preserve of the countryside where they are best defined as ‘pieces of grass-covered land mown for hay’, they now adorn our cities, parks, estates and private gardens. There is a sort of irony here in that as historic, wild, flora-rich meadows are in decline rurally, due to agriculture, development and climate change, we are frenetically creating them elsewhere.

And this trend for meadows has inspired and influenced some of the most cutting-edge approaches to planting we see today – think the Olympic Park, the Super Bloom Event at the Tower of London and a huge proportion of Flower Show gardens. Meadows are beautiful, dynamic and biodiverse environments but is creating them really worth the hassle?

I remember reading the late, great Christopher Lloyd’s book Meadows some twenty years ago and realising the complexities of creating a native meadow. The process can take many years and there is no guarantee that one of your introduced meadow species won’t suddenly become dominant and wipe out the rest. Or that underlying seeds laying dormant in the soil won’t emerge and subsume your sown plants. The process is essentially about reducing fertility and suppressing grasses to allow as wide as possible a range of broad-leaf flowering species to thrive in harmony with the grassy sward. It’s a challenge! And something you need to think long and hard about before attempting.

If your garden is super fertile, shaded or consistently wet then it’s perhaps not right for you. However, if your garden is sunny, free draining and of medium to low fertility it may be worth a shot. Creating a native meadow is complex, but in essence, to make one on your own