Today’s tutorial tackles a very tricky subject indeed: the lawn. Because although a smooth green sward might look lively and healthy, lawns are often deserts for wildlife, demanding water, food and the removal of any flowering plants which might attract wildlife.

Not everyone is able to dig up their lawn and grow a prairie-style garden or a long meadow, though. Lots of gardeners have children who love a patch of grass to mess around on, and so today’s post will teach you how to manage your lawn so that it is truly green, as well as digging it up entirely.

Part 1: the radical method

If you think you can live without your lawn, then do. You can dig the whole thing up and plant beds brimming with flowers with paths winding between them. Imagine how interesting your garden could become, and how difficult it would be to discover it all at once if you had no lawn. You could do this in a formal way, like this potager, or in a wonderful, rambling way, like this garden. Try to replace the grass with as many plants as possible that attract wildlife.

Part 2: the meadow method

You can keep your grass, but turn it into a haven rather than a desert. Leave it to grow long, moving neat paths through it and round the edge for contrast and to make it clear you have designed the garden to be this way.

There are two ways to create a meadow:

1. The true meadow

This is when you allow a meadow to develop over years and years and years to become a true habitat for wild flora and fauna. Experts estimate that a fully-established wildflower meadow takes 100 years, but you can get instant results visually by a bit of strimming.

Select the area you want to leave as a meadow, and mow and strim the grassy areas at the boundaries to make it clear and well-defined. The contrast between the neat mown grass and the lush tall meadow is fantastic.

Now leave the grass to see what wildflowers appear naturally.

You can add wildflowers to your meadow yourself, but the important thing to do first is to look around at your local environment and see which flowers grow wild on grass verges and in any nearby fields. It’s a good idea to sow and grow those wildflowers which you can already see locally. Only sow native plants.

You can either over-sow the seeds of wildflowers (you’ll need to buy these as you cannot gather seeds from the wild) over the lawn once you have cut the grass very low and raked away the debris.

Or you can grow the seeds into young plants in plug trays, or buy plug plants. When you plant these into your lawn, try to do so in gentle drifts rather than dotting them around the lawn. Clear the area around each plant to ease competition while it establishes itself.

You will still need to mow your meadow. If the majority of your plants flower in the spring, then don’t mow until late summer. If you have a summer-flowering meadow, mow in spring up until May and leave until the autumn. In both cases, leave the hay on the meadow for a week or so, and then remove to compost. This ensures that seeds work their way from plants down into the soil, but does not increase the soil fertility.

Good meadow flowers include: Ox-eye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare), Cuckoo Flower (Cardamine pratensis), Poppy (Papaver rhoeas), Snake’s Head Fritillary (Fritillaria meleagris), Devil’s Bit Scabious (Succisa pratensis), Wild Daffodil (Narcissus pseudonarcissus), Meadow Cranesbill (Geranium pratense), Cowslip (Primula veris), and Red Campion (Silene dioica).

If you’re suffering from too much grass and too few flowers, sowing Yellow Rattle (Rhinanthus minor) will help as it is semi-parasitic on grass.

2. The pictorial meadow

This is an instant-impact meadow brimming with flowers. It is especially good for beneficial insects because of the amount of pollen and nectar available.

Clear your meadow area of all plants and weeds, then leave for a few weeks to hoe out any new seedlings that pop up. Then rake the soil down to a fine tilth and water well (watering before sowing stops the seeds being moved around too much).

You can use any seeds you want in a pictorial meadow. Poppies always look wonderful, as do cornflowers, Californian poppies and ox-eye daisies. Mix the seeds together with some soil in a bucket and then broadcast over the prepared soil at around 3g per square metre.

Part 3: keep the lawn and make it green

Lawns do have their place, and for many gardeners with children, it is near impossible to imagine life without a grassy space. There are many steps you can take to cut down the carbon footprint and water consumption of your lawn.

1. Cut out fertilisers and instead sow white clover amongst the grass. Do this whenever you need to seed new areas. The clover nurtures the grass through nitrogen-fixing nodules in its roots.

2. If you can, leave some weeds to flower in your lawn. You can uproot dandelions if you wish, but leave the daisies, buttercups and clovers to feed the bees.

3. Swap your petrol mower for a hand-pushed one, thus cutting out the fuel. If you really can’t stomach the idea of powering the mower yourself (it is good exercise), then switch to electric as this can be from cleaner energy sources (especially if you’ve switched your household electricity to a green energy firm such as Good Energy).

4. Raise the blades on  your mower so that you do not cut the grass so short each time. This means the lawn needs less water in the summer months.

5. Don’t panic if your grass goes a little golden in hot weeks. It’s one of the most resilient plants there is, and it will recover without you drenching it with a hose. To that end, stop using sprinkler hoses on your lawn. If you have to water it, give it a very good water with a hose that you carry yourself, no more than once a week at the very most.

These three options are ones that any gardener can handle. Choose which one you’ll pick and stick to it. Tell us in the comments which one you will go for: digging up the lawn, making a meadow, or making your existing lawn green.

That’s all for today. Tomorrow’s tutorial will teach you to stop using imported products and peat. Don’t forget to subscribe to our better gardener emails to get the next post delivered straight to your inbox.