You can grow wildflowers in a border, a pot and a window box as well as in a meadow.
A good wildflower seed mix can keep colour going with changing flowers for months at a time.
And the cost of a few packets of seeds makes this a cheap way of filling a border.
It’s easy but there are a few things you do need to know.
Note that this isn’t about growing your lawn longer.
Nor is it about rewilding (see Serena’s rewilded garden.)
This is about using wildflowers to add colour and biodiversity to your garden.
So I asked Charlotte Denne of Kent Wildflower Seeds to explain it.
She said that you approach planting native wildflowers in the same way as you do all your other garden plants.
They don’t have a different set of rules. In fact, many ornamental garden plants have wildflower great-great grandparents.
Once I got my head round this, it all seemed much less mysterious.
Do you need to choose native wildflowers?
The issue of native plants varies depending on where you live.
In the UK, ‘native’ often means native to Britain, Northern Europe, parts of Asia and even parts of Africa. We’re connected by land or easily crossed areas of sea to three continents. Trade and migration mean that plants have constantly crossed borders. Ground elder, the most pernicious weed in my garden, was brought here by the Romans in 43AD.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, Australia is surrounded by large areas of ocean. There was no recorded trade or migration of plants, animals or people for hundreds of thousands of years. With the arrival of colonists, there was a sudden influx of non-native plants. Some have proved to be invasive and environmentally damaging.
The Americas stand somewhere between the two.
Balance is always important – you don’t have to be perfect
In this post on Gardening for Biodiversity, the RHS senior wildlife specialist, Helen Bostock, said that the RHS had carried out research on the value of native and non-native plants for wildlife. ‘Native plants offered the most benefits for wildlife.
But non-native plants also offered benefits and there was surprisingly little difference between the two groups.’
The main bonus of non-native plants is that they can extend the season, often flowering or fruiting in slightly different weather conditions or times than native plants.
There are also ‘naturalised’ plants. These were introduced to the UK (or any other country) a very long time ago. Our wildlife has evolved to find naturalised plants as useful as native ones. Wildlife-friendly naturalised plants in the UK include borage and ox-eye daisies. Many people refer to ‘naturalised’ plants as ‘native plants’.
Generally, it’s considered best to grow native or naturalised wildflowers because many are in decline. These will be different depending on where you live, but the general principles around growing them are very much the same.
However, you can have many types of garden and still be eco-friendly. You don’t have to follow every rule.
It’s fine to balance out your own preferences with what’s best for nature. See Fergus Garrett’s advice from Great Dixter on how you can have a beautiful but wildlife friendly garden.
How do you maintain a wildflower border?
You need to keep a wildflower border from drying out while the seeds are germinating or the plants are very small. If you don’t have much rain, you may need to do some watering.
But you probably won’t need to water them once they’re a reasonable size. Native plants are usually well adapted to your climate.
Otherwise, you will need to cut down an annual wildflower border completely some time between autumn and early spring. Then you will need to sow fresh seed for another crop.
If your wildflowers are perennial, you can cut them down, leaving their roots in the ground, some time between autumn and early spring.
It’s also worth consulting seed packets and seed companies to see if your wildflowers need any special care.
Can I just sprinkle wildflower seeds?
You can’t just sprinkle wildflower seeds into lawn grass (see below). You won’t get any flowers.
You can sprinkle wildflowers seeds into a border. That’s what I did with three packets of seeds. But you will get a better result if you read the instructions on the packet and the rest of this post.
Charlotte Denne says that growing specific wildflowers from seed in seed trays gives you more control.
If you want to fill a gap in your border, you can plant seedlings of a particular flower colour or height. If you just sprinkle seed into a gap in the border, you have very little control over where or when the flowers will come up.
Can you grow wildflowers in the lawn?
Growing wildflowers in your lawn needs some management. In Top Meadow Lawn Mistakes, wild garden expert Joel Ashton explains that lawn grasses will out-compete wildflowers.
So you can’t just throw wildflower seed or seed mixes/balls onto a lawn and expect to get wildflowers.
You’ll need to weaken the lawn grass either by grubbing it out or planting a wildflower called yellow rattle. Yellow rattle kills the lawn grass.
And Joel also advises planting wildflowers that have already reached a certain size. You can buy them as seedlings in 9cm pots or grow them from seed yourself in trays.
How to create a wildflower meadow
Sarah and Dan Kennedy have a large field adjacent to their garden. They wanted to do something special with it. ‘The soil is a mixture of clay and chalk’, says Sarah. ‘Taking that chalk meadows are in decline, we decided to use the space to create wildflower meadows and woodland.’
There are three ways of creating a wildflower meadow. Sarah and Dan are trying all three methods.
For instant impact, you can have the current turf or grass removed completely. Then you can sow meadow turf which will come up with flowers and meadow grasses in its first year.
The second way takes longer, but is more organic. You simply leave areas of your lawn or field to grow.
But you must plant yellow rattle to weaken the grasses. Grasses are too dominant and wild flowers can’t grow amongst them easily.
The third approach is to weaken the meadow grass, then over-sow with specific wildflower seeds.
Kent Wildflower Seeds is working with Sarah and Dan on this.
Then some areas will grow and develop naturally. In other areas, Kent Wildflower Seeds will over-sow with specific seeds.
When the yellow rattle starts to work, you can either allow natural wildflowers to develop and emerge. Or you can oversow with particular wildflowers.
Can you grow wildflowers in borders?
Yes, you absolutely can. I have planted three borders up with wildflower mixes. We sowed seed directly into the earth covering most of the bed. I had left a clump of plants in each bed, but this was a mistake.
If you want a complete bed of wildflowers, then scattering seed or wildflower seed mix onto a bare border should be fine.
But if you want to plant wildflowers mixed in with your other garden plants, Charlotte recommends growing the flowers you want from seed, then planting them out, so that you know what will go where.
I did scatter seed over part of a border. I don’t think that worked as well. The plants that were already there overshadowed some of the seed mix so some of it didn’t grow or didn’t grow as much.
Will wildflowers grow in mulch?
Many people ask if you can grow wildflowers in bark, compost or mulch. And the answer is ‘probably not.’
Wildflowers usually prefer a poor soil, so they don’t need compost.
Plus we use bark and other mulches to reduce weeds, so that makes it more difficult for many plants – not just wildflowers – to grow through it. Established perennials will just push up through the layers, but that will be harder for individual wildflower seeds.
Will wildflowers grow in rocky soil?
Yes, the right wildflowers will grow in difficult conditions. That’s where native or naturalised plants can really succeed because they’ve evolved to grow in specific places.
Kent Wildflower Seeds sell collections for heavy clay or chalk soils, for example.
Pictorial Meadows do mixes for woodland edges and watersides.
And Boston Seeds also have a number of specific mixes for different conditions, such as chalk, limestone, coastal or acidic soils.
Plus you can research specific individual wildflowers to find one that will grow well in a difficult part of your garden.
Check whether your wildflower seeds are perennial or annual
The main mistake I made was probably to forget that, like all other plants, wildflowers can be perennial, biennial or annual.
Perennials are plants that live for three years or more in your garden.
Annuals are plants that grow from seed, flower and die, all in one year. Biennials do it over two years.
However, the shade border mix from Boston Seeds is mainly perennials. The border was planted quite late – in May, and the plants haven’t grown as much as the other two borders. Charlotte says that because perennials can take longer to establish, they will probably flower next year or perhaps much later this year, depending on the weather.
But if they do flower this year, they probably won’t be as tall as they will be next year.
Will wildflowers grow in shade?
All plants have a preference between growing in sun, shade or partial shade. And wildflowers are plants, so you’ll be able to find ones that prefer sun, ones that are happy in partial shade and ‘woodland’ wildflowers for shade.
Find out what wildflowers for shade are native to your area. Garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolate) and red campion (Silene dioica) are both shade-loving wildflowers that are native to the UK, northern Europe and parts of Asia.
I bought a Boston Seeds Woodland & Heavy Shade seed mix for the shadiest of my three borders.
How to grow wildflowers in pots
Charlotte grows her wildflowers in seed trays before transferring the seedlings into pots. That way you can see what you’ve got.
Once again, this is exactly like growing any other plant from seed to put in pots.
She doesn’t advise using potting compost however. Wildflowers don’t need too many nutrients, so buy a bag of topsoil for your pots instead. This is available in the same sort of bags as potting compost – for example, I’ve used Westland Topsoil in the past.
Don’t just sow wildflower seeds into a pot and hope for the best. If you grow them in trays and transplant as seedlings, then you can space them out and give them room to grow to adult plants.
You can also make sure that you marry up the right type of wildflower for the right pot. Charlotte grew wild carrot (Daucus carota) in big galvanised containers. It’s a very tall plant and needs a big, stable container. Meanwhile clover can be planted in smaller pots.
Generally, you need to plant shorter wildflowers in pots and window boxes. Kent Wildflowers have a specific pots and window box seed mix.
Whether you’re planting in pots or in borders, don’t over-fill the area with seed. Read the advice on the seed packet. And spread seed the way they tell you to!
If you over-crowd a border or pot with seeds, some won’t germinate and others will grow but will stay very small. If your wildflower mix has been designed to give you flowers over a long period, you will miss out on some of the successional blooms. The stronger, faster-growing plants will dominate.
Can you grow wildflowers without weeds?
That depends on what you consider to be a weed, says Charlotte.
She advises you to weed out the plants you don’t want. But if you like a weed – consider it a wildflower.
When first planting a wildflower border, Charlotte suggests weeding it to give the wildflowers as much space as possible.
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