Rain, rain, please don't go away

Unlike George II, who was not a fan of the wet British summer, John Lewis-Stempel is delighted by an early-June morning deluge on the lush lawn

- John Lewis-Stempel

THREE fine days and a thunderstorm’ is how George II disparaged the British summer. I feel that the last monarch of these isles to be born outside them failed, probably congenitally, to appreciate the necessity of rain in the making of Britain as a green and lush land.

This morning, I dwelled on George’s mal mot, the study windows open, the front lawn burgeoning before me—a lawn watered not by a mains-connected sprinkler, but natural dense, divine rain. No false British modesty: our front lawn is a spectacle, a mini wildflower meadow, as riven with colour as if Allan Quatermain had reached into King Solomon’s treasure box and cast its jewels with mad, laughing abandon. The overnight deluge had made the lawn spangle and sparkle even more than usual.

It was my intention, after placing the advance order for hop roots (‘Prima Donna’, a dwarf variety, good for light bitter) via rural broadband (slow and good for little), to write this column extolling the loveliness, the eco-worthiness of lawn as substitute ‘mead’. In particular, I intended to debunk the fashionable fallacy that a uniform ‘no mow’ is the way to go, the belief that, in order to replicate a natural wildflower meadow, you simply stop mowing during spring and summer. A song thrush will not thank you for rank grass 3ft high, although a red admiral butterfly will positively applaud you for a bare patch where it can sunbathe. A really authentic mini wildflower meadow is a mosaic of habitats, with areas of short turf, exposed soil (such as you see around the gateway of a field), as well as the grass sufficiently long to hide a proverbial kicked football.