Best wildflower mix?

[veneeroftheyear]

Our lawn has huge bald patches and instead of seeding with grass seed I'm thinking of sowing a wildflower meadow instead while we work out what to do with the garden long term. Which wildflower mixes are best? I know some contain some plants that can be a big thuggish. Sarah Raven seed mix has poor reviews. Any recommendations?

Hiya, you might have already bought your seeds but if not I would recommend:
Emorsgate
Boston seeds
Plant wild (also do plug plants)
Habitat aid
Meadow mat (if you want the quick option.)
And wildflowerlawnsandmeadows.com who are more expensive but do some good mixes including low growing flowering lawns, and mixes which contain orchids. Mine are taking really well.

Wildflowers don't like high nutrient soil and cant compete with vigorous rye grass, so even if you have bald patches it would be a good idea to scrape off the top layer of soil before seeding. People often don't bother with this step and then get disappointing results.

A lot of the "meadow" mixes you can buy from garden centres either contain non-natives or are mostly made up of corn flower annuals. These are colourful things like poppies but they will only grow for one year. The thug species tend to be things like teasle which you're more like to find in the "bird and bee" flower mixes, or in seed "bombs".

For a permenant meadow you need species perennials like black medic, salad burnet, wild tyme, self heal and birds foot trefoil - all which will tolerate some mowing and grow fairly low. You can buy 80/20 mixes with both sweet grasses and wildflowers. I've also found the specialist online suppliers to be much better value in terms of volume of seed.

Wildflower meadows are often much more difficult to manage than grass, for all the reasons @Cluelessasacucumber says above. Do you know what’s causing your grass to be such a mess?

I've used Boston seeds before and been very pleased .

Thanks for the recommendations - I hadn't realised there were replies! It certainly sounds like I might underestimating the work involved. We're planning on a garden overhaul at some point soon so it doesn't need to be a long term thing as I think we'll probably lose the lawn soon in favour of larger beds. I'll investigate your suggestions.