A Wildflower Meadow in Hampstead

The brief

A beautifully established Hampstead garden with mature trees, a proper rose border and the bones of somewhere loved for a long time. The lawn in the middle of it had stopped earning its keep. Cut weekly through the summer, thin and stressed by the drier years, and doing nothing for the pollinators the rest of the garden clearly welcomed. The owners wanted to hand that middle back to the wildlife without letting the garden slide into looking uncared for.

Our approach

Meadow turf rather than a lawn. Grown-on, ready-to-lay wildflower turf laid across the prepared ground, so the meadow arrives as a knitted-together mat rather than a wait for seed to take. Cut once or twice a year rather than weekly, mown paths where the family walks, and left to itself the rest of the time. Slower, quieter, and doing a job that lawn was never going to.

The build

A tight, sequenced job. Strip out the old lawn, prepare the ground properly, roll out the meadow turf in a single working session, then keep it watered through the first establishment window. The rest is patience: the meadow does the work itself once it is in.

The result

A garden that reads as considered rather than tidy. The meadow comes up through the summer in soft pinks and greens, sits comfortably next to the more formal rose border and cast-iron seating, and turns the middle of the garden into a working piece of habitat for insects, bees and birds. The owners have somewhere lovely to sit and something lovely to look at, and the whole space asks for a fraction of what a lawn would have.