It is difficult to establish wildflowers in clay soil, over several years I tried, seeds, wildflower plugs (expensive £1 each) then bought wildflower turf, especially for clay soil. Wildflowers like dry,rubbish soil, no compost or anything else. Now we have it established, I have added Rosa Rugosas, (they love the clay and dont mind getting their feet wet) Fox gloves, and cornflowers grown from seed
Hi @""Nanny Beach", thanks for the reply! I'm so pleased our Beebombs worked out quite well; they grew quite quickly last spring and came back again this year so they haven't been too deterred by our clay soil - yet. I'll see how our seeds fair but it might be that they don't take too well. Sounds like Plan B will be to add some more foxglove and cornflowers which I love anyway; Rosa Rugosa looks quite large and might be too big to plant in between my other plants.
"If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need"
Thanks again @Butterfly66 - my partner will be pleased to hear I can cut down on the water usage! I usually water either at night or in the morning, but will hold off and only continue to water if they start to look particularly wilted or dry (in the late evening after a chance to recover). Lesson learned about soil structure going forward!
"If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need"
Hello @Nanny Beach, I listened to a webinar by the Wildflower Turf people the other day. It was quite interesting as they said that Wildflowers not liking good soil is an urban myth. Having poor soil is an advantage but in one way only - it reduces the competition from grass and the wild plants aka weeds that you don’t want. They definitely don’t support the advice given by many that you should strip off good soil to establish wildflowers, but do say that if it is fertile then it can take up to three years to establish a meadow as you need to control the excess growth (so more regular mowing than you would an established meadow) and to get under control the thugs you don’t want.
If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”—Marcus Tullius Cicero East facing, top of a hill clay-loam, cultivated for centuries (7 years by me). Birmingham
@Butterfly66 Sounds very interesting! There's so much mixed advice out there. I did think the poor soil recommendation must be a bit of a myth. I have had to do a fair bit of weeding early spring, but it seems mostly in control now, and there's hardly any grass to speak of in the meadow area since I pulled a few tufts up in April. I think my main issue is self seeding; I'm not sure the hard, unloosed clay can really help with self seed. Plus I was advised not to cut the growth back at all, but to let it die back naturally. I then just removed all the larger and taller dead 'sticks' in early spring. I'm too scared to cut back the new growth in case it doesn't return again!
"If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need"
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East facing, top of a hill clay-loam, cultivated for centuries (7 years by me). Birmingham