Wildflower garden area / meadow

[Gncq]

Hello gardeners,

I'm sad we've missed growing season, but very pleased we've finally bought a lovely house in Derbyshire with a decent sized garden. I'm planning for next year, feel like I have so much to learn.

The back end of the garden "tapers off" a bit past some trees, before it reaches the fields behind, and this area is the perfect size/shape (in my imagination) to have a wildflower area/meadow type thing.

I'm completely new to gardening, have only just learned the difference between annual and perrenial .

We'd like the meadow to flower over summer attracting pollinators, then over the winter to not just die back to a muddy area of nothing, but for nice long leafy grass to be there.

Perrenials sound to me like easier maintenence as you don't have to re-sew them each year, but can anyone help me out if i were to plant a 100℅ perennial mix like this one
www.wildflower.co.uk/wildflower-seed-mixtures/butterfly-and-bee/lwb-butterfly-bee-100.html
which contains poppy, foxglove, cornflower, borage, yarrow and sounds lovely, how is the area going to look in winter?

Do these plants completely die away or do they leave their leaves or stalks up or anything?

Can I plant long grass with these seeds as well or will that stop them growing?

The RHS website has some good info
www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?pid=436

If you have rich long grass growing and trees it might not be simple to make a wildflower meadow which depends on poor soil and open airy meadow. But I'm sure it will be possible to grow native flowers of some type.

That mixture isn't 100% perennial. Poppy and cornflower are annuals, requiring bare soil and no competition - they've presumably been added so you have something to look at in the first year (most perennials won't flower till the second year). Foxgloves are biennial - they'll overwinter as a rosette of leaves, flower the second year, then usually die. Their natural habitat is woodland clearings formed by fallen trees. I don't think the borage will take kindly to competition from grass.

If you want a "hay meadow" the regime is to mow ("graze") until May, then shut it up till July when you take your hay crop (the flowers won't have finished, but it's more important to get rid of the grass at its peak to reduce the fertility of the soil) , then mow again when the grass grows ("let the animals graze the aftermath"). In a garden context, you can leave the mowing till August but not much longer. Have a look at this site, which is about restoring northern hay meadows: www.ydmt.org/what-we-do/hay-time

If you're in Derbyshire and not in the fertile lowlands, you could try the patient approach of not mowing May-July, then mowing early August and taking the trimmings away, and see what grows from the seedbank you already have.

If it's short grass on dryish soil, and you want to go for seeds or plant plugs, you'd be looking at species like yarrow, self heal, yellow rattle (which is semi-parasitic on grass), birdsfoot trefoil. If the grass is longer and lusher, on damper soil, you could look at things like greater burnet, meadow cranesbill, field scabious, knapweed, meadow vetchling

This site is worth a look for ideas: www.naturescape.co.uk/

Going down this route, you could expect flowers from May until you mowed, then a few more growing back after the mow. In winter it'd just be grass - some perennials have rosettes of leaves in the winter, some die back to just roots.

You could always consider bulbs in spring (but then you wouldn't be able to do the spring cut) - native daffodils, non-native species crocus and tiny species tulips for example, also primroses and cowslips. Snakeshead fritillary if your soil is damper.

That's great, thanks

We have an area of wildflower meadow in a large open space but it takes a long time to establish IME. I actually made it a bit smaller this year since to buy enough seed to cover any decent sized "meadow" costs an absolute fortune.

We have loads of different tall grasses and then various wildflowers but a couple of years on and it definitely still looks more grasses than flowers. Be aware that its a perfect home for ticks. The grasshoppers also love it though.

If I was doing it again I'd be sure to dig up the whole area first (we had poor grass - mainly moss and sheep's sorrell with loads of bare patches and so were a bit lazy about this. We basically just chucked on loads of seed) and then make sure you have plenty of seed with a good amount of yellow rattle. I think its very difficult to make a meadow from a previously lawned area without yellow rattle.

If you have a problem with grasses you can try sowing yellow rattle annually in August to parisitize the grass, and keep the area well mown until April time, then let the yellow rattle do its thing.

We did this but in a more woodland-edge situation on clay soil. It's been tons of work but looks good now in year 3. We used a perennial Pictorial Meadow mix with no grass in it, because that was apparently better on rich soil. Lots of red campion, columbine, foxgloves, yarrow and honesty plus primroses, cowslips etc in the spring.

We stripped the grass, killed weeds and then planted. We had to hand-pull thousands of annual weeds which were obviously dormant in the soil and were activated when we rotivated/sowed etc.

It's full of bees, birds and butterflies which is great but it's much more high-maintenance with weed control than we expected. Good luck!!

We sowed a 100 per cent wildflower area from a seed mix from John Chambers. the website has a huge range of wildflower and grass mixes to choose from based on the area of the UK you live in, your soil conditions etc. Ours has done beautifully this year (sown in October last year) but we weren't sure it was going to do much, and suddenly it's come on leaps and bounds with a wonderful variety of flowers and so many insects! We had very poor soil however, as that area had been home to a few extremely large conifers that had sucked every nutrient imaginable and shaded it for years (we had them removed last year when we bought the house).

Do some reading over the winter, No Nettles Required is great and there are whole load of others. General idea is: be messy, have a pond or some water all year round, have flowers all year e.g. ivy for winter, don't get hung up on spring flowers, etc. Remember there are lots more bugs and creepy crawlies than butterflies and bees, and these bring other wildlife in, tussocky grass is really good. Good luck and enjoy!

Ahh these replies are so helpful.
Cathy that's gorgeous 😍

The area is sloped facing south, although it is surrounded by trees down two sides but the back leads to fields, so I'm thinking it should still get enough light/air?

The soil isnt very fertile i don't think, it's very "limestoney" most of the other flowers and plants are planted in raised beds. But i understood wildflowers were good in this type of soil?

So I gather is it best to completely strip away the lawn (and moss, there's a lot of moss) down to bare earth, then seed / plug?
How successful is trying to seed the lawn?

Thanks for the tips re yellow rattle, we'll add plenty.

We're really aiming to make it a good place for creepie crawlies and pollenators so agree wrt not getting too hung up on looks.

This is what we had, and this is what has grown now. The big brown patch in the back left was cleared in autumn and sown. And I took the photo of it yesterday! We've planted a native mixed hedge on two sides so far and spaced in some native trees too.

The soil isnt very fertile i don't think, it's very "limestoney" most of the other flowers and plants are planted in raised beds. Oh, that's great! That's exactly what you want!

So I gather is it best to completely strip away the lawn (and moss, there's a lot of moss) down to bare earth, then seed / plug? The idea is to remove the top 2-3 inches of very fertile soil and then re-seed. It depends how the lawn has been managed over the years - have they simply mown it, or have they been using "weed and feed"? Did they simply mow what was there or did they lay turf?

How successful is trying to seed the lawn? Not very. Though having said that, the way they're successfully regenerating flower rich hay meadows in the northern Dales is by taking hay from an established meadow and spreading it on the meadow they're trying to improve, so all the flower seeds can fall out.

Given that you've already got (hopefully poor) limestone soil, and you're not hung up on looks, I would start by simply not mowing, and seeing what you've actually got there. This would be the best for the creepy crawlies and pollinators - you'd have local flowers able to be exploited by the local invertebrates. Our local park stopped mowing the grass in one area about 10 years ago, and for the last 4 years they've had a colony of marsh orchids flowering so you have no idea what could pop up.

You could still add yellow rattle. See if a local farmer would let you collect some seed (they're coming into seed now). You can sow it straight away. It needs to be in contact with the ground, so move the moss/thatch away in little scrapes and put a few seeds in each. It'll then come up next year. It's an annual, so needs to regrow from seed every year.

Ours is quite chalky soil. We're on the edge of the Surrey Hills really. Regardless of what you sow, some plants will like the conditions better than others, and you will end up with something unique to your conditions that changes between the seasons, and year on year.

Habitat Aid has some useful info on their website about sowing wildflowers etc.

I agree about it being much more work than expected. Surprisingly the best seeds I found were in Lidl in a little box. I'm rethinking my area this year as it gets too much wind and just looks windswept all the time.

See if a local farmer would let you collect some seed
That's a good idea since wildflower seed is surprisingly expensive

I'm rethinking my area this year as it gets too much wind and just looks windswept all the time.
That's pat of the reason mine was reduced in size this year. I love it (as does the dog) but it does look windswept and messy until you've managed to get something really established like the lovely photos cathyandclare posted.

Mine looks a bit bedraggled and windswept too following the storms in the last day! We've been giving it a strim and removing the cuttings when it gets too wild- but it's a bit wet for that at the moment.