Devon SSSI nature reserve and eco lodges - Maggie's Blog
5 July
Let the weeds grow...
I've stopped calling the garden around our house a lawn and just refer to it as the grass now - in April it was awash with dandelions, then came the daisies, and now it's a sea of clover. The bees, and especially the bumblebees, love it - so I tread carefully when hanging the washing out. But nobody's been stung yet, not even 2 year old Euan who runs through it barefoot frequently.
And pottering about on google I found out that clover lawns sometimes sown deliberately. Apparently they're good because they don't need watering yet stay green all summer, fertilise themselves (they fix atmospheric nitrogen), don't need much cutting, feel good underfoot and are immune to dead patches from dog wee - quite apart from their value to the bees.
We thought maybe it was the cutting regime that encouraged the clover - we mowed fairly regularly in the spring, then stopped around the beginning of June when things got busy and one of the mowers broke. I guess that's what allowed the clover to flower. But I also read that clover does best after an 'excessively' wet year (sound familiar?)because that encourages new plants from runners. So I wonder whether we'll have it again next year. Maybe, because clover is a short-lived perennial, so it should last 3 or 4 years.
These are a couple of the links I found...
There's so much of it it perfumes the whole garden. I thought it was the sweetpeas at first, but the fragrance was still there even after I'd picked all their blooms for the lodges.