What to Know About Growing a Wildflower Garden From Seed
Bring a bit of this magic home by dedicating a portion of your yard or a little rooftop patch to growing wildflowers. Read on to learn more about designing, prepping for and maintaining a wildflower meadow or patch in a sunny spot in your yard.
Central North American-native purple prairie clover (Dalea purpurea) in front of ‘Goldsturm’ black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia fulgida var. sullivantii ‘Goldsturm’)How to Get StartedWhom to hire. If you do not have experience with starting a garden from seed, hiring a landscape designer or native plant specialist will be helpful. A landscape designer or landscape architect also can include a wildflower meadow as part of an overall landscape design. Time involved. Depending on how large the area is that you wish to plant, budget anywhere from an afternoon to a weekend to clear the ground of weeds and prep the soil for planting. Tack on additional time if you are converting a lawn into a wildflower meadow, as you will need to get rid of the lawn first.
When to plant wildflower seeds. Wildflower seeds can be planted in spring or fall, but fall is often favored for a number of reasons. Fall planting can be done as part of a fall cleanup, and you won’t need to fend off as many weeds as you would in spring. The seeds (and gardener) have the chance to rest over winter and, come spring, both get a jump-start on the season. Plus, for many wildflower seeds, exposure to cold and then early spring rains can help encourage sprouting. If you choose to start a wildflower garden in fall, make sure seeds are in the ground by early fall through winter, depending on climate. In cold-winter areas, seeds can be planted from late September through October, or until the ground freezes. In mild-winter climates and areas along the Pacific coast, anytime in late fall or winter is suitable for planting. Wildflower seeds can be planted from early spring to midspring in all climates, once the ground has thawed. If you have heavy clay soil in a region that receives frequent rainfall, wait until spring to plant, as seeds can rot over winter in wet soil. Not sure what type of soil you have? Learn your soil type....
How to Grow a Wildflower Garden From Seed1. Choose your site. Pick a spot that receives full sun, generally four to six hours a day. This can be an open path, a section between orchard trees, a border along a driveway, containers or even a rooftop. Many wildflowers thrive in areas with poor soil — like rocky slopes or spots with little topsoil — so they can be problem-solver plants where other ornamentals have not done well.Note: Keep in mind that wildflower seeds and seed mixes — particularly ones that include nonnative seeds — should not be sown in wild areas or environmentally sensitive areas. The planting instructions provided are intended for home gardens.
2. Select and order seeds. You can purchase wildflower seeds by the packet (either as a seed mix or a single flower variety), canister or in bulk, depending on how large an area you wish to cover. In general, a few seed packets are enough for a small or medium bed (one that is less than 40 square feet), and a 2.3-ounce canister can cover 600 to 700 square feet. Beyond this, it’s best to buy in bulk.Planting a wildflower meadow can be a great opportunity to introduce (or add more) native plants to your yard. Native wildflowers well-adapted to your soil, climate and growing conditions provide food, shelter and nesting materials to the local wildlife that has evolved alongside them. If you’re not choosing a native seed mix, opt for one that is suited to your region and climate. Many seeds are sold as “butterfly mixes” or “bee-friendly wildflower mixes,” with plants chosen to benefit pollinators. Many regional wildflower seed mixes come with a variety of bloom colors and shapes, as well as staggered bloom times — which means you can enjoy watching different species of wildflowers emerge and bloom over a long period.How to Find the Right Native Plants for Your Yard...
Some wildflower mixes come seeded with native grasses, which can create a lovely meadow effect over a larger area. Many of these meadow grass-plus-wildflower seed mixes include seeds of little yellow rattle (Rhinanthus minor) to give a boost to the wildflowers. Little yellow rattle is a type of wildflower that helps suppress the roots of grasses, increasing the chance that wildflowers growing in the same area will have soil space to thrive alongside more aggressive grasses.Sources for wildflower seeds (both native and other mixes) include Renee’s Garden, Territorial Seed and American Meadows.
3. Prep the soil. Once you’ve chosen an area to start a wildflower garden, clear the soil of existing weeds and other vegetation. This can be done by hand with the help of a scuffle hoe or by soil solarization. To remove weeds using solarization, clear the majority of plants, rake the soil smooth and then cover the ground with plastic sheeting tacked down at the edges with rocks or landscape staples. After a few weeks, remove the plastic sheeting — all vegetation underneath should be dead and easy to remove.Find gardening tools in the Houzz Shop
Tall blazing star (Liatris aspera), a wildflower native to the central and eastern U.S., in a New York gardenNext, use a rake to scuff up the surface of the soil, breaking up any clods you come across by hand and removing rocks. The goal is to have light, loose topsoil without many clods or rocks that could smother seeds. You also can add mild organic soil amendments (like bone meal or kelp meal) at this point to replenish nutrients lost in the summer growing season. In general, avoid adding too many amendments or any high-nitrogen fertilizers. The wildflowers don’t need them, and they can give weeds a boost next spring.
4. Plant seeds. For an even distribution of seeds, divide the planting bed into quarters with string or a sprinkle of flour on the soil. You also can divide larger garden spaces into smaller quadrants to help guide how much seed to use for each space. Sow the wildflower seeds by hand or with a lawn seed spreader (if you’re seeding a large area), retaining enough seed to cover all areas and following seed packet instructions as to sowing density. If seeds are tiny and lightweight (and you’re planting by hand), it can be helpful to mix the seeds with a little sand.Cover the seeds lightly with a mix of two-thirds sifted top soil or fully decomposed sifted compost and one-third sharp sand. Sprinkle this soil-and-sand mix on top until seeds are just buried and no longer visible. In larger areas where this is more difficult, add sifted compost and sand to cover the soil to begin with, and then sow seeds and gently rake them in afterward. Cover the seeds with netting if birds are attracted to them.
Astrantia major subsp. involucrata ‘Shaggy’ and Allium sphaerocephalon wildflowers in bloom5. Stay on top of weeding and watering. Wildflowers sown in fall don’t require much maintenance over winter. If you live in a mild-winter climate, pull up any weeds you spot in the bed. Some wildflowers seeded in fall may sprout and emerge in fall, grow slowly though the winter, and then bloom in spring. If fall-sown wildflowers do emerge in fall, keep the soil moist, supplementing with a sprinkler if rain is inconsistent.If there is little rain in your area in spring, lightly water the wildflower bed with a sprinkler in the evenings. This will speed up sprouting. Once wildflower plants emerge as tiny green shoots, keep the soil consistently moist to support growth. Most young plants cannot survive if the soil dries out completely. If this is a risk, consider staking a shade cloth over the bed. If you’ve chosen to plant native wildflowers or a mixed seed packet designed for your region, taper off watering as plants mature. For a greener, lusher meadow, set a sprinkler on the bed about once a week or less, depending on rain levels in your area.Find a landscape maintenance professional on Houz...
Be diligent with weeding. If there’s one thing — other than a drought — that will kill off a new wildflower garden, it’s being outcompeted for space and soil nutrients by more aggressive plants. Introduced European pasture grasses are the most common assailant in North American gardens and quickly spread to cover a bed and stifle wildflower growth. Pull them early on and often.It can be tricky to tell a weed seedling from a wildflower seedling when plants are young. Given that this is the best time to pull weeds, consider looking up what the seedings look like of the wildflowers in your seed mix to be able to distinguish between them and invasive weeds.
English wildflower meadow in spring, before bloomOther ConsiderationsWhen will flowers appear? While some fall-sown wildflower seeds may sprout and sometimes even bloom in fall, the majority of wildflowers bloom from spring to summer. Often, flowering begins in May. Using a mix of wildflowers with staggered bloom times can ensure that you can enjoy a variety of flowers over a long bloom time.
How to keep wildflower gardens thriving year after year. Wildflowers that grow annually from seed have to reseed (either naturally by self-seeding or reseeding by you) every year. To encourage plants to self-seed, allow seeds to fully ripen on the plants in late summer and fall. Leave the plants in place over winter and allow seeds to fall to the ground. Alternatively, once seeds have matured and plants have died, you can gently shake the plants to disperse seeds before removing them. This is also a good time to add a light sprinkle of compost or organic soil amendments like bone meal and kelp meal. If you wish to add new wildflower seeds to the bed, follow the steps above: Prep the soil, spread seeds and water once seedlings emerge.
You don’t need a large space or a substantial budget to grow a wildflower garden. This project does, however, require more than tossing a bag of wildflower seeds in the backyard and waiting for the flowers to spring up.
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