Lawns - love them or loathe them?
21 June 2011
On Radio 4’s Today programme this morning (21 June) Colin Crosbie, Curator of RHS Garden Wisley, defended the idea that lawns have fallen out of fashion.
Colin, who was debating the subject with garden writer Sally Nex, said that although the space given to lawns in private gardens is decreasing, the RHS believes that grass is good. Sally, meanwhile gave lawns the thumbs down, preferring to plant wild flower meadows or shrubs in their place.
“Lawns are an important part of the garden,” said Colin on the programme. “We need them to be able to sit somewhere and enjoy our flowers and barbeques. And they needn’t be as high maintenance as people think. We are concerned with the trend to pave over lawns. We need to look at this development very carefully.”
The RHS recognises that the poor management of lawns may have negative environmental impacts. “Gardeners need to move away from the focus of keeping lawns green during periods of drought,” says Colin. “Watering lawns can take up large amounts of water which gardeners have to be careful of. There is actually no harm in letting your lawn dry up. The grass will go brown but soon greens up after a good rain shower.”
A mix of lawns and beds in the garden is an another way to encourage biodiversity. Some birds for example, such as blackbirds, prefer open spaces to look for worms and insects. And there are insects that find grass areas an ideal environment. However, this does tend to depend on how manicured the lawn is kept. Lawns left to grow taller encourage more insects than those that are kept very short.
“We mustn’t lose our lawns,” says Colin Crosbie. “But we also need to recognise that in the future there will be less space dedicated to this fantastic garden plant so we need to be clever in how we use grass to get maximum impact. Maybe planting a green roof on the garden shed with a mix of grass for example. Grass is good.”