Wildflowers? Not necessarily native

[bionicnemonic]

Hello...I have a patchy lawn...I’m not a fan of grass...and I’m thinking it would be nice to have a wildflower meadow instead...I’m thinking the cornflower and poppy variety like the council put in in the verges, rather than just the native species. A guardian letter suggested cutting the grass and flipping the turf over for the plants/seeds (which?!) to grow. I don’t have a monumental amount of time (who does!) but any suggestions? Also maybe some soft fruit? Thank you!

It sounds lovely, but will require maintenance:
www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?pid=446

Have you considered ground cover planting instead? Plants such as vinca look good all year round.

Ground cover sounds interesting...presumably they’d still attract insects...I’ll have a look-thank you all

Lots of ideas here

Thrift is very grasslike, full of pink and white Pom Pom flowers.

A wildflower meadow has grass - it's the definition of a meadow - a field of grass (and, formerly, perennial flowers) which is grown to produce a hay crop. You can strip off all your turf and plant a meadow mix, which will include grass. Or you can try buying plug plants and planting them in the grass, though this is less successful as there's a lot of competition from the grass.

What Councils often plant, and people call a "wildflower meadow", is a mix of annual flower seeds (often not even native). These annuals include cornflowers and poppies, and they are weeds of corn fields - in other words, as annuals, they need bare ground to germinate, so to keep them going successfully you have to dig over the plot every year.

The key thing is why is your lawn patchy? Is it shaded? Is it too damp? Too dry? - this will affect what you can grow there, There's no point replacing patchy lawn by a patchy planting of annuals, or a patchy round cover.

I did a “ cornfield mix” that contained no grass. It was poppies, corn flowers, corn cockles, and a couple of other things. Very like work, just cut it down to six inches in October.
Can’t remember where I got the seed mix in afraid, but I found it on the net so it must be googlable.