Topiary Lawn Meadow

One major area of work at Dixter in September is the cutting of all the wildflower meadows.

The meadows of Dixter are a testament to the passions of Christopher’s mother Daisy Lloyd for ecology and naturalistic gardening principles. An English wildflower meadows require poorer soils than intensive agricultural practices allow, consequently is a habitat in decline. The aspect of the topiary lawn make it a good site for wildflower, because it gets full sun, adequate spring rainfall and the soils is naturally nutrient poor. One of the most important species in the meadow is Yellow hay rattle Rhianthus minor, yellow rattle is semi-parasitic and greatly curbs the vigour of the grass it grows off. Reduced competition opens dense swards allowing wild flower species to colonise. Four terrestrial orchids native to the Weald have naturally established and colonised themselves on the lawn: Early purple, Green winged, Twayblade and the common spotted Dactylorhiza fuchsia.

Ben James and myself cutting and clearing the topiary lawn, in the scary presence of BBC4

Rowing up the orchard meadow using traditional hay rakes

The timing of cutting is determined when seeds of the wildflowers have matured and ripened late summer end of August into September. It is favourable to cut in dry conditions as mechanical operations are easier to perform. The meadow is cut using a Trac Master Power scythe. The scythed biomass is raked to rows by hand using Dixters own hay rakes, more efficient than modern spring tined rakes, then bagged and removed from the site to continue to deprive the soil of nutrient. For a clean finish and to remove further vegetative matter the site is closely mown with the ride on mower.

Bagged material being transported to Dixter farm to be strewn on the new wildflower meadow.

The stack of meadow hay to be composted

Much of the material taken from the topiary lawn is stacked in a large composting heap to decompose over a three year cycle. The compost off the meadow is incorporated into the vegetable garden. It is used in the vegetable garden and not the borders, because it contains a large weed seed bank that can be managed in an environment that is regularly hoed. The management at Dixter is to increase the area of wildflower meadows; therefore, proportions of the clippings rich in seed are collected and moved to other grassland and scattered on the surface in a process called strewing. Strewing enables local seeds to spread to new grassland increasing the rate new wildflower meadows can establish. To return formality to the topiary lawn the edges of the yew topiary are weeded and edged to create definite boundaries from the lawn.

The Topiary lawn the following morning clean cut with crisp edges.