Wildflower patch

[Laurasanford111]

Hi all
Moved into a new house October had a generous grassy garden, at the back there is a patch of land with weed cover on, for this summer I wanted to use it as a wildflower patch. We hopefully will have raised beds added in at some point for those I've decided on cosmos, zinnia and cornflowers as I want flowers for cut and come again and bouquets, those flowers that I grow will be sown in greenhouse and planted out. For the wild patch I want seeds I can throw down and forget about, has anyone had any luck with them wildflower seed packets you buy and can recommend any? I'm fairly new to gardening, just want to throw them down and let them do thier thing and end up with wonderfulness! Haha thank you, also something that lasts most summer if poss

X

Wildflower meadows are notoriously hard work, which is why you dont see them everywhere all the time. That said, if you have a bare patch of earth you can get wildflower seed suitable for the location (how sunny etc) and you might get away with it for the first year.

it is hard to get the kind of beautiful meadow you see in movies. you need poor soil (so weeds don't grow) and cutting at the right time of year and several years for it to establish.

most patches of bare ground will rapidly be covered by nettles / thistles / bindweed / dandelions if you leave them untended. which is probably not what you want.

do try some of the seed packets, but keep your expectations low and be prepared to do some weeding.

it is hard to get the kind of beautiful meadow you see in movies. you need poor soil (so weeds don't grow) and cutting at the right time of year and several years for it to establish. Your reference to “cutting at the right time of year” suggests you are thinking of a genuine wildflower meadow (rather than those beds of cornfield annuals seen in so many LA plantings and referred to as a wildflower meadow). The poor soil isn’t so that weeds won’t establish, it’s because grass is better adapted to making use of rich soil - to allow the wild flowers to flourish, you handicap the grass by poor soil.

OP - what had you in mind? A grassy patch with wildflowers, or bare soil densely sown with flowers? Are you after actual UK wild flowers or just the appearance?

Botanically, there is no difference between wild flowers and weeds. A weed is just a plant growing where you don’t want it. If you are working on ecological grounds,you would simply manage to allow wild flowers to flourish, ie don’t apply fertiliser, cut less often, and take cuttings away to avoid them putting nutrient back into the ground. It’s long and patient work.

has anyone had any luck with them wildflower seed packets you buy

No, save your money

I agree with all the others, the idea that a wild weedy patch can be turned into a lovely pretty patch of wild flowers is a distant dream.

I would keep an eye on it this spring and summer, cut back any brambles, dandelions, willow herb and nettles, and stuff you don't want, then wait and see what else pops up. You might get some nice foxgloves and so on.

if you want a fairly wild looking patch that looks nice but doesn't need too much maintenance look into prairie style planting. You could put one or two grasses with a few flower species and it should just get on with it. It's quite fashionable so there's lots of information about it - keep it simple!

Enjoy your new garden!

a wild weedy patch is precisely a patch of wildflowers

@Laurasanford111 yes I have used those, I raked the soil as finely as I could and sowed several packets. They did come up with various levels of success, definitely didn't look like the photo of the packet!

But I had poppies and a couple of others.

It doesn't work like that. True wildflower meadows need very poor soil, otherwise grasses and things like dandelion, dock and creeping buttercup take over. It takes a lot of work to get it right and it's a long process.

A densely sown annual patch is much easier and very pretty - stuff like cosmos germinates well. Poppies are great too. Put some biennials in as well like foxgloves and aquilegia too.

I've had success with a grass & wildflower mix on a lawn patch - yarrow, oxeye daisy wild carrot, knapweed, trefoil clover, plantain etc. We've got poor soil and this was also a spot where some renovation rubble had been so when the rubble went, we raked over and sowed with the mix, approx 70/30 grass to wildflower ready mix off internet, somewhere like wiggly wigglers. Last summer was yr 4, it's still looking ok, but plantain & knapweed starting to dominate as well as cocksfoot so am going to scarify and overseed this spring. So it's not an amazing pictorial plot but a more natural grassy sward.
We give an early spring cut to knock back grass, then leave till late summer when again I strim it, leave cuttings for a few days then give a good rake over & remove material. Making hay, essentially, on 4 sq m!

You can plant yellow rattle, which is an attractive meadow flower in its own right. It's a hemiparasite on the roots of grasses, supposedly it weakens their growth and gives the other meadow flowers a bit of a march on them.

We've had free packets of wildflower seeds several times - in February you can sign up for some here growwild.kew.org/get-involved/seed-kits/apply#:~:text=Grow%20wildflowers%20with%20us!,%2C%20with%20beautiful%2C%20blooming%20colours.

or order some honey from Just Bee and get free seeds with it.

They dont look like the packets but we have had poppies, corncockle, cornflower, oxeye daisy. Acquilegia grows like a weed here so we have to remove some every year. We also have lots of wildflowers in what was once a lawn.

When you chuck them down scatter a bit of soil over them to discourage the birds from eating all of them and if it's dry sprinkle some water on.

I've tried to do this at my allotment and you wouldn't believe how many packets of those wildflower meadow seed packets I've scattered to no avail because the grass always goes back faster than the seeds can come up. If you've got thick grass and weeds then it's good fertile soil. You'd be better off clearing as much grass as you can and sowing some of those annual cutting flowers there too. Things like sweetpeas, phacelia and cornflowers don't need protecting in a greenhouse and will grow strongly in fertile soil. I've done this and also gone with lots of bulbs in my patch of soil like this, alliums, iris, camassia's and summer bulbs too like gladiolus and nerine which are easier to weed around, enjoy the fertile group and you can use them as cut flowers too.

I'm on my third year with my wildflower patch. Nothing much grew in year one but I had a decent amount of oxeye daisies and a few other various plants popping up. I have scattered wildflower seeds each year but have been more successful growing them in seed trays and transplanting out in late spring.

We had luck with wildflower seeds.

We had a bare bit of earth after intensive strumming and de weeding.

We bought giant box of wildflower seeds (think it was £24). Seeded area with two boxes in the end. Watered. Covered with netting as ducks were eating the seeds.

Several weeks, perhaps 5-6 weeks, later flowers appeared and lasted most of the summer. Ours was a generic wildflower mix.

It looked lovely, real mix of flowers, quite wild looking, not pristine.

We decided to do this, mostly because of the pollinators. I have an area with fruit trees. Our garden is north facing but because of the size,gets sun there,clay soil. Yes,most wild flowers want poor stoney soil,sun. I bought packets of seeds, the perennial plugs at £1each, this was about 8 years ago,then bought wildflower meadow turf, expensive,hired a turf cutter, removed turf, laid wildflower. A mix that is happy with our conditions. It still took 4 years to get going.I suppliment. With things like cornflowers grown from seed. Hardly any luck with red poppies. It also looks revolting in autumn when cut back. Never got one single yellow rattle to germinate.

I have a wild flower patch which I’ve found the hardest area in the garden to deal with. I find planting grown plants like aquilegia, stachy daisies, cornflowers, poppies, fox gloves, geraniums, anything tough and likely to survive works better.

plantain & knapweed starting to dominate Which plantain? I presume ribwort? I’ve managed to establish Greater Plantain, Plantago major, which is lovely as the flowers have long stamens giving a pink fuzz round the spike, and they’re scented!

Yes ribwort plantain and it's some sort of cultivated variety I assume so it's really really tall, like a good foot or two! Great for shooting games but not so visually appealing 😁

I had a spare patch where I had moved my hens from, so pretty well fertilized soil, I bought 2 boxes of polinator/meadow seeds from a supermarket and had a wonderful display last summer, cheered me up no end.

Thank you all so much for your ideas and experiences, I have decided to do the annuals I'm sowing in greenhouse and plant them out in spring instead, once the garden is more organised and established I may attempt a patch of wildflower when I have more time to commit to it

The bees desperately need dandelions early in the season; please reconsider eradication. They are lovely little flowers.

You can establish a pollinator garden in that patch, handily. Google for guidance local to your area.

forget me not are early flowering, seed easily and will feed the bees without dandelions.

They don't flower as early as dandelions.

I had a great wildflower patch but it was work! I covered the ground in biodegradable plastic to stop weeds etc. then grew the wildflower seeds in cardboard tubes (toilet rolls mainly) - once they had reached a certain size I cut holes in the plastic and planted the little plants (I removed them from the tubes as toilet rolls take a long time to degrade, if you made tubes from newspaper it would be easier). This gave them enough of a head start that they grew brilliantly. But it needs done every year as grass and weeds will dominate very quickly.

I collect the seeds each year for replanting

Slightly better picture - the patch was full of bees and butterflies from spring until late autumn

That's lovely, Chrysanthemum!

I did a huge patch of zinnias, cosmos, dill, etc & bees, butterflies, hummingbirds loved it.

They really adore the herb comfrey, and it grows prolifically.