My teeny little CA native meadow did well last year:

purple needlegrass grew well into small clumps

several wallflower plants came up (all next to each other, though, must transplant some soon)

oodles of Clarkia flowers, several large lupines and a few nice Gilia.

Overall I was very pleased. I gathered a lot of seed (which I'm using in a new bed out front where a privet hedge was previously). I thought I was over-gathering the seed because I really went out and stripped plants of seed. Little did I know...

The meadow area is a carpet of green seedlings! I can recognize a lot of them because they already have a set of true leaves. I was worried about competition, they were so thick, and I scratched out lines with a hoe to leave some space. Am I micromanaging nature? Will this cause problems? I mean, I had hundreds of seedlings in some areas, just hundreds! The mature plants were 1' to 2' tall and you can't pack a hundred of those in a 1 foot square area.

CJ