Extra floristic low flowering lawn turf with wild orchid seed

This is the most floristic and colourful lawn turf that you will come across. I have created it using my top selling ‘Low Flowering Lawn’ seed mix, with a few tweaks to make for a wonderful floral lawn turf. It is for creating a lawn you can mow and walk over yet still enjoy flowers. You regulate the height by the frequency of mowing. It is grown on a fully biodegradable plant fibre backing, not a mesh.

For details on how to manage my ‘Extra floristic low flowering lawn turf’ click here.

Turf management:

When you cut your turf take it down to between 1 to 2 inches high and always remove the cuttings. If your aim is to maximise flowering all season, maintain a mowing frequency of about one cut every 3 – 6 weeks for the majority of the summer (removing the cuttings). If you mow too regularly i.e. every week, then many of the flowers will not get a chance to bloom, although you will not kill the plants, you will not see much flowering. If you wish to maximise the flowering and wildlife benefits of your wild flower lawn once it is established, instead of mowing the whole lawn in one go, you can mow alternate halves every 3 weeks or more i.e. alternating which half of the lawn you cut each time. This will ensure that there are always flowers to view and for bees and butterflies to enjoy throughout the summer, as it can take a week or two for flowering to resume following each mowing, depending on how tight you cut it. The final cut of the year should be done shorter than 2 inches to leave the lawn quite tight and remove the cuttings to ensure good flowering resumes in the spring. It is important to remove leaf fall off the wild flower turf at the end of the year, using a leaf blower is the easiest method.

When the wild orchids start flowering (this will not be until 3 to 4 years after sowing, as they form an underground tuber first) you might want to mow round their lovely flowering spikes as they will only flower once each summer unlike the other species which will put up more flowers following mowing. Please note that the wild flowers in your lawn turf are perennial and come up year after year, they do not need to drop their seed to continue.

Turf weight: typical per m² 18kg or typical water saturated per m² 22kg

Approximate established height: between 3cm and 10cm – the height will be affected by your mowing frequency.

* I will send you my native Common Spotted Orchid seed separately to sow over the surface once the turf is laid (simple instructions will be included with the seed packet).