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Gardening

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

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Original poster

Turning lawn into a wild meadow

28 replies

MyOtherProfile · 01/06/2024 23:22

We have a side lawn that's a bit weedy. I have always fancied making it more like a meadow with wild flowers but I have a feeling it will be harder than I expect. I'd like to just throw a load of wild flowers seeds out and hope for the best but I think there must be more to it than that.

Can anyone give me any pointers?

OP posts:

BigDahliaFan · 03/06/2024 10:17

Depending on the size I'd be very tempted to fill it with perennials and self seeders instead. Improve the soil, leave a lawn path going through it and fill it with aquilegia, perennial poppies, roses etc...

Basically a flower border...

EnglishBluebell · 03/06/2024 11:30

BabbleBee · 01/06/2024 23:27

My experience of wildflowers is that they’re easy to grow- throw the seeds on, give them a bit of a rake over / cover up and they’ll soon pop up.

When they’re out they look beautiful and definitely good for pollinators.

But…. When they go over and start dying off they look messy and straggly. Easy enough to cut back again but until they’re at the point of cutting back they don’t look as good.

They’re also a survival of the fittest and I don’t think I’ve got rid of the poppies and cornflowers that I put down a few years ago! Some of them can be quite invasive too.

I don’t think they’re the easiest option ime

Not in my experience! They alllllways get eaten by birds here. This year I threw a very light sprinkling of soil over to disguise them but even so, the birds ate most of the seeds and slugs ate the ones that did get to seedling stage

longtompot · 03/06/2024 12:41

I saw a post on Facebook I think about someone turning their lawn into a wild flower meadow. It took a few years and they mowed the grass very very short and starting from the middle planted plugs of wild flowers in circles. Over the years they gradually increased the rows of plugs going outwards. They mow every spring and then again in the autumn and have a good range of flowers now.
A front garden near us has a wonderful display of wild flowers in their grass area, knee high with poppies, ox eye daisies and lots of other plants. It looks beautiful.

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