Wild flower turf

[Speedqueen2]

Has anyone laid wild flower turf in their garden and how did it turn out? We have a biggish lawn with 5 or 6 fruit trees/flowering cherries and I'd love to turn that area into a wild flower garden. Trouble is it's about 65 square metres so think it'll be v expensive. Also, how much of a faff is it digging up & taking the top off the existing turn?

I’ve never heard of wildflower turf. Given that they prefer poorish soil wouldn’t it be easier to sow it from scratch rather than buying turf?

Digging up grass is hard work but needs to be done either way. Why not start with a small section and let it spread naturally as you remove the grass around it each year?

You can buy rolls of turf already planted up with a wildflower mix which contain all the right grasses that don't take over the wild flowers. Looks beautiful. Reading about it, I'm told that planting a wild flower meadow from seed is pretty difficult with quite a low success rate (& I'm not much of a gardener!)

We've tried from seed several times and largely failed - the grass grows up and over the little wildflowers. So a premixed turf sounds good...

Relaying 65sqm is a huuuuuuuge job! I'd suggest a wild patch as a first go, 2x3m or so, and see if it works.

We've planted a perennial wildflower meadow. It's about 200 sq metres so we couldn't afford the turf. It was an ENORMOUS amount of work to get it established and get control over the annual weeds. It's the third year and we're getting there. A friend spent 2k on turf and gave up on it after a couple of years.

I must admit, if I had my time again I'd buy lots of plug plants and bulbs, and plant them in the existing lawn, lots of crocuses, daffs, daisies and cowslips etc. Ours does look lovely (mostly) but I think that would be an easier option.

We used Pictorial Meadows,Woodland Edge among newish fruit trees. It's all quite high, but as the fertility drops each year it is getting lower and looking better. Some pics:

all the right grasses that don't take over the wild flowers Any grass will crowd out wildflowers if the nutrient levels are high. While some of our traditional wild flower meadows have been lost because they're been dug over and reseeded with fast growing grass, mainly they've been lost through addition of fertiliser. The key really is to get the nutrient level low when before you start.

Also be clear what you're going for - "cathyandclare's* meadow looks to be lowland, relatively damp grass, and is full of red campion, stitchwort, fox and cubs, foxgloves and giant bellflower on the woodland edge, daisies on the mown path -it's absolutely beautiful, but that's a very different mix than on a traditional Yorkshire haymeadow. And different again from the cornfield mix of cornflowers and poppies so often planted by Parks Departments (and don't get me started on "wildflower" meadows full of Phacelia and Cosmos).

I must admit, if I had my time again I'd buy lots of plug plants and bulbs, and plant them in the existing lawn, lots of crocuses, daffs, daisies and cowslips etc That approach works well with bulbs but plug plants are every bit as difficult as seed to get established, and more expensive. I've done two meadows that way and neither are entirely satisfactory. If I had my time again, I'd strip the turf completely and discard, taking the fertile top few inches of soil with it, and start again from seed.

More pictures of the plug plant approach in rather fertile soil:

I think the real answer is, creating a meadow is not something you do in a year. It's something that develops over several years under the right management.

I e seen it and it's also on garden rescue a lot but it's really expensive. I think a wildflower meadow seed mix might be better

I tried a wildflower mixture from B&Q last year in our raised vegetable bed. It looked fab for about a month or two; then a lot of the flowers faded, but it was hard to cut them / take them out without affecting the later flowering plants. The mixture also seemed to contain no grass seed at all. I have therefore decided to turn the bed back into a vegetable patch this year (I expect lots of weeding). It's harder than a normal lawn in my opinion, although it does look beautiful in nature.

I love your meadow @cathyandclare - just beautiful! Don't underestimate the amount of work establishing your meadow will take OP; I think stripping back the turf and removing the top soil as suggested upthread is the way forward. Definitely not for the faint-hearted if you've 65 sq m though...

Thanks for all your advice. And lovely photos. I've decided to listen to those of you saying 65 square metres is huge and I'm going to just but 8 metres or wild flower turf to surround our fruit trees/flowering cherries, then mow paths. I know I'm probably dreaming but I hope to create something similar to this!!

Hmm ... I wonder whether you'd be better to do it the other way round? Mow round the fruit trees and have wildflower patches elsewhere? Most of the wild flowers one associates with meadows are not shade lovers.

Bluebells would be good in the shade, along with primroses and anything else flowering before the leaf canopy is too dense.

For shade there is the obvious wood avens, red campion, stitchwort, possibly yellow archangel, and some of the speedwells - ivy leaved and germander do well in shade. There's a garden form of wood speedwell which also does well. And cow parsley.

As an alternative thought, I'm looking at a flowering lawn mix as an alternative. I think it's a mix by Scotia seeds. You mix until June and then get it grow/flower over the summer I'm hoping it'll be a lower maintenance option to establish because it is cut more than a meadow mix and contains more grass too.

Gah. Autocorrect doesn't like mowing. You mow it until June....

The standard flowering hay meadow method is to graze until end May, then shut up the field allowing both flowers and grass to grow. You take a hay cut after 15th July (this is the date specified in Higher Environmental Stewardship grants in the Yorkshire Dales) - flowers are still in full bloom - let the grass grow a bit, then let the animals back on to the "aftermath". A small amount of manure is applied t replace nutrients lost by removing the hay crop. This regime retains a rich mix of flowers.

In garden terms, this means give it an early mow up to end May- obviously you can't do this if you're also growing spring bulbs in there. Garden levels of nutrient are high to start with, so you won't want to add manure, you'll want to reduce nutrient levels (because the grass is better adapted to high nutrient levels than most of the flowers you want to encourage). Ideally you want to cut the grass at its peak, to remove a lot of nutrient before the grass starts to die back and return nutrient to its roots and to the soil, but that's also when it's looking at its best, so it's a compromise. You'll probably decide to cut in August or September. When you cut, take the cuttings away, don't leave them to rot in situ.