Wilding an English country garden

I’ve mentioned previously how I am creating “wild” patches in our front and back gardens to augment the presence of our wildlife pond. At the moment, the front is under the regime of NoMowSummer, not just NoMowMay (which helps nothing). Leaving it to go wild for the full summer means that all the invertebrates that are attracted early on by the wildflowers that emerge can benefit across their full lifecycle into the autumn. Soft-brome grass growing wild in our lawn, this seedhead has yellow specks of fungus on it, presumably a pathogenic species like Puccinia brachypodii Anyway, the back garden does get a bit of a mow, at the moment it’s far too hot to do that and there is lots of Couch Grass, Sorrel, Oxeye Daisy, Ragwort, and other species poking out of the lawn. One species I don’t think I’d noticed growing previously is Soft-brome, Bromus hordeaceus. It’s an annual or biennial grass and looks a little bit like a stumpy barley head. American readers might know it as bull grass, soft…