September – the meadow

For much of the growing season, the meadow here at Gasper Cottage demands very little input. Its winding grass paths are the only part in need of attention, and even then nothing more than a weekly whizz round with the mower and occasional light sculpting of the edges. Not a foot is set on the vegetation itself: a rich, heady tapestry of long grass, wildflowers, and naturalistic perennials.

Once a year, however, this fuss-free feature veers to the other extreme of dominating the gardening schedule entirely. For a good week or two it is all the team think of, with the whole thing to cut back and clear in preparation for the following year. This annual process is a vital part of meadow management: without a cut, woody plants would naturally take over, turning the area at first into scrub and then eventually woodland. How the waste material is managed is also important. Removing it helps maintain the low soil fertility crucial to a successful meadow, whereas leaving it to decompose in situ would render the conditions too rich for most meadow plants.

While the need for an annual chop is irrefutable, the 'when' and 'how' are a little more up for debate. At Gasper, we aim to leave the process as late as we can, simply to squeeze as much enjoyment out of it as possible as well as ensuring plants have sufficient opportunity to set seed. Mid-September seems to be the latest we can get away with, beyond which the vegetation is simply too flopped over and in a state of decay to cut well.

There is still much to be enjoyed about the meadow well into September.

The 'how' is something Head Gardener Jack has been experimenting with for several years. Initially, the task was carried out by contractors who used a mechanical scythe on the open areas, and strimmers in the harder-to-reach spots beneath the fruit trees. While the results were fast, the machines were unpleasantly noisy and the shredded, strimmed material was time-consuming to rake and pick up.

Both Bella and Jack were keen to try a different approach, and so last year saw the introduction of traditional hand scything. With help and guidance from a local teacher, Jack and part-time gardener Katy used this bygone practice to cut the whole of the meadow.

Once widely manufactured in the UK, hand scythes can now only be sourced from overseas. These were shipped from Austria.

"Hand scything is less destructive to wildlife than machinery", explains Jack. "There's such a huge ecosystem living in the meadow – we've seen masses of shrews, toads, lizards, and all manner of insects and spiders. The slower pace gives them much more time to get out of harm's way".

This young toad is amongst the many creatures we've seen evacuate the long grass during the scything process.

It is also considerably better in environmental terms (emitting none of the noise or petrol fumes of its mechanical alternatives), and leaves the cut material in long, easy-to-gather pieces. There are drawbacks, however: namely how physically demanding and time consuming it is, particularly on a meadow left as late in the year as this. By September the vegetation has begun to flop; not, of course, helpfully in one uniform direction, but all over the place. This makes hand scything significantly more challenging – the efficient, repetitive, swinging action described in textbooks assumes an upright sward which can be sliced and moved through with ease. Not so here, each square metre to be hacked at from a variety of directions, often involving several fruitless, maddening swings of the scythe by which the blade merely strokes over the grass.

Collapsed, matted grass. Not a welcome sight to anyone wielding a hand scythe.

This year, Jack concluded the task was best treated as a multi-tool job. Despite its challenges, he felt hand scything remained the best option for trickier spots such as beneath the fruit trees and on any sloping, uneven ground. In the more open and flat sections, however, he conceded that a return to a mechanical scythe was the most sensible option.

Not only is this an awkward space, but one slight bump of the tree sees apples comically raining down on both scyther and scythe.

Nothing makes you more pleased to see a machine quite like several days of challenging scything.

In an attempt to mitigate harm to wildlife, the cuttings were raked into a line and left for several days to allow any remaining creatures time to disperse.

The waste material was then collected up and barrowed to a neighbouring field, where it was piled up for the local Estate Manager to scoop up and take away to a large scale compost area using his tractor and trailer .

The meadow was then given one final, finishing trim with 'The Titan', a beast of a mower designed for use on rough ground.

Hand shears were used to trim the last few whisps of grass around tree trunks, and so, the cutting of the meadow was finished for another year, allowing attention to return to the rest of the garden.

Job done.

Having said this, there will be a few more forays into the area before the year is out. Jack plans to rough up patches of soil with a scarifier to allow for the sowing of yellow rattle seeds (read about the way in which this benefits the meadow in May's blog post). He will also be planting a few new perennials divided from existing clumps elsewhere in the garden, and anticipates a handful of mows between now and March. The latter is to keep the area looking neat and prevent grasses from becoming dominant.

This annual cutting of the meadow is one of the most labour-intensive jobs in the gardening calendar here at Gasper Cottage, and is certainly a period in which no one involved has any trouble getting to sleep. While undeniably daunting at the outset, the finished job brings enormous satisfaction, as well as comfort in the knowledge there is a whole twelve months until it needs doing again!