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Praarda Graz, Styria
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Schools and verges

Schools and Verges

Both are the same job at different sizes: the right seed, the right ground, and patience.

A school meadow patch of 50 square metres in plan, 10 m by 5 m, with a mown path curving through it 10 m 5 m Mown path
Fig. 1 A 50 m² school patch with a mown path through it.

School Sowing Morning

€390 for up to 30 pupils. We bring the School Patch mix for 50 m², rakes, boards for pressing the seed in, and about two and a half hours of work. The ground is cleared before we arrive, by the caretaker or by us at €6 to €9 per m².

Mornings are booked at least 4 weeks ahead and run in April, May, September and October. We leave a mown path marked out so the patch can be walked through without being trampled.

A roadside verge in section: the road edge, a strip mown short beside it, the sown meadow beyond and a bank rising behind Road Mown short Sown meadow, cut once 1 m Turf strips on the steep bank
Fig. 2 A verge in section, with the safety strip and turf on the steep bank.

Verges and Banks

Every verge job starts with a survey and a written seed specification for €180, taken off any verge order over €1,500. The Styrian Verge mix is €98 per kg or €445 for a 5 kg sack, sown at 3 g per m², so one sack covers about 1,650 m².

A 1 m strip beside the road stays mown short for sight lines, and the meadow starts behind it. Where a bank is too steep to hold seed through a storm we lay turf for banks that won't hold seed. We travel up to 150 km for jobs over 1,000 m².

A Job I Still Drive Past

The one I still drive past on purpose is a school courtyard in the north of Graz. It was 60 m² of gravel and a dead lawn in 2019, and twenty-eight children raked it, sowed it and stamped it down in one wet October morning. The next June the caretaker sent me a photograph of a girl standing in knapweed up to her shoulders, and I have it pinned above the seed cleaner.

Theresa

What We Turn Down

  • Herbicide spraying to clear ground. We lift turf or smother it instead.
  • Clearing established scrub, hedge or old grassland to make room for a new meadow.
  • Artificial grass, in any form, for anyone.
  • Sites that will keep being mown every week.

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