Wildflower gardens can be a beautiful addition to your garden. Not only will can wildflower gardens provide food and a place of shelter for wildlife, they can be more interesting than other garden flower features and much easier to maintain. Of course, it can be difficult to know where to begin and how to prepare your garden, but this guide could help you.
Choosing the Right Spot
You should choose a sunny patch of lawn for your wildflower garden. It would also be ideal for this spot to have short grass that is cut regularly and be free from the use of weed-killers and fertilisers. Your wild flowers will also grow best if the soil in this area is kept as low in nutrients as possible. This can be ensured by keeping the lawn free of any plant clippings that would mean nutrients is returned back into the soil.
Top tip: Keep the space free of vigorous grasses that may take over from the plants and flowers you want to flourish in your wildflower garden.
Choosing your Wildflowers
As with any type of flowers, there is a wide variety of different wildflowers to try. Different flowers will grow best in different soil types (an important factor to consider), but here are some to try:
- Ragged robin (Lychnis flos cuculi), whose flowers are delicate and pink
- Ox-eye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare), a large white daisy
- Cowslip (Primula veris), long- stalked yellow flowers
- Red Campion (Silene dioica), large pink or red flowers
Planting the Wildflowers
Of course, everyone will have different preferences of the flowers they wish to include depending on a variety of things, including soil type and colour schemes; you should consider these things before planting your wildflowers. Most wildflowers will grow best if planted during autumn and should be planted in groups across the lawn as plug plants for a natural look. The hole for each plant should be around 15cm deep and 5 cm wide. Watering and spreading leaf mould around each plug plant will also encourage them to grow well and with little competition.
Top tip: Drop a handful of compost into each hole before planting the flowers in order to help them to establish quickly.
Caring for your Wildflower Garden
At the end of summer, when most of the flowers will have set seed, you should cut the grass to keep it short. If your wildflower garden is small, you should cut the grass with a strimmer or a scythe- a lawnmower would be too large and may damage your flowers. Larger areas of grass can be cut with a power scythe in order to reduce effort, but grass should be kept no longer than 1cm.
Top tip: Remove cut grass when you have finished to prevent nutrients re-entering the soil.
If you have any tips on creating a wildflower garden, or would like to share your favourite wildflowers let us know in the comments section below!
[Photo Credit: Rambling Vegans ]
