A wild flower patch in your garden

Until yesterday, my grass had not been cut for two weeks. It was very long and quite pretty, covered with yellow flowers which, on closer examination turned out to be buttercups. It reminded me of the two wild flower meadows I maintained in my old garden.

I do not actually like grass very much. I can admire a really well kept lawn (like a bowls green) but otherwise I consider it a ‘green cancer’. Apart from somewhere to sit, it performs no function and needs a lot of attention to keep it looking good. Therefore wild flower meadows are a good answer as far as I am concerned. You can still play in it whilst it needs much less upkeep and is not just a boring one shade of green.

You do not need a large acreage to have a wild flower meadow, you can create one in an ordinary size lawn, and there are a lot of assets to having one. For a start, they require a lot less looking after than an imaculate lawn. You only mow it for about three monthe of the year instead of eight.You do not need to feed it. Insects love it, which in turn invites the birds into your garden so you are being very ecologically friendly. However, if you are a neatnik, then a wild life meadow is not for you. It is not neat and tidy.

My patch of grass would not make a wild life meadow. Buttercups only grow in rich, fertile soil, which is the last thing you need when growing wild flowers.  If you already have a patch of grass which you wish to grow wild flowers in, then there are a number of things you need to know.

First, you really need poor, inpoverished soil. That way the wild flowers will thrive and the grass will not. You also need fine grasses, so that they do not grow too long and smother your flowers. You can create this be keeping your grass cut very short for at least three years and collecting every scrap af cuttings from it. Do not feed it at all. It may end up looking a bit scrufy but that will not matter.

Then you need to decide whether you are going to grow wild flowers which flower in the spring (like cowslips and forget me knots (and loads of others) or those which flower in the summer such as ox-eye daisy and poppies. There are many specialist merchants who sell  both wild flower seeds and also plug plants for wild flowers. (These are small-rooted plants). They will tell you what plants are included in which catogary and you can make a decision on that.

The reason you need to make that decision is that the cutting regime for your grass will differ. If you have sping flowering  plants, then you cut your grass in the summer after the spring flowers have finished flowering and have set seed.Don’t dead head the flowers or collect the seed, they need to re-seed themselves in your grass. (Unless, of course you want to grow more pplug plants for some reason).  If you have summer flowering plants, then you cut in early spring and in autumn – after seeds have set.

One of the things we did was have a garden party after the plants had set their seeds and let our guests trample the seed into the grass. In nature, the cows do this job, but your guests will churn up the soil equally well.

Every year in  a wild flower meadow will be different. One year  the majority of flowers will be of one type, whilst the next year it may well be a different type. Sad to say, you are unlikely to always have a balanced mix.

When you first start your wild flower meadow, the grass may well be too much comppetition for wild flower seed to germinate and grow. To get over this problem. either buy ready grown plants (plug plants are great because you only have to dig very small holes) or grow your own small plants in seed trays from specialist wild flower seed and then plant them.

As I said before, wild flower meadows are not for everybody. They inevitably are untidy. Nature is not tidy, but I like my garden a bit on the wild side and the joy of looking at the various plants (some of which will congregate there naturally) and the wild life enjoying them makes up for the down side.