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Gardening

Find tips and tricks to make your garden or allotment flourish on our Gardening forum.

Wildflower advice

38 replies

MummaPI · 05/06/2021 20:22

Hi
I'm a very amateur gardener who has found such pleasure in gardening during the pandemic. I have an area I would love to plant wildflowers and am after any tips please!
Which flowers? Seeds or plants? Bit of both?
We have stripped the area and raked it over and taking out any grasses or weeds that appear at the moment.
Thanks!

OP posts:
Purplewithred · 05/06/2021 20:26

Wildflowers are harder to garden than you think. They are very dependent on site/soil and how/when you cut them or manage them, especially annuals. Definitely consult a specialist for advice - plantlife.love-wildflowers.org.uk/wildflower_garden is a good place to start

passenger19 · 05/06/2021 20:27

I did this with seeds.make sure your mix has yellow rattle in..It helps kill off grass

ErrolTheDragon · 06/06/2021 09:23

Agree it does depend a lot on the site and soil, and whether you're mostly thinking of summer or more throughout the year.

I'd want year-round not just summer annuals, glorious as they are.
So (depending on the location) I'd plant some snowdrops (at the start of next year, in the green), perhaps some celandines, wild-type narcissi, definitely primroses, cowslips, maybe violets, wood anemones. Then moving through the year, I'd probably sow some red campion and herb Robert (and then in perpetuity have to weed out most of it as they self seed rampantly in garden soilGrin).
Then Welsh poppies, fox and Cubs and other knapweeds, meadow cranesbill....

Lots more, basically I'd think about what delights me when I'm out walking through the year and see if it would work.

MereDintofPandiculation · 06/06/2021 12:03

@passenger19

I did this with seeds.make sure your mix has yellow rattle in..It helps kill off grass
She's already killed the grass - the yellow rattle won't have anything to feed on and will not thrive.
MereDintofPandiculation · 06/06/2021 12:25

With the exception of the Welsh poppies, everything Errol talks about are perennials which will grow in grassland. Which means you can mow it in autumn but otherwise leave it to its own devices. I've done that in my garden. I have snowdrops, wild daffodils, primroses, cowslips, species crocus, species tulips (they don't look like the usual florists tulips, much tinier, with open flowers), snakes head fritillary, lady smock for spring, then for summer meadow cranesbill, hedge cranesbill, shining cranesbill, common vetch, bush vetch, meadow vetchling, birds foot trefoil, melancholy thistle (no prickles), red and white clover, catsear, self heal, daisies, hoary plantain, creeping buttercup, meadow buttercup, greater burnet, white campion. The self heal, daisies and white clover prefer the path through which I mow every week or so, the rest are happy in the long grass. Some of them are chosen to be specific to my location - damp clay, partially shaded.

It would be easier to have a separate "spring meadow", to be mowed regularly from end May onwards, and a "hay pasture", "grazed" (ie mowed) till end May, then the stock kept out (stop mowing) till you take the hay cut in July/August, then mow again. The important thing is to keep the fertility low, because the grass can use high fertility levels more effectively than the flowers you want to encourage. So it's more important to cut the grass at peak growth, before it starts sending its energy back down into the roots or rotting back into the soil, than it is to wait for the flowers to seed - they're perennials, so they'll still come up next year. And when you do cut, be sure to remove the cuttings.

Alternatively you can emulate a cornfield, with annuals that need clear ground to germinate. You'd have to clear the plot every winter and keep it weed free, then either let the seeds in the soil germinate in spring, or buy a fresh packet. For a truly wild plot you'd use cornflower (the blue wild form), corn marigold, corn cockle, corn chamomile, poppy.

If you're less purist and just want the wildflower effect, you could sow any mixed annuals. Councils use mixes that commonly include non-natives like Phacelia, Californian poppy, Cosmos. "Bee friendly" selections would give the same effect.

If you're still with me, sorry for the length!

MummaPI · 06/06/2021 22:17

These are all so helpful, thank you to everyone!

OP posts:
ErrolTheDragon · 06/06/2021 22:38

I meant to mention foxgloves. I've never had any luck growing them from packet seed, but having bought a few small plants, they've then self seeded so now I get lots appearing all over the place. Fortunately they don't mind being transplanted.

Ihaventgottimeforthis · 06/06/2021 22:45

We're establishing a wild grassland in our lawn - oxeye daisies, knapweed, wild carrot, red clover, birds foot trefoil, yellow rattle (I wish), yarrow & whatever else arrives naturally - cats ear, speedwell etc
A more colourful 'pictorial meadow' would need annual cultivation, for things like poppies, cornflower, corn marigold etc.
In my view a year round grass-based meadow is much better for wildlife & easier to do, even if it's not as colourful.
Any idea what 'weeds' & grasses you killed?
Weeds are wonderful native wildflowers...

Ifkip · 06/06/2021 22:51

We put in wildflower turf last year for an instant effect. Very pleased with the outcome. The rest of the lawn we've left to grow for two years now (rewilding) and some interesting plants coming up, including fox gloves, rag worth, red campion and lots I need to find the names of.

Wildflower advice
Ifkip · 06/06/2021 22:53

Sorry, not really advise as such, except to say the turf was good for the instant effect.

AlwaysLatte · 06/06/2021 22:59

Following! I spent hours and hours completely clearing an area of grass and weeds, raking it, lovingly sowing huge amounts of wildflower grass/seed mix and loads of other packets of poppies, nigell, cornflower, you name it. And watered it in very well. This was 2 years ago. Our result is very long grass that looks like we can't be bothered, a few daisies and two marigolds that we didn't plant there. We're going to get it strimmed and then mow it but go around any flowers that might miraculously pop up.

MummaPI · 06/06/2021 23:08

@Ihaventgottimeforthis

We're establishing a wild grassland in our lawn - oxeye daisies, knapweed, wild carrot, red clover, birds foot trefoil, yellow rattle (I wish), yarrow & whatever else arrives naturally - cats ear, speedwell etc A more colourful 'pictorial meadow' would need annual cultivation, for things like poppies, cornflower, corn marigold etc. In my view a year round grass-based meadow is much better for wildlife & easier to do, even if it's not as colourful. Any idea what 'weeds' & grasses you killed? Weeds are wonderful native wildflowers...
Haven't 'killed' anything, just dug out and raked over the section of our lawn that we intend to use.
OP posts:
KingdomScrolls · 06/06/2021 23:17

I just bought packets of wildflower seeds/bee friendly varieties scattered and watered well, did similar in a shady corner under a tree with varieties more suited to that and they've taken off like wild fire, problem is after year one they're everywhere, between patio slabs, alongside the drive, in most of the neighbours' gardens.... I blame birds and wind. We do also live in the South East and get a lot of sunshine. I can plant tomatoes, peppers, chillies, cucumber from seed in pots and straight outside no greenhouse. So that probably helps.

nimbuscloud · 06/06/2021 23:20

Plant native species
The last thing you want to do is introduce alien invasive ones

Ihaventgottimeforthis · 07/06/2021 00:08

Ah OK - one approach could then be to just let it do its thing & see what arrives naturally? Would be really interesting to monitor progress.
Or an 80/20 grass & flower mix.

MereDintofPandiculation · 07/06/2021 08:46

Haven't 'killed' anything, just dug out and raked over the section of our lawn that we intend to use. I think she was saying, in a not so gentle way, that the lawn itself will contain a mixture of grasses with different flowers, and its own selection of wildflowers. known to lawn enthusiasts as "weeds", and would could have formed the basis of a wild flower meadow.

MereDintofPandiculation · 07/06/2021 08:53

@Ihaventgottimeforthis

Ah OK - one approach could then be to just let it do its thing & see what arrives naturally? Would be really interesting to monitor progress. Or an 80/20 grass & flower mix.
That's a really good approach, because you get the microvarieties native to the area. It doesn't work very well if the soil fertility is too high (as it will be if you've been feeding your lawn for years) - grass is really well adapted to make use of high nutrient soils and crowd everything out. You need to reduce the nutrient levels to have success with wild flowers.

In terms of grasses my "lawn" produced meadow grass, bent, cocksfoot, crested dogs tail, false oat, Yorkshire Fog, perennial rye grass, sweet vernal and foxtail. At least two of those have no place in a lawn mix and suggest to me that my Victorian house has never had a lawn laid, the successive owners have simply mowed the grass of the field that it was built on.

BarkingUpTheWrongRoseBush · 07/06/2021 10:28

I did this last year on a patch of ground that we'd dug over an raked. I tipped, quite heavily, a box of wildflower seed over it - an annual mix, that I got from a reputable on line supplier.

it was beautiful and kept on going till the first frosts. It was probably about this time of year I did it. Maybe a week earlier. It worked really well.

It was really beautiful. I just wanted a one year thing to allow me to leave that bit of the garden alone till I had time to deal with it and plant it up.

I've put a bed there now and sown cornflowers and poppies in among the perennials I'm establishing.

BarkingUpTheWrongRoseBush · 07/06/2021 10:29

Oh and permanent wildflower areas are quite hard to not have just as a bit of a mess - plug plants are good to buy.

ErrolTheDragon · 07/06/2021 10:44

grass is really well adapted to make use of high nutrient soils and crowd everything out. You need to reduce the nutrient levels to have success with wild flowers.

That's where the yellow rattle comes in useful.

In normal times I do some volunteering on a local nature reserve. There's some rough grassland which is managed by cutting down brambles, and strimming and raking in the autumn. There's been some addition of plug plants and natives grown from seed gathered elsewhere on the site - eg fox and Cubs, mallow, cranesbills... I've forgotten what else.

The strimming and raking is quite laborious on largish areas but makes a big difference in keeping it open and letting the wildflowers, both what was there anyway plus the additions, thrive.

harridan50 · 07/06/2021 10:45

Look at bee bombs they have been successfull in my garden

MummaPI · 07/06/2021 13:00

@MereDintofPandiculation

Haven't 'killed' anything, just dug out and raked over the section of our lawn that we intend to use. I think she was saying, in a not so gentle way, that the lawn itself will contain a mixture of grasses with different flowers, and its own selection of wildflowers. known to lawn enthusiasts as "weeds", and would could have formed the basis of a wild flower meadow.
Yes I guessed that 😀 it's purely grass, a lawn, nothing growing in it. I donhave a rogue flower under my tree that I'm leaving though, plant app says its a banana tree! 🤣 I don't have a lot of luck with those apps+
OP posts:
1Dandelion1 · 08/06/2021 08:46

Over the last few years I have been replacing our lawn with pollinator friendly wild flowers including daisys, white and red clover, wild violets, speedwell, self heal, wild thyme and wild strawberries.

I did cheat and buy plugs from Naturescape.

Ihaventgottimeforthis · 08/06/2021 22:46

My other not-so-gentle advice 😁 is to manage your own expectations (it's taken a few years for me to be pleased with the diversity & display of my natural garden, I wanted things to just get a move on!); to ignore any mutters from neighbours about 'untidiness' ; and to spend some time just observing & watching your garden up close. Once you start to see what wildlife visits & loves your garden, especially the tiny secretive insects & the flowers that independently make their own way to your wildlife oasis, you understand it, fall in love with it & then get very protective of it & obsessive over watching how it changes & evolves throughout the seasons & years.
Best of luck, I hope it brings you joy 😊

Wildwood6 · 09/06/2021 14:26

Just to add a few of our neighbours have tried this over the last few years, they initially tried with seed but seem to have much more success with plug plants, and they're now thriving. I would have naively assumed the plants would have sprung up like weeds from seed, but as @Purplewithred mentioned they can be trickier than you'd think. Luckily there seems to lots of online companies now specialising in wild flowers that seem to provide both seed and plug plants depending on your preference.

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