How to Create a Wildflower Meadow
How to Create a Wildflower Meadow
With spring and summer comes lots of bees, butterflies, and bugs. Keep them well fed and looked after by growing your very own wildflower meadow! Wildflowers are very important to our ecosystem, and with fewer popping up, it's up to us to take over! It’s a simple project that will require little upkeep and will fill your garden to the brim with colour and wildlife.
What you will need:
What you need to do:
Wildflower meadows grow best in unproductive (or, unfertile) soil. The best time to sow your wildflowers is the start of autumn but preparing the ground for this task may take several weeks. Make sure you leave yourself enough time!
- Choose a suitable area!
Make sure that the place you have chosen for your wildflower meadow is open and sunny. You may want to turn an old flower bed or lawn into your new meadow, but make sure that it is flat and big enough for all the flowers to grow.
- Reducing the fertility
Your soil is likely to be too fertile for wildflowers if it has had plenty of fertiliser over the years. The best way to reduce fertility is to remove the top three to six inches of topsoil, using a turf cutter, or a spade and some elbow grease! If you don’t want to strip the soil, try planting some mustard seeds. They are notoriously hungry plants and will remove some of the nutrients from the soil as they grow!
- Remove the weeds!
Here is where the real work starts! You need to create a fine tilth (soil that resembles breadcrumbs) for your flower meadow to prosper. Make sure to take out all the weeds, ensuring that there are no seeds left in the soil. You can do this by using chemical weed killers, or by laying black plastic over the area so that the seeds germinate and die.
- Make sure you have your wildflower seed mix
This is a very important step! Make sure you have your wildflower seed mix to hand, or a selection of different seeds. We have a wide range available that are easy to sow and give amazing results!
- Time to sow!
Now, it’s time for the fun bit! This is best done in autumn. You don’t need much seed per square metre, so if you’re unsure, mix it with some dry silver sand. The correct ratio is usually three-five parts sand to one of seed. After you have scattered the seeds, make sure to rake them so that they can make contact with the soil. Keep the area well-watered until the seeds have established.
Your meadow will evolve year by year, if looked after properly, welcoming creatures such as bees, grasshoppers, and butterflies. Birds should begin to feed there, and bats should be attracted to your garden at night. It will become a hive of activity, and will thoroughly benefit your garden, and the nature that lives in it.
