{"id":854,"date":"2019-07-01T15:24:26","date_gmt":"2019-07-01T14:24:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/overthehils.com\/?p=854"},"modified":"2019-07-01T15:24:26","modified_gmt":"2019-07-01T14:24:26","slug":"not-so-nice-stripey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/overthehils.com\/index.php\/2019\/07\/01\/not-so-nice-stripey\/","title":{"rendered":"Not so nice & stripey"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wimbledon is upon us and some focus has been given to the preparation of the grass courts; is it the lawn tennis court that inspires gardeners, big and small, to aim for that even, green, striped garden lawn?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m curious because I recently ruptured the ligament of the biceps in my right arm; to my friends\u2019 great amusement I did it trying to start my petrol lawnmower and then aggravated it by removing the cork from a bottle of red! So unable to use my arm at all for a few days and with the lawnmower locked in the garage for the foreseeable future, my lawn has been subjected to the two-week cutting regime. I don\u2019t feed or weed kill the garden lawn and so this regime has allowed the wild flowers to grow and flower.<\/p>\n

I have been amazed at how beautiful it looks and how much it frames the rest of the garden, providing a continuum of colour right across the garden space and not delineating flower beds from lawn; the dominant colours are the wonderful yellow and red of the birdsfoot trefoil, white and pink of the clovers and the deep purple of self-heal.<\/p>\n

It is a wonderful magic carpet which is alive with insect life. All of the plants mentioned above are bee-friendly and on closer examination there are several species of bee visiting my garden. It has aroused some interest from a friend of mine who is a Professor of Apiculture and so I find that I have a research project in my back garden. Who knew that injuring your arm could lead to such an interesting outcome?<\/p>\n

\"\"
Honey bee on white clover<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

However, it is a serious lesson in lawn management for me \u2013 forget the unnecessary expense and effort of lawn treatments and the enslavement of the once a week lawn cut. Forget the idea of having just a small \u201cnature corner\u201d but let nature take over your lawn and create your own meadow naturally. From my experience, I don\u2019t recommend the rupture of a ligament as a means to this end \u2013 just do it!<\/p>\n

\"\"
Daisies, hawksbit, cinquefoil, self-heal & clover<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wimbledon is upon us and some focus has been given to the preparation of the grass courts; is it the lawn tennis court that inspires gardeners, big and small, to aim for that even, green, striped garden lawn?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":855,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/overthehils.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/overthehils.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/overthehils.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/overthehils.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/overthehils.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=854"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/overthehils.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":863,"href":"https:\/\/overthehils.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/854\/revisions\/863"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/overthehils.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/overthehils.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/overthehils.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/overthehils.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}