“I don’t know if it happens elsewhere, but in some parts of Auckland not mowing your grass verge is a thing. These grass verges are owned by the council but traditionally homeowners have willingly kept them mown – why wouldn’t you?”
The upshot of all this is that there are many un-mown grass verges which are actually quite attractive. While a lot of them are nothing but an overgrown mess, others develop into what are understated but attractive wildflower lawns – some examples of which are shown here.
The worst out-of-control messes are those where coarse tropical grasses like Kikuyu and paspalum dominate. Given a reasonable amount of summer rainfall (which we have had this year) these grow prolifically and without mowing you get what you can see in the photo below.
In the absence of those grasses, without mowing, attractive wildflower meadows can develop. These are a mixture of finer and less vigorous grasses such as browntop, fescue and ryegrass along with broadleaf “weeds.” Without mowing, the grasses and weeds produce flowers and seedheads and hence the wildflower meadows emerge. These grasses and broadleaf “weeds” naturally occur together in grassland meadows in Europe where these plants originated.
It is interesting that on the grass verges in Auckland, a relatively small number of broadleaf weeds dominate these accidental wildflower meadows. The main broadleaf weed species are:
- Narrow leaf plantain – very seldom broad-leafed plantain
- Hawksbeard and hawksbit (these are both members of the dandelion family but dandelion itself is not that common.)
- Oxeye daisy
- Red and white clover.
The plantain, dandelions and oxeye daisy are prolific seeders – without mowing they will flower and increase in numbers through seed production. The clovers are perennial, and they will increase more through natural spread than seed production.
Good examples of these natural wildflower meadows are generally found on reasonably low fertility soils which means that the grasses (especially coarse grasses) do not overgrow everything. The result is a balanced mixture of grasses and broadleaf wildflowers and the grass flowers and seed heads become part of the overall effect.
Click through for wildflower meadows
