Skip The Mower, Aim for the Meadow.
“I chanced upon a bluebell glade as I strolled in the glen.
A field of dreams before me lay. I stopped a while, and then…”
No epic retelling of an exciting night ever starts with: “So, we were drinking some fruit juice…”
The same goes for stories about relaxing afternoons spent outside. Nobody says: “…then we stepped out into the formal garden with the perfect lawn and the kids were walking in straight lines, not engaging with anything…”
Lawns just aren’t romantic and they don’t inspire fantastical outdoor living. Meadows, filled with butterflies and wildflowers, on the other hand, do just that…
Get to 1000 hours
If you are a parent who spends any amount of time online, you’ll have heard about the concept of 1000 hours outside per year. Now this might sound undoable, but if you break that into daily doses its less than 3 hours a day. Luckily, we have great weather in SA which means it is perfectly fine to shoo the kiddos outside most of the year. Now, unless you have a full-blown Spur playground in your backyard, the kids might just get bored after the first 20 minutes.
Our solution to this is to go low key with your lawn (and summer garden in general).
Most children will, if you ignore the initial 5 minutes of moaning and groaning, find a way to entertain themselves in an open patch of nature. As long as that nature is inviting, and they can engage with it. If your garden is paved over, structured beyond measure and full of prickly hedges, poisonous plants and super delicate little flowerbeds, the kiddos and garden might not be a great mix. If, however, your garden is lower key and a bit wild, a healthy kid, who is herself a bit wild, can happily potter around for hours, making the most of all the messy mossy spots and thriving in imaginative play.
Leave the leaves
We have said this before but leave the leaves and banish the rakes and leaf blowers. Not only will you be saving time and energy, but also allowing the natural decomposition of foliage to feed important nutrients back into your soil. More than that, nothing gets a kid as excited as the prospect of running through a giant pile of leaves and rumble-tumbling down into them.
Don’t mind the mud
Another all-important part of outdoor play, is getting messy. It’s a known fact that sticking your hands into earth, like you would while gardening, actually acts as a natural mood lifter and reduces anxiety. Plants can heal, but so can dirt. First prize would be to get planting with your kiddo, but if this isn’t possible or sustainable, set up a mud kitchen. This can be as basic or elaborate as time, budget and space allows. The ultimate is to have a workbench, a water source and numerous containers and old kitchen tools that can help your kids be imaginative, messy and happy.
Lawns suck. (Well, mowing, weeding and overseeding them sucks.)
Finally, and here we get back to our initial story – why not go all out and practice lawn meadow-fication. Making your lawn a meadow is a great way to instantly boost your ecological standing and get that great view from the moral high ground, as well as save time and money on traditional lawn care and treatments. Even if you’re not into having your entire lawn become a meadow, create a space that you allow to go wild. It might take more than one season for your lawn to grow into itself, but soon enough you’ll have a fresh supply of dandelions and whimsy.
Not just for parents.
We are not telling you to let your whole garden go to seed, but stepping back a bit from hyper formalized gardens and stressful garden care can be a great way to embrace sustainability, increase biodiversity, save the pollinators and allow yourself to sleep in on the weekends instead of mowing and weeding. 1000 hours outside is a necessity for kids, but grownups can benefit just as much from more relaxed, unscheduled outdoor time, and step one in achieving this is to put down the weed wacker.
If you need more convincing. Read on!
Benefits of wildlife gardening
Rewild your garden (But its is not just about letting everything go!)
Here are 5 tricks to give your garden and instant facelift.
