Pretty clueless, how to do a wildflower border?

[Fran91]

Pretty clueless gardener, grass has been taken over by moss but will leave it as it is rather than attempt to re seed etc but want to create wildflower borders, tried last year and failed - think I did it when it was too hot / sunny so thinking of doing it soon. What do I need to do, dug the borders, removed any big weeds / stones and given it all a good turn over, do I need to top it with compost before sowing or am I missing something else?

says it all when I can’t grow wildflowers. Failing that I’ll stone the borders or equally low maintenance (?), want to make the garden more presentable than what it is but it’s quite wild at the moment and quite like the look of wildflowers.

The big weeds are also wildflowers.
You don't need to prepare the ground really, just chuck a handful of wildflower seed mix on a patch of ground every now an then through the summer.

Thank you, I removed the weeds thinking they’ll take over the seeds etc as they were quite large and just easier to remove but will keep them in when it all grows .

If they take how long until they come out?

You need bare soil with grass removedif possible(slice off top layer and compost or put in base of hedge to break down). Wildflowers thrive on poor soil so you need to remove nutrients not add compost.

I highly recommend adding yellow rattle to mix or buying mix containing this. It parasitises grass which would smother and out compete your wildflowers/weeds and gives them space to grow. We did this and now have cowslips and orchids growing😀
It’s a brilliant thing to do for wildlife and only maintenance is mow and rake iff early autumn leaving time for birds to enjoy seeds. Very good luck OP.

You should see some growth in a few weeks to a month, but keep chucking more seed mix on every few weeks regardless until about July, then the plants will be big enough to reseed themselves.
Don't tidy it up at all in summer unless it gets too tall to see over, it will sort itself out.
Leave things to self seed and leave stems for winter. Cut the dead stuff in about late March/early April and it'll all come back from dormant seeds in the ground.

Wildflower borders are actually hard.

If you sow seeds, they'll generally be a mix of self-seeding annuals - this is what some councils have taken to sowing on roundabouts etc., and they can look lovely. But, because they rely on re-seeding, it's easy for the strong ones to dominate the weaker ones - and especially, the grass! So you may find nothing much comes back next year. As @Maninthemoonsmiles says, including yellow rattle helps weaken the grass and make it less dominant, but it's a slow old process. Rattle would have been sown last year, as it needs a prolonged cold period to germinate.

If you want to avoid having to re-sow every year, you want to encourage in some perennials - but, again, they need to cope against the vigour of the annuals.

If it were me, I'd sow my seeds. I might buy some plugs of rattle if I were that way inclined. And I would put in some perennials, looking at what seems to thrive in the local area (on verges; in weedy gardens). So it might be scabious, types of cirsium, campion, yarrow, hawkbit, oxeye daisies, etc. These ought to keep coming back, so long as they like your soil and don't get smothered. They'd provide a bit of a backbone to your border.

If you haven’t already got grass in there, the yellow rattle will struggle. It actually needs the grass.

There’s two separate things, a wildflower meadow, which is grass with wildflowers. Most of the things which grow in a perennial grass sward are perennials themselves. Annuals can’t compete and get themselves established. Meadows are used to grow hay, and as pasture when the grass has grown back after the hay drop has been taken

And there’s what councils and seed companies call a wildflower meadow, which is actually a cornfield without the corn. This is made up of annuals such as poppy, cornflower, corn cockle, corn marigold (see the theme emerging?). They can’t compete with grass, so they germinate on bare soil (triggered by light). So sow on bare soil, next year turn over the soil so bury any weeds, and any seeds brought to the surface. Some mixes add non-native flowers like Cosmos to add to the colour.

Grass is well adapted to make use of high nutrients, so always try to keep the nutrient level low to give the flowers a better chance.

So it might be scabious, types of cirsium, campion, yarrow, hawkbit, oxeye daisies, etc. These ought to keep coming back, so long as they like your soil and don't get smothered. They'd provide a bit of a backbone to your border. Other perennial meadow flowers - Centaurea nigra, field scabious, devilsbit scabious, common, bush and tufted vetch, red clover, meadow vetchling, lady’s bedstraw. For shorter grass, birdseye trefoil, daisies, white clover, self heal, field woodrush.

Ooh - red clover too. I wish I could get it established but my soil's wrong (I think).

I’ve had more success with crimson clover in the gravel garden