How to Have Your Own Mini Wildflower Meadow in the City

1. Use Resilient Plants

Plants face a host of challenges in the city, such as proximity to sidewalks and streets, hot, polluted air and low-quality soils. Additionally, the occasional passerby might snip a bloom to take home, or a neighborhood pet might use the flower bed as a restroom.

You can alleviate those issues a bit by using adaptable plants — natives are often a good choice — that can tolerate a variety of site conditions. These plants should be better equipped to withstand the rigors of urban runoff and soil and air pollution with more gusto than others.

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2. Plant Tightly and in Layers

Weeds and heat will be your primary foes when you’re gardening in an urban environment. One way to combat both is by thickly planting your wildflower garden so that it is lush and layered.

Place plants close together (fewer than 12 inches apart) and layer them, starting with low or ground cover plants. Then add midlayer plants that are 2 to 3 feet tall, followed by flowering plants that reach 3 feet tall or higher, including shrubs and small trees.

These layers not only create a more visually engaging and intriguing landscape for humans, but they also increase the garden’s ability to shade out weeds and conserve soil moisture, all while amending soil naturally over time with root growth. The wildlife benefit a garden like this could provide is also off the charts.

Grasses and sedges (Carex spp.) are also important ingredients to layer in an urban wildflower garden. Wildflowers will come and go as they self-sow and move, and at times there will be bare spots where you don’t want weeds moving in.

Grasses and sedges help cover these open areas, and their fibrous root zones are fantastic at opening up clay soil for greater water penetration and enriching poor soil with a sandy or gravelly element. Grasses may lose a third of their roots each year, and these dead roots add vital organic matter and foster beneficial soil organisms.

Some grasses to consider include:

• Little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium, zones 2 to 9)
• Sideoats grama (Bouteloua curtipendula, zones 3 to 9)
• Blue grama (Bouteloua gracilis, zones 3 to 10)
• Shortbeak sedge (Carex brevior, zones 3 to 8) — a fairly adaptable sedge

3. Maintain a Pleasing, Tidy Design

It’s always good to follow a few tried-and-true design rules when thinking about wildflower gardens in high-visibility areas, as these gardens should be inviting and appealing to passersby.

• Half of your plants should be 1 foot to 2 feet tall or shorter. I’d suggest a combination of low sedges and grasses as well as ground cover flowers like wild geranium (Geranium maculatum, zones 2 to 9) or purple poppy mallow (Callirhoe involucrata, zones 4 to 9). This strategy provides an unimposing, unified layer that smooths out the garden plane, making it easier to view the entire landscape. If the plants are low enough, they might even mimic a tall lawn.
• Plant in clumps of odd numbers. Repeat those clumps in various areas to provide a pleasing repetition for the human eye to follow. Those groupings signify to a passerby that this isn’t a wild mess, but has been planted with purpose.

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