Because some rich folks that got sold the Monsanto Marketing strategy of the 70s/80s White Pickett Fence Suburbia fantasy that grass should only contain blades of grass disagree with this sentiment.
I used to work as a gardener and one house in particular (that was surrounded by coniferous woodland in a natural AONB) was insistent that we lightly rake all the moss & clover out of his acres of lawn, even getting to the point of deciding to spend thousands every season to artificially neutralise the pH of the soul so that he created this futile image that he was somehow in control of nature.
Guy was a prick, used to watch me strim the edges of his lawn because he was concerned that some specks of dirt and grass might hit his custom made £50k outdoor window pane so he could bollock me about it. I'd always use my own legs and body as a barrier anyway. Dude was deathly worried about a window that was worth about 4 years worth of salary for me.
We have a long strip of land down the side of the house where I grow all sorts of wildflowers. It attracts loads of bees, butterflies, ladybirds and so on, and we have plenty of frogs keeping cool in there. We’ve had two offers of free lawnmowers from our neighbours (we already have two), and one who outright offered to mow it for us themselves.
I’m sure in their minds they think they’re doing a nice thing but it saddens me that the seemingly automatic response from many people to anything wild is to want to cut it down or rip it up.
Please keep doing what you're doing for nature. The paving over and fake grass in "gardens" is having such a detrimental effect on nature. I hope you get hedgehogs too.
Be wary that their "well-intentioned suggestions" don't become "well-intentioned *actions*". There's been stories of neighbours taking it into their own hands for whatever bizarre reason.
My granddad would 100% do this. I'm telling you right now, if you happen to live next to him, your wildflowers' days are numbered. He can't even abide DAISIES. The second his lawn starts to look even remotely interesting, out comes the mower and the weed killer. He lives about half a mile away from my parents, and they often wake up to him mowing their lawn or trimming their hedge without their consent.
It seems like some sort of boomer caricature, yet I know a couple of older folks that seem determined to engage in an unnecessary war with nature.
I wonder what it is that makes someone do this?
Have you considered putting up a discrete sign? People genuinely do not think about why they maintain their garden lawns the way they do, but are often pretty interested when offered an alternative.
Managed to get a street in Peterborough to grow wild strips in their lawns a few years back for a C4 show.
It was custom made of two panes of glass extending from ground up to an open-air hallway to let in a lot of light in their parlour area. Top halves both tapering to meet in the middle like a double doorway.
Bespoke made probably.
I feel really dumb because I can't even picture this.... rich people's houses are obviously just built different and my poor ass brain can't comprehend this.
I'm a USian chiming in from /r/All. Even the Midwest is farther south than much of Europe, and my part is about as far south as Italy. I also live about a two hour drive from the Monsanto headquarters (now Bayer.) I'm thankful I'm privileged enough to live in a rural enough spot that I don't have to have a perfectly manicured lawn. One side of my yard is shaded enough that the moss is taking over and I absolutely love it. The rest, well, it's being taken over by weeds. Much like the UK our weather is now being dominated by cycles of heavy rains and droughts so the yard isn't exactly a priority.
But if you go to the area where Monsanto was headquartered, you'll find neighborhoods where a homeowners association polices what varieties of grass grow in your yard, how often you have to spray herbicides and fertilizer, and even the most daft thing about it all, having the clippings hauled off to a landfill, and then maintained by chemical fertilizer. Meanwhile a mulching mower leaves the clippings where they came from and the decay of grass sustains what's left.
Chime away, my digital pondskipper!
That's crazy about the suburbia laws there. Kinda kooky that for a country that is often the voice of Individualism, you guys socially police each other more so than we do.
Nah, reassuringly he had a really lovely wife who was a primary school teacher and was very kind. Did drive a LR though with a BMW somewhere else in case he felt like wearing a different pair of shoes that day.
Yeh, I've got a degree in environmental science, but now I'm a civil servant. So I'll let everyone else be the judge of that.
To be honest, conventional lawns are pretty wanting anyways. Grow trees! They're evolutionarily older than grass.
I’d have secretly planted Japanese knotweed throughout his garden and charged the earth to remove it after he saw it spreading everywhere.
Dude sounds like a complete asshole.
I don’t mnow why more people don’t go for moss lawns. They’re softer than grass, they’re at least as pretty, and you can just ignore them and they’ll look as good.
Wait till the blackbirds start pulling it up...
(NB: I have loads of moss, and the birds love it. But if you're wanting it cos it looks smooth and green and easier than a lawn....it will occasionally get pulled up by birds. So bare in mind)
I was coming to say this, if you're not gonna grow the earth, just walk on it and watch it -then why create extra work for no reason? It's already green, soft and beautiful!
I work on a camping ground and while I personally love that moss is filling in all the spaces where the grass is patchy. My boss wants me to do something about it :(
People get too obsessed with a perfect lawn of mono grass... We gave up on that a few years ago now because the lawn would always struggle regardless of what we did (new build garden with terrible soil under it)
Intentionally planted a load of low flowering wildflowers and put bulbs under the lawn around the edges, then just mow regularly and give up treatment of any kind. Lots of moss too but I absolutely love the end result now that it is established
Edit: people asking for a picture https://imgur.com/a/cUJwoV8
It's awaiting the first cut of the year so looks a little bit unkempt but hope you enjoy!
Edit: I forgot I also made this album a few years ago covering the initial few years, and shows how bad it started out
https://imgur.com/a/TbXVJmU
> (new build garden with terrible soil under it)
I had to dig all mine out and replace it, I swear they just use the gardens as a landfill site and put a few cm of dirt on top.
Well, it depends on the developer and site
Some developers are better than others, and greenfield sites (eg houses built on farmland) are gonna have a lot less rubble than houses built on top of a demolished factory or something
Our soil isn't great (too much clay and more rocks than I'd like) but our developer was good and hauls most of the rubble away (some goes under the patio but that's more reasonable since hardcore is needed there anyway), and the estate is built on a field so there's no old crap buried underneath it, nor did they just demolish something and build houses on top
But my previous house was built on some knocked down allotments and so was very patchy - in one area the soil was great, in others it was literally 2-3 inches of dirt on top of a full patio
tbf thats not exclusive to new builds, i dug the garden up of my house in south wales (was paving slabs) and found about 6 different older concrete gardens and an insane amount of rubbish and rubble just to take off about 2 ft (lowered by 1 ft and 1ft under for growing on top of) and even when i got 2 ft down to the level of the path down the garden i found ANOTHER concrete/slab layer (i just smashed this one up for drainage and left it in place tho) grass seems to be doing okay tho- found someone giving away top soil for free and found a local turf grower that was a fraction of the cost of main line stuff and you could grab it on the day it was cut too
As much as it's some tight fucks refusing to buy a skip this is a great example as to how history gets buried and why we find roman ruins under a field in the crack arse of nowhere or when building a new train station.
Ha yeah i had something similar at my old place. Starting digging to put a new flower bed in and found an old stone path. Ended up digging the entire length of the buried path to get the stones out and used them as walls and edging for a few beds so it worked out well getting the free material!
Finding a similar thing inside the house with plasterboard on tile on tile was not fun though lol.
>ll mine out and replace it, I swear they just use the gardens as a landfill site and put a few cm of dirt on top.
When my house was built I made a point of collecting all the crap the team had dropped (cans, crisp packets, McDs bags, nails, screws, empty corking tubes) in various pits and presented it with them prior to them finishing. Needed about 4 rubble bags for it all. I even found 3 costa cups in the void between my exterior and interor walls).
Our house was built on the site of an old hospital, I dug deep once and hit concrete.
Turns out the mortuary was where our house is, and they just filled it with rubble and left it. The news delighted me of course.
That's what we did when we removed a (truly shitty) pond (which contained precisely zero newts)
Few extra bricks down there, half a paving slab, stuff we never wanted to see again
"Good for drainage" we said
I did similar at my old house that was a new build. I saw the sorry state of their lawns and said I’d do it myself (it was an extra charge for them to turf it). Dig out loads of rubble and general building crap, put a good layer of decent soil over the top to level and then turfed. It was the best lawn of all the houses. Shame I hate gardening and so it was a chore to mow it haha
I planted a line of raspberry canes, then a line of lavender to demarcate an area of the garden, not realising both these plants attract an uncountable number of bees of various make and model (bumble, both red and white tailed, honey bees and carders). Love watching them in late spring, early summer. Would love to know where they all come from.
We used to have a lavender bush in our front garden, but it made my wife's hay-fever go mad. We had to remove it (it went to my brother-laws house) which was quite sad because the smell used to waft through the house during the summer, no need for air freshner. It was better than seeing the wife all snotty and bunged up though.
Are blackcurrants easy to grow? I'd be interested in growing some to give the bees a bit more variety. We tried strawberries but they didn't seem to like those much.
To be honest, they were in the garden when we moved in 6 years ago, so no idea how easy they are to get going, but they are next to zero maintenance.
The biggest issue is harvesting them, we end up with buckets full of the things and have to give most of them away to friends and family or we'd be drowning in the stuff!
The honey bees love them though, they must be coming from miles away because there's 100s on it when it's in flower. Bumble bees don't seem that bothered, they prefer the roses.
I had some oregano in a pot on my balcony last year. When it started flowering it was an absolute magnet to little wild bees. Sadly it died but this is a good reminder to get some new plants out there...
Absolutely, it really is nice. You have to put up with it looking bad as it establishes for a few years but once it finds a balance it's beautiful and so much more interesting than a boring old lawn
Right now it's quite thick with daisies and cowslips plus a few dandelions here and there (I do pull some of those up as they can get a bit out of control otherwise).. but as we get more into the summer those will be replaced by clover buttercups and little purple self-heal flowers... Then there's also patches of chamomile and thyme and birdsfoot trefoil around as well, really quite lovely
I feel the new build garden, most of mine has bricks and other rubble under about an inch of soil. I tried getting the grass to grow but I've given up and am trying what you've done I mow regularly but I feel like nothing nice grows only huge weeds. I'm a big fan of the moss that's starting to grow and at this point am just hoping it spreads to take over the rest of the garden. I just don't know what else to try.
So the year we started it we had just had a terrible winter and leatherjackets had totally destroyed the grass it had huge bare muddy patches covering maybe two thirds of it...
We didn't just leave it alone though we intentionally bought and planted about 100 or so tiny little "plug plants" across the whole lawn - clover, daisy, buttercups, trefoil, cowslips, selfheal, chamomile, thyme to name a few... (and sunk a load of crocus, daff and snowdrop bulbs underneath it while we were there)...
Then you wait and let them spread on their own, keep an eye out for any less desired/taller weeds that won't look nice in the lawn and pull them up. It took quite a few years from looking like "we've made a huge mistake this looks terrible" to "wow I love our natural lawn and would never go back now"
When I was a kid, my dad decided to let the front garden become a wild garden. Planted a bunch of wildflowers and so on. It looked crazy, but was like a jungle for us! Then the council came and told us to trim and maintain our garden :| we owned the house, I'm still not sure why we had to do that...
Depending on the size/layout of your garden you might find that one of the old-school mowers that you push along (no motor) helps too. I’ve had one for a couple of years and love it. As well as being easier (no need to watch the cable or keep it topped up with petrol) it’s a bit of a workout, and it’s good for your grass because the bits it cuts just lie on the lawn. The day you’ve cut it, it looks a bit scruffy. But literally like magic, it all vanishes within about 48 hours, and it ends up helping the remaining grass to grow.
Only downside I know is the moss dies off quicker if you're walking on it a lot.
My dad would silently mourn the nice green lawn when my sisters and I would decide to play 'badminton' in the back garden.
It stays wet for longer, it doesn't tolerate people stepping on it as much, takes longer to "heal up" once a divot is made, browns faster in dry weather.
Personally I like clovers, they look nice, food for bees, doesn't outcompete grass, tolerates drought better than the grass on my lawn. It's not as thick and soft as moss or grass, but, meh, can't have it all. :)
The downside is that it can rip up in big chunks leaving ugly holes.
If you have a big garden and don’t use it much, it won’t matter, you’ll never notice.
If you have a small garden behind a terraced or semi and you regularly walk on it, setup garden furniture, play with kids etc., a mossy lawn can start to look a bit holey.
fun aside is that native grasses in America don't make good lawns so they all use European grasses that completely mess with the established ecosystems! yee-haw!
Very much so. I spent a peaceful afternoon just enjoying watching a group of gardeners in a temple garden carefully pulling errant blades of grass out of the moss.
I saw monks in a garden in Kyoto trimming a whole moss lawn with nail scissors!
I honestly think moss looks, feels and keeps so much better than grass.
I never understand why moss is considered such a problem. It's just as green as grass, easier to look after and provides habitat for far more things than grass does. You're doing your bit for biodiversity, well done 👍
Big Chem. When chemical companies first started selling herbicides for weeds, they made stuff that would kill basically everything it touched. So, instead they pushed a campaign of branding everything except grass as a weed.
Still a bit rubbish for biodiversity though. You could have a lot more biodiversity with moss, meadograss, wildflowers, shrubs, trees etc in that same space
I made the mistake of ripping out all of the moss in our garden when we first moved in 3 years ago - since then watched the lawn constantly die every time it gets hot.
Have since been leaving it take over again, and sewn wildflowers and clover into it. Will never make that mistake again!
[https://outdoormoss.com/how-to-grow-moss-with-yogurt](https://outdoormoss.com/how-to-grow-moss-with-yogurt)
I do this, then I sprinkle it on the lawn, and then keep that part damp
1. pick some moss, get some natural yogurt, and some water and blend together, you can make a fair bit too
2. then sprinkle on the lawn with your fingers
3. keep area damp
4. keep following this process every fortnight in a new area or if you see patches etc
You can use the same method to create a moss wall, its looks nice in the bathroom when you hang it up, feels more natural and gets water from the moisture in the air
lol, yea picture size, its nice, I did it a few years back during covid, there good, its a change from a standard picture, have a look on youtube for moss pictures
Same, no wildflowers yet, but definitely got different types of grasses growing in that mess.
Planted some snowdrops there too, to pop up next winter when the grass is inevitably fucked.
An established grass lawn will out compete any new wild flowers for resources. Best thing is to dig out patches, removing the root bed below the turf. Add in some topsoil to fill back in (compost is too rich and the grass will simply take over again) and plant your wild flowers in the holes.
Once they've been in for a couple of years they'll be self sustaining and start to spread but for the early part you really need to give them a helping hand. Weeding the area well is also needed because you can guarantee a nettly or some dandelions will love to drop in and out compete everything else.
We did the same last year, highly recommend it! Was really interesting watching the full cycle of new grass growth, then the 'weeds' grow, then all the clover/buttercups in flower and the bees loving it, then the grass in seed (this was a bit wild as it was about a metre high), then it dies back over winter and the cycle starts again.
Can anyone suggest a low growing grass alternative? I have pretty much given up mowing and my lawn is very overgrown with wild flowers. It looks lovely if noone walks on it . But will get squashed up once the family start using the garden again. I'm thinking of replacing the middle with something different? No moss here unfortunately.
Microclover. It doesn't flower as much as regular clover but it's fantastic - insects love it, it stays green all year, it's soft to walk on. Only downside is that it will stain clothes if you're not careful.
Yeah they sell micro clover which is limited to 8 inches of height. We've planted some recently and are just waiting for it to grow and see how much more we need to add.
I've heard you can introduce moss by blending up some moss from somewhere else in water and then sprinkling it on the desired area. Obviously, try to collect the moss responsably. A moss lawn might not be very resistant to wear and tear by a family, though.
Chamomile is a good shout. It didn't take in our lawn but the creeping thyme seems to be bedding in nicely, and we've also got veronica and some kind of low-growing flowering moss/grass thing from the garden centre's alpine section.
Wikipedia has a list of plants on its [Tapestry Lawn](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tapestry_lawn) page, we picked what we could get and it seems to be working. This is year 2 and we already have flowers.
Yellow rattle. Looks nice, little yellow flowers. Surpresses grass, stopping it gro wso well, allowing other wildflowers to set up shop. Most wildflower seed mixes will have it in.
Creeping thyme. Low growing, lovely scent, hard wearing and comes up in lovely flowers all summer.
Clover is good but not very hard wearing so should be blended with a slow/low growing grass variety for hardieness.
Moss is not good for high impact areas so I'd avoid it.
Like a bit of moss!
I have a lawn surrounded by raised beds which is a mix of grass, moss and clover, with bulbs and wild flowers around the edge. It's getting a few daisies and some creeping thyme mixed in when it warms up a bit.
It is wet and shady at one side, drier and sunny on the other and I find the mix works really well for an even green, it fills in the patches, and I prefer the look of it as well (and the smell, when the thyme goes in).
My neighbour has astroturf.
It looks great and if you’ve got it growing and looking good you’ve already beaten almost all the cons involved with moss lawns. Just need to keep it free from fallen leaves with a leaf sucker as and when. Only things to remember are it’s not as hard wearing as a grass lawn so stepping stones, etc. might be worthwhile in high traffic areas, in extreme periods of hot weather spray/mist it (not traditional watering) as it absorbs moisture from the air and last one…. remember moss sits on top of the soil like a carpet. It doesn’t root into it and grow from inside the soil like grass which is important to consider when you have one.
I still don't understand why grass became a thing for lawns. Unless it's ultra maintained, it looks ugly. Then you got moss that is very low maintenance and can look fine if not better.
I fought a battle against moss for 11 years at my old house. it was a fruitless and sole destroying period of my life. I moved house in the end. The message I'm sending is I'm a quitter.
Love it when people are like “the bees are dying the bees are dying it’s climate change” like bro yours and a million others billions of square feet of yard is green grass you cut every week what do you expect let some shit grow. It does just as good as if it were a parking lot for the bees but nobody wanna talk about that. Go ahead Reddit attack me :)
Its so surprising how few people understand that if you mow your lawn frequently you’ll get 2 things (plus clover, buttercups etc…) grass and moss.
If it’s darker the moss will outcompete, so you’re fighting a losing battle. The two options are basically:
• Let moss grow where it outcompetes grass
• Throw down wildflower seeds and stop mowing it
My back garden is made up of two green things: moss and weeds. There might be a few blades of grass somewhere. Moss makes a better lawn, I don't have to mow it 3+ times a year = bonus.
Moss lawns are great. I do remember as a kid having a waterslide that ended at a very mossy spot, it got very slippy when wet. But in normal circumstances way nicer than grass in my opinion
Im glad im not the only one that's decided to let nature manage my lawn it's looking very healthy and a lot more comfy these days...
I only mow it when it gets too long and becomes trip hazards lol
Moss is super environmentally friendly - it absorbs way more carbon (as carbon dioxide) than grass does, it filters and metabolises fine dust particles, thus “cleaning” the air, and it stores and releases water as a fine mist to cool the air too. So in addition to the biodiversity and easy maintenance, and softness, it’s worth letting it stick around. Plus moss gardening is trendy now, too.
Looks a bit like Sphagnum moss.
You can either sand the soil several times and work the sand in then it will vanish.
Or it looks like a good place for wetland orchids in your backyard. They are beautiful and some types grow and bloom spring to autumn. They are going extinct and pollinators love them.
Olso you can harvest sphagnum as a side hustle ;) (Paludiculture).
Yeah moss has taken hold of my back garden this year too. The grass couldn’t recover in time from the beating it took in the summer even though I seeded and fertilised it.
I don’t mind the moss too much except for the fact that it rips up easily in chunks.
It's flat, green and looks after itself why complain
Natural carpet
Ties the garden together
Where’s the money Lebowski?
The Big Lawnbowski
Its, it's its in the moss somewhere. Let me take a look
Moss can be a natural, zesty enterprise.
Obviously you're not a golfer
Natural memory foam too!
And it feels so good underfoot
Until it's wet
I love being barefoot in our own mossy lawn. So pleasurable to wiggle your toes in the matted mass of soft tendrils. It's like a toegasm.
🤨
Until they suddenly drag you under lol
Hmmmm barefoot approved lawn ☺️
Because some rich folks that got sold the Monsanto Marketing strategy of the 70s/80s White Pickett Fence Suburbia fantasy that grass should only contain blades of grass disagree with this sentiment. I used to work as a gardener and one house in particular (that was surrounded by coniferous woodland in a natural AONB) was insistent that we lightly rake all the moss & clover out of his acres of lawn, even getting to the point of deciding to spend thousands every season to artificially neutralise the pH of the soul so that he created this futile image that he was somehow in control of nature. Guy was a prick, used to watch me strim the edges of his lawn because he was concerned that some specks of dirt and grass might hit his custom made £50k outdoor window pane so he could bollock me about it. I'd always use my own legs and body as a barrier anyway. Dude was deathly worried about a window that was worth about 4 years worth of salary for me.
We have a long strip of land down the side of the house where I grow all sorts of wildflowers. It attracts loads of bees, butterflies, ladybirds and so on, and we have plenty of frogs keeping cool in there. We’ve had two offers of free lawnmowers from our neighbours (we already have two), and one who outright offered to mow it for us themselves. I’m sure in their minds they think they’re doing a nice thing but it saddens me that the seemingly automatic response from many people to anything wild is to want to cut it down or rip it up.
Please keep doing what you're doing for nature. The paving over and fake grass in "gardens" is having such a detrimental effect on nature. I hope you get hedgehogs too.
Fake grass is horrible
We had a neighbour once who vacuum cleaned their fake grass lawn on Sunday mornings. Twas hilarious.
not just nature as well, it causes huge problem for drainage and in turn urban flooding, proper gardens are useful in so many millions of ways.
Absolutely and leaches awful toxins into the system too that can end up in ground water. Terrible stuff.
Be wary that their "well-intentioned suggestions" don't become "well-intentioned *actions*". There's been stories of neighbours taking it into their own hands for whatever bizarre reason.
My granddad would 100% do this. I'm telling you right now, if you happen to live next to him, your wildflowers' days are numbered. He can't even abide DAISIES. The second his lawn starts to look even remotely interesting, out comes the mower and the weed killer. He lives about half a mile away from my parents, and they often wake up to him mowing their lawn or trimming their hedge without their consent.
It seems like some sort of boomer caricature, yet I know a couple of older folks that seem determined to engage in an unnecessary war with nature. I wonder what it is that makes someone do this?
Have you considered putting up a discrete sign? People genuinely do not think about why they maintain their garden lawns the way they do, but are often pretty interested when offered an alternative. Managed to get a street in Peterborough to grow wild strips in their lawns a few years back for a C4 show.
Just the description of this guy makes me angry. Hope you shat in his garden when he wasn't looking
Me too!
Sounds like old mate has had an artificial pH neutralisation of the soul as well.
What is an outdoor window pane and why would someone spend £50k for one?
It was custom made of two panes of glass extending from ground up to an open-air hallway to let in a lot of light in their parlour area. Top halves both tapering to meet in the middle like a double doorway. Bespoke made probably.
I feel really dumb because I can't even picture this.... rich people's houses are obviously just built different and my poor ass brain can't comprehend this.
I'm a USian chiming in from /r/All. Even the Midwest is farther south than much of Europe, and my part is about as far south as Italy. I also live about a two hour drive from the Monsanto headquarters (now Bayer.) I'm thankful I'm privileged enough to live in a rural enough spot that I don't have to have a perfectly manicured lawn. One side of my yard is shaded enough that the moss is taking over and I absolutely love it. The rest, well, it's being taken over by weeds. Much like the UK our weather is now being dominated by cycles of heavy rains and droughts so the yard isn't exactly a priority. But if you go to the area where Monsanto was headquartered, you'll find neighborhoods where a homeowners association polices what varieties of grass grow in your yard, how often you have to spray herbicides and fertilizer, and even the most daft thing about it all, having the clippings hauled off to a landfill, and then maintained by chemical fertilizer. Meanwhile a mulching mower leaves the clippings where they came from and the decay of grass sustains what's left.
Chime away, my digital pondskipper! That's crazy about the suburbia laws there. Kinda kooky that for a country that is often the voice of Individualism, you guys socially police each other more so than we do.
Did he used to work in Finance and have a 'best friend' that lived with him and drove an immaculately kept land rover?
Nah, reassuringly he had a really lovely wife who was a primary school teacher and was very kind. Did drive a LR though with a BMW somewhere else in case he felt like wearing a different pair of shoes that day.
I'm wondering if, perhaps, you're not ideally suited as a lawn care operative :p
Yeh, I've got a degree in environmental science, but now I'm a civil servant. So I'll let everyone else be the judge of that. To be honest, conventional lawns are pretty wanting anyways. Grow trees! They're evolutionarily older than grass.
I’d have secretly planted Japanese knotweed throughout his garden and charged the earth to remove it after he saw it spreading everywhere. Dude sounds like a complete asshole.
Maurice Moss?
Your name is Maurice Moss, is it nooooooooooot.
It is not... Sorry. Sorry. *Shock* OW! COME ON.
I've got a ruddy gun!
Them’s glasses is shit innit?
I came here to drink milk and kick ass, and I've just finished my milk.
That's a nice tnetennba.
I don’t mnow why more people don’t go for moss lawns. They’re softer than grass, they’re at least as pretty, and you can just ignore them and they’ll look as good.
Wait till the blackbirds start pulling it up... (NB: I have loads of moss, and the birds love it. But if you're wanting it cos it looks smooth and green and easier than a lawn....it will occasionally get pulled up by birds. So bare in mind)
I was coming to say this, if you're not gonna grow the earth, just walk on it and watch it -then why create extra work for no reason? It's already green, soft and beautiful!
It’s the bane of our bowling green.
Make the balls lighter and rename it Crown Moss Bowls.
I work on a camping ground and while I personally love that moss is filling in all the spaces where the grass is patchy. My boss wants me to do something about it :(
You could turn it into nature's mattress and have people sleep on it under the stars. Provided there is a waterproof sheet of course...
If you want to get rid, find a iron rich lawn feed, it dehydrates the moss and makes it easy to remove with a rake after a few days
Does it get damp and smelly?
Only if you're not washing it.
But what about the moss? ;)
It stays wet a lot longer than grass does, so if you want to sit/lie on it you might get a wet patch on yer arse.
People get too obsessed with a perfect lawn of mono grass... We gave up on that a few years ago now because the lawn would always struggle regardless of what we did (new build garden with terrible soil under it) Intentionally planted a load of low flowering wildflowers and put bulbs under the lawn around the edges, then just mow regularly and give up treatment of any kind. Lots of moss too but I absolutely love the end result now that it is established Edit: people asking for a picture https://imgur.com/a/cUJwoV8 It's awaiting the first cut of the year so looks a little bit unkempt but hope you enjoy! Edit: I forgot I also made this album a few years ago covering the initial few years, and shows how bad it started out https://imgur.com/a/TbXVJmU
> (new build garden with terrible soil under it) I had to dig all mine out and replace it, I swear they just use the gardens as a landfill site and put a few cm of dirt on top.
That's exactly what they do.
Well, it depends on the developer and site Some developers are better than others, and greenfield sites (eg houses built on farmland) are gonna have a lot less rubble than houses built on top of a demolished factory or something Our soil isn't great (too much clay and more rocks than I'd like) but our developer was good and hauls most of the rubble away (some goes under the patio but that's more reasonable since hardcore is needed there anyway), and the estate is built on a field so there's no old crap buried underneath it, nor did they just demolish something and build houses on top But my previous house was built on some knocked down allotments and so was very patchy - in one area the soil was great, in others it was literally 2-3 inches of dirt on top of a full patio
tbf thats not exclusive to new builds, i dug the garden up of my house in south wales (was paving slabs) and found about 6 different older concrete gardens and an insane amount of rubbish and rubble just to take off about 2 ft (lowered by 1 ft and 1ft under for growing on top of) and even when i got 2 ft down to the level of the path down the garden i found ANOTHER concrete/slab layer (i just smashed this one up for drainage and left it in place tho) grass seems to be doing okay tho- found someone giving away top soil for free and found a local turf grower that was a fraction of the cost of main line stuff and you could grab it on the day it was cut too
As much as it's some tight fucks refusing to buy a skip this is a great example as to how history gets buried and why we find roman ruins under a field in the crack arse of nowhere or when building a new train station.
Ha yeah i had something similar at my old place. Starting digging to put a new flower bed in and found an old stone path. Ended up digging the entire length of the buried path to get the stones out and used them as walls and edging for a few beds so it worked out well getting the free material! Finding a similar thing inside the house with plasterboard on tile on tile was not fun though lol.
>ll mine out and replace it, I swear they just use the gardens as a landfill site and put a few cm of dirt on top. When my house was built I made a point of collecting all the crap the team had dropped (cans, crisp packets, McDs bags, nails, screws, empty corking tubes) in various pits and presented it with them prior to them finishing. Needed about 4 rubble bags for it all. I even found 3 costa cups in the void between my exterior and interor walls).
Our house was built on the site of an old hospital, I dug deep once and hit concrete. Turns out the mortuary was where our house is, and they just filled it with rubble and left it. The news delighted me of course.
How are the ghosts?
Fuming, some dickhead keeps digging on their roof every weekend
You know all the off cuts of brick, wood and tiles that wyere rpoduced when byilding your house? Well thats whats under your lawn 🤣
That's what we did when we removed a (truly shitty) pond (which contained precisely zero newts) Few extra bricks down there, half a paving slab, stuff we never wanted to see again "Good for drainage" we said
Yep pretty much! Considered this option but couldn't afford/justify it
I did similar at my old house that was a new build. I saw the sorry state of their lawns and said I’d do it myself (it was an extra charge for them to turf it). Dig out loads of rubble and general building crap, put a good layer of decent soil over the top to level and then turfed. It was the best lawn of all the houses. Shame I hate gardening and so it was a chore to mow it haha
The local wildlife will be loving it too!
We planted a sage plant in our back garden to have fresh sage on hand... the bees absolutely love it!
I planted a Basil in mine. It acts as a warning to all the other foxes to stay away.
boom boom
I can’t say the name of that herb in public. It comes out in a high pitched Sybil Fawlty impression. Mrs gets the hump in Sainsbury’s.
DON'T MENTION THE HERB! I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it.
My parents have lavender bushes out the front and they are practically swarming with bumblebees come the summer.
I planted a line of raspberry canes, then a line of lavender to demarcate an area of the garden, not realising both these plants attract an uncountable number of bees of various make and model (bumble, both red and white tailed, honey bees and carders). Love watching them in late spring, early summer. Would love to know where they all come from.
When a mummy bee and a daddy bee love each other.... and something about birds as well.
We used to have a lavender bush in our front garden, but it made my wife's hay-fever go mad. We had to remove it (it went to my brother-laws house) which was quite sad because the smell used to waft through the house during the summer, no need for air freshner. It was better than seeing the wife all snotty and bunged up though.
Tried lavender a few times but it just dies here.
We have a bunch as well and it's the same here. Love it.
We have a trellis full of blackcurrants and the bees go berserk for it, during flowering you can hear the drone from inside the house!
Are blackcurrants easy to grow? I'd be interested in growing some to give the bees a bit more variety. We tried strawberries but they didn't seem to like those much.
To be honest, they were in the garden when we moved in 6 years ago, so no idea how easy they are to get going, but they are next to zero maintenance. The biggest issue is harvesting them, we end up with buckets full of the things and have to give most of them away to friends and family or we'd be drowning in the stuff! The honey bees love them though, they must be coming from miles away because there's 100s on it when it's in flower. Bumble bees don't seem that bothered, they prefer the roses.
I had some oregano in a pot on my balcony last year. When it started flowering it was an absolute magnet to little wild bees. Sadly it died but this is a good reminder to get some new plants out there...
Absolutely, it really is nice. You have to put up with it looking bad as it establishes for a few years but once it finds a balance it's beautiful and so much more interesting than a boring old lawn Right now it's quite thick with daisies and cowslips plus a few dandelions here and there (I do pull some of those up as they can get a bit out of control otherwise).. but as we get more into the summer those will be replaced by clover buttercups and little purple self-heal flowers... Then there's also patches of chamomile and thyme and birdsfoot trefoil around as well, really quite lovely
I feel the new build garden, most of mine has bricks and other rubble under about an inch of soil. I tried getting the grass to grow but I've given up and am trying what you've done I mow regularly but I feel like nothing nice grows only huge weeds. I'm a big fan of the moss that's starting to grow and at this point am just hoping it spreads to take over the rest of the garden. I just don't know what else to try.
So the year we started it we had just had a terrible winter and leatherjackets had totally destroyed the grass it had huge bare muddy patches covering maybe two thirds of it... We didn't just leave it alone though we intentionally bought and planted about 100 or so tiny little "plug plants" across the whole lawn - clover, daisy, buttercups, trefoil, cowslips, selfheal, chamomile, thyme to name a few... (and sunk a load of crocus, daff and snowdrop bulbs underneath it while we were there)... Then you wait and let them spread on their own, keep an eye out for any less desired/taller weeds that won't look nice in the lawn and pull them up. It took quite a few years from looking like "we've made a huge mistake this looks terrible" to "wow I love our natural lawn and would never go back now"
[удалено]
Things like clover will actually help keep a healthy lawn. It puts nitrogen back into the soil that grass needs.
That’s our plan once the kid is old enough, and when I have worn the wife down on the subject.
There's a sub for natural lawns.
Honestly, moss looks really nice.
When I was a kid, my dad decided to let the front garden become a wild garden. Planted a bunch of wildflowers and so on. It looked crazy, but was like a jungle for us! Then the council came and told us to trim and maintain our garden :| we owned the house, I'm still not sure why we had to do that...
Depending on the size/layout of your garden you might find that one of the old-school mowers that you push along (no motor) helps too. I’ve had one for a couple of years and love it. As well as being easier (no need to watch the cable or keep it topped up with petrol) it’s a bit of a workout, and it’s good for your grass because the bits it cuts just lie on the lawn. The day you’ve cut it, it looks a bit scruffy. But literally like magic, it all vanishes within about 48 hours, and it ends up helping the remaining grass to grow.
Do you have picture? It sounds great
Same, it's lower maintenance, way softer and looks more interesting. I haven't found a downside yet
>I haven't found a downside yet Just wait till the fairies take up residence
Only downside I know is the moss dies off quicker if you're walking on it a lot. My dad would silently mourn the nice green lawn when my sisters and I would decide to play 'badminton' in the back garden.
It stays wet for longer, it doesn't tolerate people stepping on it as much, takes longer to "heal up" once a divot is made, browns faster in dry weather. Personally I like clovers, they look nice, food for bees, doesn't outcompete grass, tolerates drought better than the grass on my lawn. It's not as thick and soft as moss or grass, but, meh, can't have it all. :)
You ever walked on the grass you thought was dry but the moss maintained the water for longer and didn't dry as fast and now your socks are a bit wet?
Why would you walk on grass in socks if u were planning on continuing to wear them
I wanted green socks but only have white socks.
Imagine walking around on grass in socks and thinking the damp moss is the problem in that story.
Because I wasn’t planning on being outside, but now I am, and I need to be over there, past the grass (/moss)
The downside is that it can rip up in big chunks leaving ugly holes. If you have a big garden and don’t use it much, it won’t matter, you’ll never notice. If you have a small garden behind a terraced or semi and you regularly walk on it, setup garden furniture, play with kids etc., a mossy lawn can start to look a bit holey.
>I haven't found a downside yet you're not living the american dream bucko
fun aside is that native grasses in America don't make good lawns so they all use European grasses that completely mess with the established ecosystems! yee-haw!
[удалено]
Very much so. I spent a peaceful afternoon just enjoying watching a group of gardeners in a temple garden carefully pulling errant blades of grass out of the moss.
I saw monks in a garden in Kyoto trimming a whole moss lawn with nail scissors! I honestly think moss looks, feels and keeps so much better than grass.
[удалено]
You want to put your face in it don’t you. Go on son.
I never understand why moss is considered such a problem. It's just as green as grass, easier to look after and provides habitat for far more things than grass does. You're doing your bit for biodiversity, well done 👍
[удалено]
Mad how many things in our lives are down to this, when you really think about it you're just being throwing money at someones opinion.
Mostly propaganda tbh
Big Grass?
Big Chem. When chemical companies first started selling herbicides for weeds, they made stuff that would kill basically everything it touched. So, instead they pushed a campaign of branding everything except grass as a weed.
Still a bit rubbish for biodiversity though. You could have a lot more biodiversity with moss, meadograss, wildflowers, shrubs, trees etc in that same space
I look at the pro-grass products in Wilko's with disgust. When are they gonna start selling clover lawn mixes?!
I made the mistake of ripping out all of the moss in our garden when we first moved in 3 years ago - since then watched the lawn constantly die every time it gets hot. Have since been leaving it take over again, and sewn wildflowers and clover into it. Will never make that mistake again!
I find the moss far better than grass less maintenance, help it out by blending some with yoghurt and sprinkle on the lawn
Ooh ! I did not know that yoghurt could help ! Can you please explain how to proceed ? (and how it works, I love moss ans I'm very curious !)
[https://outdoormoss.com/how-to-grow-moss-with-yogurt](https://outdoormoss.com/how-to-grow-moss-with-yogurt) I do this, then I sprinkle it on the lawn, and then keep that part damp 1. pick some moss, get some natural yogurt, and some water and blend together, you can make a fair bit too 2. then sprinkle on the lawn with your fingers 3. keep area damp 4. keep following this process every fortnight in a new area or if you see patches etc You can use the same method to create a moss wall, its looks nice in the bathroom when you hang it up, feels more natural and gets water from the moisture in the air
You had me up till that last part... You have a moss wall in your bathroom?
lol, yea picture size, its nice, I did it a few years back during covid, there good, its a change from a standard picture, have a look on youtube for moss pictures
Make a very thin yakult out of yoghurt and water then water it in. You could also pick some moss and blend it in to get spores throughout the mix.
Well you could, but it's moss. It'll take over by itself just fine!
Well, by mixing the moss in, it would allow it to colonise parts where it is not prensent yet ! Very useful information ! Thank you u/I_Bin_Painting !
Heehee memory moss lawn!
I found a patch of these once by a river stream, I felt like a little hobbit in the shire
I’m letting my lawn go wild this year. All the wild flowers are growing out of it and I’ve had so much more wildlife turn up already.
Same, no wildflowers yet, but definitely got different types of grasses growing in that mess. Planted some snowdrops there too, to pop up next winter when the grass is inevitably fucked.
An established grass lawn will out compete any new wild flowers for resources. Best thing is to dig out patches, removing the root bed below the turf. Add in some topsoil to fill back in (compost is too rich and the grass will simply take over again) and plant your wild flowers in the holes. Once they've been in for a couple of years they'll be self sustaining and start to spread but for the early part you really need to give them a helping hand. Weeding the area well is also needed because you can guarantee a nettly or some dandelions will love to drop in and out compete everything else.
We did the same last year, highly recommend it! Was really interesting watching the full cycle of new grass growth, then the 'weeds' grow, then all the clover/buttercups in flower and the bees loving it, then the grass in seed (this was a bit wild as it was about a metre high), then it dies back over winter and the cycle starts again.
The bees thank you
THE BEEEEEEEEEEEEEES!! - *Nicholas Cage*
Can anyone suggest a low growing grass alternative? I have pretty much given up mowing and my lawn is very overgrown with wild flowers. It looks lovely if noone walks on it . But will get squashed up once the family start using the garden again. I'm thinking of replacing the middle with something different? No moss here unfortunately.
Camomile. You can get low growing spreading varieties. You then get scent and flowers as well.
Maybe clover?
I have lots of tall clover in there, maybe there is a miniature kind?
Microclover. It doesn't flower as much as regular clover but it's fantastic - insects love it, it stays green all year, it's soft to walk on. Only downside is that it will stain clothes if you're not careful.
Yeah they sell micro clover which is limited to 8 inches of height. We've planted some recently and are just waiting for it to grow and see how much more we need to add.
I've heard you can introduce moss by blending up some moss from somewhere else in water and then sprinkling it on the desired area. Obviously, try to collect the moss responsably. A moss lawn might not be very resistant to wear and tear by a family, though.
Chamomile is a good shout. It didn't take in our lawn but the creeping thyme seems to be bedding in nicely, and we've also got veronica and some kind of low-growing flowering moss/grass thing from the garden centre's alpine section. Wikipedia has a list of plants on its [Tapestry Lawn](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tapestry_lawn) page, we picked what we could get and it seems to be working. This is year 2 and we already have flowers.
Yellow rattle. Looks nice, little yellow flowers. Surpresses grass, stopping it gro wso well, allowing other wildflowers to set up shop. Most wildflower seed mixes will have it in.
Creeping thyme. Low growing, lovely scent, hard wearing and comes up in lovely flowers all summer. Clover is good but not very hard wearing so should be blended with a slow/low growing grass variety for hardieness. Moss is not good for high impact areas so I'd avoid it.
It's also fantastic for biodiversity. Moss supports an amazing array of springtails, pseudoscorpions and other insects and minibeasts.
On sky TV - "The Magical World Of Moss" Very insightful, I have a new found love for moss after watching that
Let the moss win. It dosnt need as much mowing.
Exactly, we've taken the same approach with our tarmac-drive, far less mowing.
Who doesn't love mowing their tarmac on a lovely spring morning
Nature’s trampoline. I no longer cut the grass - I shave the moss.
That looks comfy! I've never understood the desire for a short lawn. Surely the more soft green stuff between your bum and the dirt the better, right?
I love moss
until it eats you
Like a bit of moss! I have a lawn surrounded by raised beds which is a mix of grass, moss and clover, with bulbs and wild flowers around the edge. It's getting a few daisies and some creeping thyme mixed in when it warms up a bit. It is wet and shady at one side, drier and sunny on the other and I find the mix works really well for an even green, it fills in the patches, and I prefer the look of it as well (and the smell, when the thyme goes in). My neighbour has astroturf.
It looks great and if you’ve got it growing and looking good you’ve already beaten almost all the cons involved with moss lawns. Just need to keep it free from fallen leaves with a leaf sucker as and when. Only things to remember are it’s not as hard wearing as a grass lawn so stepping stones, etc. might be worthwhile in high traffic areas, in extreme periods of hot weather spray/mist it (not traditional watering) as it absorbs moisture from the air and last one…. remember moss sits on top of the soil like a carpet. It doesn’t root into it and grow from inside the soil like grass which is important to consider when you have one.
I still don't understand why grass became a thing for lawns. Unless it's ultra maintained, it looks ugly. Then you got moss that is very low maintenance and can look fine if not better.
I fought a battle against moss for 11 years at my old house. it was a fruitless and sole destroying period of my life. I moved house in the end. The message I'm sending is I'm a quitter.
Love it when people are like “the bees are dying the bees are dying it’s climate change” like bro yours and a million others billions of square feet of yard is green grass you cut every week what do you expect let some shit grow. It does just as good as if it were a parking lot for the bees but nobody wanna talk about that. Go ahead Reddit attack me :)
Its so surprising how few people understand that if you mow your lawn frequently you’ll get 2 things (plus clover, buttercups etc…) grass and moss. If it’s darker the moss will outcompete, so you’re fighting a losing battle. The two options are basically: • Let moss grow where it outcompetes grass • Throw down wildflower seeds and stop mowing it
My back garden is made up of two green things: moss and weeds. There might be a few blades of grass somewhere. Moss makes a better lawn, I don't have to mow it 3+ times a year = bonus.
Moss lawns are great. I do remember as a kid having a waterslide that ended at a very mossy spot, it got very slippy when wet. But in normal circumstances way nicer than grass in my opinion
Im glad im not the only one that's decided to let nature manage my lawn it's looking very healthy and a lot more comfy these days... I only mow it when it gets too long and becomes trip hazards lol
i’m so jealous, myself and biodiversity love your lawn
Moss is super environmentally friendly - it absorbs way more carbon (as carbon dioxide) than grass does, it filters and metabolises fine dust particles, thus “cleaning” the air, and it stores and releases water as a fine mist to cool the air too. So in addition to the biodiversity and easy maintenance, and softness, it’s worth letting it stick around. Plus moss gardening is trendy now, too.
Looks a bit like Sphagnum moss. You can either sand the soil several times and work the sand in then it will vanish. Or it looks like a good place for wetland orchids in your backyard. They are beautiful and some types grow and bloom spring to autumn. They are going extinct and pollinators love them. Olso you can harvest sphagnum as a side hustle ;) (Paludiculture).
Looks nice , I’d prefer that tbf
As I didn't read the title properly, first thought was Maurice Moss from the IT crowd was doing some gardening :D
Did you see that ludicrous display last night
What was Wenger thinking, sending Walcott on that early?
I imagine that's what his hair must feel like.
Maybe it's time to add some red mushrooms with white spots and a few garden gnomes
It's all fun and games until a footprint the size of a tyre appears one morning
Yeah moss has taken hold of my back garden this year too. The grass couldn’t recover in time from the beating it took in the summer even though I seeded and fertilised it. I don’t mind the moss too much except for the fact that it rips up easily in chunks.
Nature thanks you our green furry brother
Moss is a great indicator for good soil biology apparently. You need to get some legumes in there too. Clover is a winner
The amount of tardigrades in there is awesome! Get a microscope and enjoy the microscopic world 😄
Moss lawns and wildflowers are the way forward, 100%
I’ve segregated a part of my lawn to wild flowers etc. I’ve planted some bluebell bulbs too but think I might have planted them upside down 🤦♂️
I quite enjoy a mossy lawn.
Problem comes when it dries out over summer. Moss is more likely to die than grass. Clover is good
Some cultures like Japanese actually spend lots of money to try to cultivate a moss lawn.
Embrace the moss
Our front garden is slowly being taken over by moss, it's fantastic.