By Colin Fernandez Environmental Correspondent
10:06 PM June 16, 2024, updated 10:09 PM June 16, 2024
- Monty Don has opposed the creation of a lawn at Longmeadow’s home in Herefordshire
- Don finally relented after watching his three grandchildren play outside
- He revealed that he was sowing grass grass at 30 grams per square meter for the lawn
Garden guru Monty Don has been opposing the installation of a lawn at his home in Longmeadow, Herefordshire, for years.
The 68-year-old has preferred to concentrate on vegetables and flowers rather than grass. All the greenery that is allowed to grow in his garden has long been beneficial to nature.
But Don finally relented after watching his three grandchildren playing outside and creating a lawn in an area known as the Long Walk.
He said: ‘We have had a very difficult winter and spring with the Long Walk as we used to have an avenue of clipped box cones, but the box suffered terribly last year from box blight. So we cleared the whole place out.”
He added: ‘And the whole point of the Long Walk has been, from day one, a tranquil, green space, separating the Cottage Garden on one side and the Jewel Garden on the other.
‘I want to preserve that feeling of the gap between two busy gardens. And after much discussion, we decided to build a lawn.”
Don, who shares his Tudor home in the village of Ivington, near Leominster, with wife of 40 years Sarah, told BBC2’s Gardeners’ World: ‘For years we haven’t really had a lawn here in Longmeadow.
“But I was watching my grandchildren play the other day, and I realized it was so beautiful to see them running up and down… just feeling comfortable that they didn’t have to bump into plants or hold off from them or not. That.’
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His grandchildren include five-year-old George, Daisy, three, and a third grandson born in August last year.
Don, who replaced Alan Titchmarsh as main presenter of Gardeners’ World in 2003, said he sowed turf – including ryegrass – at a weight of 30 grams per square meter.
He said the seed mix he uses contains “a deterrent” that tastes salty to birds so they aren’t tempted to eat it.
Last year the father of three said he wasn’t a fan of the kind of mowed lawn children play on.
He told Radio Times at the time: ‘Growing grass, which is after all quite a passive activity, is probably the most effective thing you can do in any garden of any size to encourage insect life especially, but also small gardens. mammals, invertebrates and reptiles.’
The horticulturist also said there was no need to keep lawns ‘striped and tidy’, suggesting it was just a ‘concern’.
He added: ‘Cutting grass burns a lot of fossil fuels, makes a nasty noise and is about the most damaging thing you can do to wildlife.’
…but will he try the ‘dead hedge’ trend?
It may look like a pile of sticks that you could ask the council to remove.
But ‘dead hedges’ – dead wood turned into an ornamental screen – help support wildlife and are a must-have for a stylish garden, says the Royal Horticultural Society.
The charity, along with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, is recommending gardeners to install a dead hedge, with the RHS taking over a large example from designer Sam Southgate in their Wisley garden in Surrey.
Mr Southgate, whose ‘The Nest’ took six months to build, said the benefits include shelter from wind and protection from privacy.
He said: ‘It should not be called a dead hedge. It is a life-giving hedge. It takes your garden to the next level for wildlife.”
The RSPB said dead hedgerows are ‘much harder on wildlife’ than a fence, and provide homes for robins, dunnocks and wrens, while frogs have been found living in the hedgerow at Wisley.