What everyone's talking about this week: It's time to follow in the footsteps of King’s College, Cambridge, and kiss the lawnmower goodbye

Lawn and order

Although it may not have felt like it last week (rain, rain and more rain), the sixth driest spring on record and a succession of heatwaves have all but devastated our pastures.

Midsummer is usually prime time for hay yields, with conditions favourable to drying out grasses that are at their most nutritious following wetter months. Not so this year. ‘Livestock farmers are having to feed supplementary hay and concentrate feeds at a time when grass should be plentiful,’ explains Tom Vacher, a chartered surveyor and partner in his family farm in Somerset. ‘This will have a knock-on effect on farm cashflows and reduce stores of saved forage.’

Good news, however, for those of us too lazy to trim the back garden. In such unpredictable climes, the time has come to kiss the lawnmower goodbye. Those who had spent centuries pruning their land to achieve what Capability Brown set out as the blueprint for the English garden are already looking to new models. This includes the team at King’s College, Cambridge, where the once extensively manicured turf has been replaced by a lush, majestic meadow. The first wildflower seeds were sown there in 2018, in one of many such rewilding efforts in Britain to counter what some conservationists had foretold as ‘insectageddon’. The impact on biodiversity has been astonishing. Bats in the college gardens have increased threefold and invertebrates by 25 times.

Far from an institutional anomaly, the meadow is also proving a popular alternative for country homes where fields might once have recalled the set of a period drama, but are now more akin to the Serengeti. The weather has reinvented how we approach the grass altogether — no longer something to domesticate, but alongside which to be carefree. A little foraging; a little frolic.

The lawn is something of an English leitmotif, key to the development of staples such as croquet, tennis, cricket, even picnics. You might argue that taming the grass has been a cultural cornerstone for so long that letting it grow unkempt would prove existential. Pity the fool who underestimates our knack for improvisation. No picnic blanket? No matter: here’s a trestle table.

How the tables turn

As ever, when a certain word falls foul of the zeitgeist, another rises inexplicably from the ashes. The current victor of the lingo wars is ‘fusion food’, a phrase that once conjured the image of an unqualified chef blending nonsensical flavours and is nowadays a byword for the hottest table in town.

Recently, that table would have been at Claridge’s in London, where Hrishikesh Desai, patron chef at Farlam Hall in Cumbria, infused classic dishes with the flavours of his Indian childhood for the latest chapter of the hotel’s Kitchen Supper Series. The menu darted from reconstructed olives, encased in a sphere of chocolate that melted in your mouth to reveal a Noccorella purée, to poolish bread served with a trompe-l’oeil chilli butter, melded into the shape of a green pepper (above). Today’s fusion food is the apotheosis of culinary skill and makes a case for more artistry — and fun — in the kitchen. It’s got my vote.

Anyone for tea-smoked lamb chops? Head to Soho, where Fulham’s favourite restaurant, Freak Scene, has just launched a pop-up on Wardour Street. Highlights from the menu by chef Scott Hallsworth, a Nobu alum, include a grilled unagi and foie gras roll along with a selection of bespoke sakés.

Down the road on Rupert Street, chef Dom Fernando has launched a residency at Paradise. Running until the end of August, Miris Y Maíz uses British ingredients to innovate the popular fusion of South Asian and Mexican street food. Think tacos filled with paneer cheese (from buffalo milk, of course) and coconut-braised beef brisket served with calamansi and mole, a Mexican sauce that blends dried chilies, nuts and chocolate.