Lovely green and pleasant lawn ?

All my articles, videos and work are funded by my teaching and sales of award winning bumblebee nest boxes, solitary bee boxes,  and wormeries.

I have been watching the progress of this lawn for some time. To many people a lawn is a lawn. It has to be mown and weeded. To many other people it is a chore even to do that and more and more of them are concreting or otherwise ridding themselves of their front grassed lawns. Beside the detrimental effect on wildlife, e.g. blackbirds, song thrushes and robins regularly feed on lawns, the lawns in effect, act like a sponges to soak up and hold water, instead of water, that undervalued commodity, flowing away down the drains and contributing to floods.

Appreciate your wildlife? Want to encourage it ? See what happens if you leave your lawn a while and do not ‘treat’ or cut it…..

White clover is beginning to flower on the lawn

Have you ever done this to see what may happen? Just watch as this green boring lawn transforms…..

Bumblebee and insect heaven with white clover on the lawn

The bumblebees flocked to this lawn spending quite some time on each flower collecting the precious nectar needed for themselves and their young to grow. These are next years pollinators of our fruit, tomatoes and wildflowers. Visiting insects provide food for birds….

White clove, a bumblebee favourite, with self heal just starting to flower

Leave the lawn just a little longer and you have a fantastically colourful display of wild flowers……eagerly sought out by solitary bees!

Bumblebee lawn – white clover & self heal – obviously an enlightened gardener!

So what looks prettier ? When you weed and feed, you feed the grass and kill the wildflowers in your lawn.

Or leave out the weed and feed, leave the lawnmower in the shed a little longer and allow this wonderful colourful display to grow on your front lawn to bring a cheerful smile to you on that dreary Monday morning! To get the above display, let it flower and then cut it back AFTER it has flowered and set seed. A short time to wait for those eager beaver weed and feeders!! You may have different wildflowers in your lawn…..another lawn I really liked had potatoes growing in it, no grass all potatoes!

weed and feed green lawn- leave to let wildflowers grow

Read more articles about bumblebees.

Read more articles about the bumblebee nest box  in which many of the bumblebees pollinating these flowers lived!

For more information and to help save bumblebees join the Bumblebee Conservation Trust at Stirling University