Wild boars ate my lawn, sort of
Our local wild boars (cinghiali) popped round recently for a bit of a party on my lawn.
10/6/20253 min read
One thing I’ve learned over my many years of living in an area heavily populated by wild animals is how smart they all are. They seem to have us completely figured out.
Sometimes feel as though we're living with our very own band of four-legged stalkers. If we go away for the weekend, the deer will know that we're not there and they'll be at the house immediately, chewing on our trees.
After many years of the deer damaging the trees, I started planting the same varieties that grow wild in the woods around us. It didn’t make any difference—I have the same beech, maple, hawthorn, wild cherry, wild plum, walnut, and pine that grow in the woods. But they still prefer mine. They must walk past hundreds of identical trees on their way up to my place, but they make the journey so they can chew on my trees instead.
It's sometimes hard not to take it all personally.
The most impressive of the local animals are the wild boars, or cinghiali in Italian. They are fascinating creatures. Unfortunately, they seem to have developed quite an interest in the grassy areas around the house.
Recently, the cinghiali decided to really make my day. And it’s not the first time.
We’ve been cultivating lawns around the houses for some years now—not because I particularly like lawn, but because putting in grass seemed like the easiest way to maintain the space and keep it neat and tidy while I was concentrating on building and renovation.
Honestly, I’m not a massive fan of lawns. They're expensive to keep up and not very good for the environment. Our old garden in London had not a blade of grass anywhere and I want to do something similar with the garden at La Rupina. The issue is that our London garden is a tiny fraction of the size of the one in Italy, so doing something different is going to be a big job. For now, it has to be lawn.
The first time the boars dug up our garden was three years ago, when they tore into the upper and lower lawns. That was quite a mess. The next year it was the same area, but not as bad, so we managed to tidy it up fairly quickly.
This year, though, they really made a good job of it. They started with the banks of the terracing in early August. I have to say, they were impressively organized—carefully following the line of the top and bottom of the bank, and systematically digging up the entire area for the whole length of one bank. No more, no less, and they missed nothing. These banks are big, about 3m high and roughly 100m long, so we're talking about a serious amount of work, and it was probably done in a single night.
Then in October, we were away, and I got a video from our neighbour showing the damage from their latest visit. I think the boars noticed the car was gone and thought, "Yeah, let’s go and dig it up—give him a nice surprise for when he comes back".
So why do they like my lawns so much that they come round each year and dig them up like this? The thing about cinghiali is that they are very focused and clever. They don’t do anything unless there’s a good reason for it.
First, there’s the obvious: short grass is easier to dig up and turn over than long grass, because taller plants have deeper roots. But it turns out there’s another reason. To keep the grass under control we use a ride-on mower set to the highest cut, and we recycle the grass cuttings by mulching them back into the lawn. This retains a lot of depth, the highest cut is about 100mm or 4 inches. Cutting the grass and mulching it in again like this adds lots of nutrients to the soil and maintains a wide variety of plants, which in turn support lots of bugs, above and below ground.
The bugs attract wildlife.
We get a lot of moles burrowing into the soil, looking for worms and others bugs, and we get big bright-green lizards above ground looking for their dinner in the grass. We also see slow worms and toads (who seem to like the wet weather) and there are plenty of grass snakes.
So it turns out our lawns have enough bugs for a substantial night’s feast—and that’s what keeps the boars coming back for more.
All I can say is they’d better enjoy it while it lasts. The building work is coming to an end, and when it does, the wild boars won’t be the only ones digging up the grass.
