Low growing lawn flowers

[whichwayiwonder]

I'm trying to create a flowery lawn which can be kept short (as opposed to wild flower meadow) so sowing Daisy (bellis perenis), clover and birdsfoot trefoil. Selfheal possibly. I've seen a tiny purpley blue flower in lawns before, does anyone know what it might be?

Eyebright?

Self-heal springs to mind for purple flowers, but you've already mentioned that. Achillea (Yarrow), fox and cubs and cats ear can grow well in lawns too, although they might not flower if mown too short.

Gentian?

Self heal is purpley blue, possibly one of the speedwells (Veronica agrestis or V chamaedrys) though they are truer blue.

My parents had an unintentional wildflower lawn (before the days of “weed and feed”) which was mowed regularly. The land was previously tennis courts, and they may have brought in fine turf from the Cotswolds. It had: daisy, white clover, black medick (like a tiny yellow clover), birds foot trefoil (clusters of small yellow sweet pea flowers) self heal, field woodrush (clusters of brown star shaped flowers with yellow pollen) hoary plantain (fragrant spikes with long pink stamens), germander speedwell (dark blue with a white eye). Time spent on that lawn as a small child learning all the flowers changed my life!

Oh, they had yarrow and mouse eared hawkweed too.

@MereDintofPandiculation my parents have a lawn like this too! If I didn't need to cover such a large area I'd ask to dig up a bit of it. It's absolute heaven to sit on, and so much more interesting than plain grass. Thank you.

Hoary plaintain...wildflowers have such brilliant names!

Thyme? Chamomile?

The dandelions seem very happy in my lawn.

I love Self heal, as mentioned by a pp speedwells are small and lovely in a lawn. Black medic is another good one. All can cope with being mowed.
Yarrow and Fox and cubs are taller and probably not so good in a short lawn.
I love Bugle in a lawn but it has taller flower spikes so you'd probably have to avoid mowing it at that time to get the full effect.

Our front lawn has
Selfheal
Lesser trefoil
Daisy
White clover
Buttercups
Cat’s ear
Dandelion
plantain
A lot of moss and not a lot of grass! Here it is last year.

(This was at the end of no mow May)

@BestIsWest that is so beautiful! I'm trying to achieve something similar but had to scalp off the rye grass, have put down a low grow mowable wildflower mix from wildflowerlawnsandmeadows.com. It coming up nicely

@BestIsWest Is that Cat’s ear? Flowers look very lemony, like Mouse ear hawkweed, or is that just the camera? I thought I could see the greyish leaves too.

Oh ! @MereDintofPandiculation I could well be wrong as I just went with what Google told me but they were about the same colour as dandelions in real life. It was actually July 2nd looking at the photo again.

Same colour as dandelions - probably cat's ear (in our area rough hawkbit and autumn hawkbit would also be contenders, and I think there's more down south). Fresher more lemony colour than dandelion mouse ear hawkweed.

There are too many dandelion-like Asteraceae to be able to rely on a plant app.

We’re in South Wales if that makes a difference.

Would also recommend violets :-)

@BestIsWest that is gorgeous. Do you still have flowers when it's mowed?

Whenever I Google any of these species in a lawn, eg 'Birdsfoot trefoil in lawn' the first few results are always on how to get rid of it. So weird and sad.

Camomile

This is such a lovely idea! You've inspired me to do the same. We've got builders in at the moment and the lawn is trashed. Now instead of reseeding with grass when they're gone I'm going to try and get some flowers in there. Think I've got a packet of clover seed somewhere...

thank you for this thread! I am doing a fair bit of earth moving in my garden, which is mostly not-lawn as described above, and was getting depressed at the idea of replacing all those lovely flowers with grass. Now thanks to this thread, I'm going to try to source some seed of the plants mentioned and re-seed with that.

Much nicer than grass.

@whichwayiwonder
To be honest I can’t remember! I know we did no-mow May last year but I don’t think we mowed until after this was taken in July last year. I guess the taller flowers must have gone. I remember that there were cuckoo flowers in May.
We’ve just mowed it this week for the first time this year but as there isn’t much actual grass there wasn’t much to take off.
We’ve just never put anything like weed killer on it - it’s all grown that way naturally, it’s very springy.
Unfortunately our back lawn grows grass a foot high and nothing else.

@CatherinedeBourgh ah that's nice. How much of an area are we talking? Our lawn is quite big, and recently reseeded after landscaping (last autumn) but needs overseeding as it's patchy. Normally this would be with more of the same grass seed but instead I'm going to use a mixture of some of these wildflower seeds - no more grass at all. Not proving as easy to source as I'd hoped though. I think I'll have to buy from different suppliers as can't find anyone that does all the ones I need. Now is good time to be doing it though.