How to create a Moorish lawn with your own hands?

Blooming Moorish lawn: photo

The ideal Moorish lawn is a motley magical canvas composed of bright floral spots that merge into whimsical patterns.

Despite the popularity of classic lawns, striking in their perfection, gardeners around the world increasingly succumb to the charm of flower-covered lawns. Such lawns not only look spectacular, but also do not require constant maintenance, like ideal green areas.

Flowers and plants for a Moorish lawn

Blooming Moorish lawn: photo

The forbs of the Moorish lawn is quite old and comes from the Spanish-Saracenic traditional motifs that originated in the 7th-8th centuries. In addition to its undoubted beauty, this type of lawn has a number of other advantages, for example, a pleasant aroma that helps to attract living decorations - butterflies. Another plus of the Moorish lawn is its ease of maintenance.
The most common grains and flowers for the Moorish lawn, mixing, create a dense variegated carpet, fragrant and blooming throughout the season.

You can make your own Mauritanian lawn planting mix, but store mixes are balanced and have the correct proportions of grasses and flowering plants. This will prevent the formation of empty areas on the lawn after the end of the flowering period.

Having decided to make a mixture at home, you should adhere to the following proportions: classic forbs assumes 80% of cereals and 20% of flowers; annual lush lawns will require 70% flowering crops and 30% cereals.

In general, the list of plants suitable for creating a Mauritanian lawn includes several dozen varieties of cereals and flowering crops. So, the most common cereals are various types and varieties of fescue, meadow bluegrass, bent grass, sweet bison, lagurus, wheat grass.

Plants for the Moorish lawn are mainly represented by summer plants: calendula, sunflowers, chamomile, decorative flax, clover, cornflowers, poppy seeds, lupines, chrysanthemums, delphinium. Also, biennial crops are often included in the mixture for the Mauritanian lawn: daisies, forget-me-nots, night violets, mignonette, some species of mullein. Finally, the lack of annuals and biennials can be filled with perennial plants - yarrow, nivyanik, chicory, St. John's wort, perennial lupines.

Despite the dominance of annual crops in its composition, the Moorish lawn is a perennial lawn. After all, almost all crops that fill it can multiply by self-seeding and thus restore the flower-cereal cover annually in the new season.

Moorish lawn: technology of creation and cultivation

Compared to preparing the land for a classic green lawn, pre-cultivating the soil for a Moorish lawn is not as labor intensive.
Step-by-step instructions for preparing the soil:

• The soil is dug to a depth of about 20 cm.
• All weeds are removed along with roots and stones.
• The surface is leveled.
• Poor soils are fertilized with organic or mineral fertilizers; additional fertilization is not required on ordinary soils.
• The soil is compacted and watered abundantly.

The optimal time for planting a Moorish lawn is the first half of autumn or the second half of spring. Sowing in summer is not recommended.Experienced gardeners practice differentiated sowing of the Mauritanian lawn: cereal seeds are sown in autumn, and flowering plants in spring. But most hobbyists prefer standard simultaneous seeding.

Sowing is carried out at the rate of 5-10 g of seeds per 1 sq. M. The easiest way is to spread the seeds with a seeder, but manual sowing is also acceptable. To do this, you need to divide the territory of the lawn into equal areas and distribute the seeds over them. Then the sown seeds are covered with a rake and rolled or covered with soil. It will not be superfluous to create a shelter for crops from non-woven fabric.
It is necessary to prepare for an uneven emergence of seedlings - the interval can be up to 1 month. At first, young shoots need constant soil moisture until their height reaches 10 cm.

Diy Moorish lawn: video

Moorish lawn care

Unlike a classic lawn, a Moorish lawn requires completely different care principles. It does not need fertilization and regular mowing: in the first year, the lawn is mowed only three times (May, June, September), starting from the second year - twice. The first annual haircut occurs at the end of June, when the spring plants fade; the second - at the end of summer, when the seeds of summer-blooming grasses ripen. During the last mowing, the lawn should be mowed to a height of 5-8 cm and left to dry on the lawn for 3-4 days. This will allow the seeds of the plants to crumble and fall into the ground so that the lawn can be renewed next season.

Regular watering will not harm the Moorish lawn in landscaping, but the need for it comes only during dry periods. Annual aeration will also be required to improve air circulation in the soil. In the spring, it is necessary to clean the lawn from debris.

Moorish lawn: photo in landscape design