Growing Wildflowers in Your Lawn

How to create an area of wildflowers in your lawn

I love to see wildflowers growing side by side with a manicured lawn.  There’s something about the change in height, in texture, in colour and in movement that just fascinates me.

In my own garden this year I’m experimenting with growing wildflowers almost as temporary hedges.  In my imagination, they’ll separate the lawn into “rooms” and lead the eye from one part of the garden to another.  Of course they’ll also save time (and petrol) on mowing and they’ll be a food source for the 120,000 or so honey bees living in the hives in my garden. I’ll let you know how I get on later in the year when I have some pictures to share.

So how can you introduce wild flowers to your lawn?

I have to confess that there are already quite a few wild flowers in mine.  I didn’t put them there but lax lawncare and a dislike of chemical weedkillers has allowed them to thrive.

So for my project – I’m going to be employing the first of my 3 suggestions for bringing wildflowers into the lawn.

1. Stop mowing and see what’s growing

I can already see areas in my lawn where leucanthemums (oxeye daisies) have sneaked out of my mini-meadow into my lawn.  This is an area beneath a beech hedge where the lawn grasses are weak (because of the shade) and there are several bare patches.   I’m simply going to mow around this area and allow whatever is growing there to do its own thing.

In another area, is a clover patch.  Bees adore clover flowers and guess what – this area is right in front of the beehives where my attempts to mow the grass often result in being divebombed by the ladies who think I’m attacking their hive.  OK, in this case it’s not so much about aesthetics as cowardice.

2. Remove some grass and grow some annual wildflowers from seed

I do like annual wild flowers.  Cornflowers, poppies, corn marigolds and the like.  These flowers like to grow in disturbed soil.  Being annuals they will flower in their first summer, set seed and then die.

To grow annual wild flowers in your lawn, use a spade to lift an area of turf in spring time.  Dig over the area, rake it to a fine tilth and sprinkle wild flower seeds on top.   No need to cover the seed.  These beauties need light to stimulate germination.   Use a watering can with a rose to moisten the soil and then keep it damp until the baby plants are growing strongly.

Now all you have to do is wait for summer and an eruption of vibrant colour.   We’ve mentioned cornflowers and poppies.  Why not bring in some non-natives for extra interest?  Cosmos is a lovely flower for attracting butterflies.  Sunflowers are popular with seed-eating birds and you can get some low growing varieties if you don’t like giant plants.

Come the autumn, you can pull up the spent flowers and replace them with turf.  If you like playing with plants, pick off the seedheads and store the seed in paper bags overwinter so you can repeat the exercise next year.

3. Add in some plug plants

If method 1 doesn’t show promise of colourful results, you might want to hurry things along a bit by introducing some wildflower plants.  You could buy wildflower plants from the garden centre and plant them into the lawn.  A bulb planter is quite useful for removing plugs of turf to make room for plants.  Put the discarded plugs onto the compost heap.

Alternatively, and this would be my preferred method, you can use Meadowmat wild flower turf to replace some of the lawn turf.

Simply use a sharp spade to remove the grass, dig over the area and unroll Meadowmat onto the prepared soil.  You’ll need to keep it watered until the plants root in.  Planting now (April) will ensure flowers this summer.  The great thing about Meadowmat is that the plants are perennial.  They’ll grow back year after year and only need a tiny amount of maintenance.

This video shows Meadowmat being installed into a lawn.  Enjoy

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