No-Mow-May

May returns and “the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land”. Sadly, the voice of the lawnmower is more likely to be heard today, as the grasses, dandelions and daisies surge ahead, and normalising lawn management fires up again. A lawn is a meadow passed under the yoke of culture. For some people even a striped lawn is too wild, and they replace it with plastic green turf. All this ‘normalising’ comes at a cost to the diversity of living things which thrive in grassland. 

Grasses were invented by nature about 120 million years ago, though it is unlikely that dinosaurs ever rolled on a prairie. It would take 70 million years or more before grasses were prolific enough to carpet the ground, so the pleasure of rolling on a greensward belonged to browsing and grazing mammals of the early Tertiary epoch. Later, whole ecosystems such as savannah, steppe and pampas evolved as a joint project of mammals and grasses. Grazers such as aurochs are likely to have maintained forest clearings and floodplain grasslands in prehistoric Britain (Yalden 1999, p.72). Wrested from woodland and valley scrubland for the purpose of livestock farming, hay meadows and grazing pastures are a Neolithic creation (Rackham 1987, p.330). Sheep, cattle and horses need them, and we need these animals.  

The familiar British meadow has become a rarity, particularly in the lowlands where 90% of it has been lost in the past century (Lake et al, 2020, p152). Ploughed up in favour of arable or replaced by monocultural grass leys, too many old meadows and pastures have been deleted from the landscape and, along with them, the vibrant populations of herbs, insects, birds, mammals, fungi, et cetera,  which had thrived on them for many hundreds of years.

One place in Suffolk with long-established grassland was Brome Park. The Hall was built in Tudor times, about 1550, and an engraving dated 1707 shows the house surrounded by extensive parkland and trees. The Park survived until about 1963 after which it was converted to arable land. The only areas not ploughed up were the grounds of the Hall, its tree-lined avenue and a scrap of land attached to a cottage known as The Bungalow, which is where I have lived since 1992.

Brome Hall, illustrated by Jan Kip, 1707.
The site of the Bungalow is just out of the picture, beyond a pond and dovecote (far left).

At first I mowed the lawns assiduously, to keep on top of the vegetation in a drive for order. I was worried what the neighbours might think if I didn’t. Later, led by a mixture of laziness and botanical curiosity, I began to make a first cut much later in the season. I began leaving some areas of grass longer than others – frankly, I hadn’t the heart to mince up the flowers that began showing themselves. As years went by, the lawn began to lose its carpet-like quality and became more like a meadow, with a tussocky grass structure interleaved with a variety of other plants. Some patches were left longer than others, following a three-tier regime. I became aware of the diverse flora within my care. I noticed discrete populations in different parts of the lawn: stands of cocksfoot grass and common sorrel on brown soils contrasting with timothy grass, ground ivy and mosses on sandier soils.

Germander speedwell (Veronica chamaedrys), ground ivy (Glecoma hederacea) and creeping buttercup (Ranunculus repens) in a sward of springy turf moss (Rhytidiadelphus squarrosus), May 2022.

Germander speedwell (Veronica chamaedrys), ground ivy (Glecoma hederacea) and creeping buttercup (Ranunculus repens) in a sward of springy turf moss (Rhytidiadelphus squarrosus), May 2022.

Lady's smock (Cardamine pratensis) starring the lawn, with a large anthill (right), May 2022.

Twayblade orchid (Listera ovata), May 2022.

In 1999, I began making a list of as many species of plants and insects as I was able to recognise. I counted seven species of grass and two kinds of speedwell. I was amazed to find a twayblade orchid in one place and a spotted orchid in another; my lawnmower had never given them a chance to grow before. I found an incipient anthill beneath a plant pot, with yellow meadow ants scurrying about. I replaced the pot, and later discovered they had earthed up around it. This gave me the idea of encouraging anthills, of which I now have four – the largest is 30 cm high x 70 cm across. The lawn is now a texturally rich habitat: it may look a bit ragged and untidy in places but it now supports a much richer flora and fauna. In August I notice small moths flying up from the grasses round my feet. Frogs shelter beneath cool, matted tussocks, and voles forge a complicated network of tunnelled pathways. The spotted flycatcher swoops from a vantage point to snatch flying insects.  The green woodpecker bangs away at the ant hills. Rabbits scuff holes and leave scatterings of bare earth which are host for fresh seeds. Plumes of gnats dance overhead, sometimes following my head disconcertingly as I move about. 

Ant activity amid leaves of creeping cinquefoil (Potentilla reptans) and tufted vetch (Vicia cracca), May 2021.  

Having this meadow on my doorstep has transformed my engagement with and understanding of wildlife, particularly plants and insects. It has prompted photography, microscopy and the gathering of a small reference library. 

What I have done here is allow the inherent richness in this small corner of Suffolk to express itself. The diversity - the seven species of grasses, for example – is a legacy of the past, and argues for habitat continuity here. I didn’t plant them. I argue that my lawn is the final, biodiverse remnant of the old Brome Park which goes back to Tudor times, at least. The sward reminds me of old churchyards; it may never have been ploughed. None of the other land round here – not even the grounds of the Hall – is anything like so rich. I admit of having made additions to the garden over the past 30 years, for example alexanders, hyacinth, marjoram, lungwort, mahonia, box, magnolia, and – on the lawn – a clump of greater knapweed. I argued that none of these have modified the baseline plant population, which I think is an ancient one. I fear that when I leave here this little world will be endangered by someone who does not appreciate just what a special place it is.

Common sorrel (Rumex acetosa) and fading leaves of lesser celandine (Ficaria verna), May 2022.

My advice to gardeners is to stop mowing in May and see what comes up on your lawn. See what plant and animal diversity you already have – get to know and identify it, discover it close up; take macro photographs. If you find a monoculture then by all means diversify it, with native species chosen to typify a Suffolk meadow in your corner of the county. Someone in the future will thank you. Vary your mowing regime – I use a hand scythe in July to cut the longest grasses in the centre of the lawn while carving out swathes of different lengths in other parts with a petrol lawnmower. Sit back and note what happens. Give yourself a decadal timescale. Prepare to be surprised and delighted by what you find. Remember: it’s not all about ‘you’: the world is a fabric of other lives, from slugs to hedgehogs, frogs to daisies, and your lawn is part of the tapestry which makes theirs possible. Make space for nature, and remember that there is nowhere on Earth that we can take wildlife for granted any more. You have a scrap of our planet in your care.

A small hay meadow in the making - first growth of grasses Alopecurus pratensis, Arrenatherium elatius, Dactylis glomerata, Lolium perenne, Poa trivialis, Poa pratensis and others, May 2022

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REFERENCES

Lake, S. et al 2020. Britain’s Habitats. Princeton University Press.

Rackham, O. 1987. The History of the Countryside. J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd.

Yalden, D. 1999. The History of British Mammals. T & AD Poyser Ltd.

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Flat field - Ancient oak

22-4-2017

The parish of Bressingham (south Norfolk) is hardly a hilly place, but it does have 'upland' and 'lowland' areas. Its uplands are the gently rolling till plateau north of the A1066 turnpike; its lowlands are the flatlands of the Waveney valley lying south of the road. The one given over to clayland arable farming; the other to pasture and woodland on relict valley fenland.

Prof Tom Williamson (University of East Anglia) gave a walking talk today on the parish's cultural landscape history. The event was hosted by the fledgling Bressingham History Group, courtesy Linda Holly, and was enjoyable and well attended. I contributed a geological dimension to the discussions.

Apart from the congenial company, two features of the walk were outstanding.

Firstly, the view south from Fen Street. A long, narrow field - flat as a runway - leading the eye south towards woods known as Horse Fen and the hidden River Waveney. It looks a suitable pasture for sheep. The BGS map tell us this field is underlain by peat. If so, what we see today are the dried-out and shrinking remnants of the thick mattress of decayed swamp woodland and fen vegetation which has covered this land for most of the last 10,000 years. Our ancestors cut turf here and went wildfowling. According to Faden's map of 1797 it used to be part of Bressingham Fen. Today, drainage has reclaimed much of the the land for farming, and it is a remarkably flat expanse of pasture. It owes its long, thin shape to the historic pattern of 18th and 19th century enclosures in the Fen. This can be seen in the early 19th century tithe map. Four of the old fields have now been knocked into one.

Tithe map [1840s] courtesy Norfolk Heritage Explorer
http://historic-map.norfolk.gov.uk/mapexplorer/ 

Secondly, the view of an immense, ancient oak tree in a clayland meadow at Valley Farm.

The tree has a stalwart trunk and colossal boughs, and is as stag-headed as the horns of Herne. It must be over 500 years old, as Tom suggested. It is truly an ancient, Mediaeval being, worthy of veneration. I wonder when the crown began to die back. Perhaps the field was ploughed for agriculture in one of the World Wars? Nevertheless, I am impressed that the occupants of Valley Farm have come & gone over the centuries without significantly interfering with this extraordinary tree. I am reminded of the celebrated Winfarthing Oak, sited only a few miles away, once the largest in England, which finally died in the 20th century. What makes people preserve such trees rather than fell them for firewood?

Horse Fen field and the Valley Farm oak - the one smooth and the other craggy - are phenomena of the parish; both are products of human cultivation, and both have stories to tell about Norfolk's landscape history.

The South Hams

Unless you see it for yourself, it is hard to appreciate the level way the hill tops of the South Hams meet the Devon sky. Stopping my car between Malborough and Salcombe I see a flattish horizon lying around me: the hill tops mark the surface of a gently wavering plateau. Just a few gentle undulations here and there detract from the general impression of a broad concordance of summits in the countryside between Dartmoor and the coast.

You can only see this plateau landscape from high places; stand anywhere in between them and you will just see hills and valleys. Car drivers in the South Hams are forever climbing slopes or dipping into troughs - but summit views tell a wide and level story. In the same way, a trawler captain might rise to a wave top and see all crests forming a composite, flat horizon that belies the rising and falling of his little ship.

The high points include summits at East Prawle (443 m), Blackdown Rings at Loddiswell (580 m) and Stanborough Camp (700 m). Lying between them and the sea is a complex, rolling mass of lesser hills, slopes, valleys and coombes that form the physical heart of the South Hams. We should not forget the contribution made by the long, dendritic estuaries - the rias - that penetrate the land mass, where lower reaches of valleys such as the Erme and Dart have been drowned by the sea. These valleys continue inland and are fed by a welter of coombes scooped out of red-brown Devonian bedrock.

I have never understood the origins of this summit phenomenon. Old-time geographers talk about  peneplanation, suggesting that the landscape was planed off in the late Neogene period. My teenage mind's eye used to hold an image of an immense wave-cut platform uplifted and then dissected by rivers. That does not make sense. What about glaciation - have the summits been planed by ice sheets? There is no evidence that this landscape has suffered anything more than periglacial processes in the freezing hinterland beyond the southern limits of Pleistocene glaciation. The slopes and coombes are thickly bedded with frost-shattered debris, but not outwash gravels nor till - not even on Dartmoor. There remains the idea of subaerial erosion as the most plausible agent, set against a history of rising and falling land levels over millions of years.

The rocks underlying the South Hams are mostly of Lower Devonian age - mostly slates and mudstones, perhaps 410 million years old. You can see them everywhere in walls, or in rocky lanes.

Supposing the South Hams were an extremely ancient terrain, perhaps tens of millions of years old. Suppose an eroded landscape of Devonian rocks was once covered by the sea, buried in sediment and then uncovered - then perhaps buried again, then exhumed once more - and all the while the land levels and sea levels were rising and falling over immense stretches of time. The South Hams landscape may have been roofed and unroofed several times over, and what survives is a battered and extremely ancient relict terrain, now seen as a complex of flat summits, hills and coombes - over which farms and villages, woods and hedgerows have been laid out in the blink of an eye.

I cast my imagination 60 million years into the future. Like HG Wells' time traveller, I see the land and its wrinkled skin of green landscape blur and then dissolve.

What's left there is ocean. 

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