Wildflower seeds

[gracelessladyhottramp]

I want to plant up a really beautiful wildflower meadow area in my garden. You know the type that you might see on a roundabout or a town verge and the colours take your breath away? Last year I was paralysed by indecision and left it far too late to plant.

Has anyone got any good recommendations?

It must have poppies and cornflowers and ideally daisies (and not bulked out by grasses in the mix).

I've tried Sarah Raven in the past and was a bit underwhelmed. Plus I'll need quite a lot of seed so something I can buy in bulk at a good price would be a plus!!

www.meadowmania.co.uk/wild-flower-meadow.htm

Have used these before. Good results and can buy by type if you want. Their mixes are good too.

I have a meadow area at the bottom of the garden and have tried both meadow turf and seeds. The meadow turf has been brilliant as a long metre-wide strip in front of the rather underwhelming area that I planted with seeds. I think the turf arrived at the beginning of April and by mid May looked brilliant. It also looked great in its second summer, hopefully it will this year too. The area behind that I planted with a Sarah Raven meadow mix looked quite nice, but had fewer flowers and didn’t have the same diversity of species or density. I might buy some wildflower plug plants to perk it up, but then it could easily end up being as expensive as the turf was (about £20 per square metre).

@Scampersaur

I have a meadow area at the bottom of the garden and have tried both meadow turf and seeds. The meadow turf has been brilliant as a long metre-wide strip in front of the rather underwhelming area that I planted with seeds. I think the turf arrived at the beginning of April and by mid May looked brilliant. It also looked great in its second summer, hopefully it will this year too. The area behind that I planted with a Sarah Raven meadow mix looked quite nice, but had fewer flowers and didn’t have the same diversity of species or density. I might buy some wildflower plug plants to perk it up, but then it could easily end up being as expensive as the turf was (about £20 per square metre).

Ohh. That sounds promising!! Where was the turf from? Thanks!!

Thanks @WowOoo. I hadn't come across that site before and it looks quite good value too.

I used Turfonline, but I don’t think that I had any particular reason to choose them. They cut the turf into individual metre squares, which were rolled up and delivered on a pallet. Each metre square was pretty heavy to carry. It was fun to see so many healthy centipedes and other bugs that accidentally made the trip with the turf, it made it seem all the more wild and meadow-like!

@Scampersaur I'll definitely check that out. Coming in turf feels a bit more fail safe!! Thank you!

It must have poppies and cornflowers and ideally daisies (and not bulked out by grasses in the mix). That's not actually a meadow. Poppies and cornflowers are flowers of arable land, wanting clear soil to germinate and relying on being ploughed every year. Meadows are permanent grassland so most of the plants are perennial, not relying on an annual seed set.

Just to complicate matters, some "meadow" mixes include cornflowers and poppies etc to give a bit of "whoomph" in the first year, with the expectation that they'll die out in the next couple of years as the perennials get their act together and start flowering.

Not particularly relevant to OP, but may be of interest to other people reading.

@Scampersaur Assuming you are managing the meadow areas to maintain a low fertility and removing the "arisings" when you mow - you could try collecting the hay from your diverse meadow and spread it on the less diverse meadow. This is how they're restoring wildflower rich hay meadows in the Yorkshire Dales and elsewhere. There's a downloadable leaflet on restoring hay meadows on the Haytime Project web site www.yorkshiredales.org.uk/about/wildlife/projects/hay-time-project/

@MereDintofPandiculation thank you so much for taking the time to reply. It's so obvious that arable and meadowland are different but somehow it hadn't occurred to me before reading your post.

Could I do poppies and cornflowers and then rotivate it and put new seed down every year or would that be a fools errand?

Could I do poppies and cornflowers and then rotivate it and put new seed down every year or would that be a fools errand? No, that would be a very sensible way of maintaining that sort of mixture, and it would look fantastic. You could also add other (now rare) "arable weeds" such as corn marigold (yellow, long flowering season) and corncockle (pink). Go for ox-eye daisies rather than the usual lawn daisies.

Naturescape is a great company to get information, seeds and plants from.

I'd second the recommendation of Naturscape for plant plugs. Haven't used them for seed.