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wild flower meadow

maggiemew1maggiemew1 Posts: 35
in Garden design
Is it possible to make a wild flower meadow without removing the grass and top soil?
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  • chickychicky Posts: 10,410
    edited May 2020
    Its possible, but quite difficult.  The first thing you need to do is introduce yellow rattle - best done by sowing seeds in scarified patches in the autumn.  The patches will spread rapidly in the following years.  Yellow rattle is parasitic on grass, so reduces its vigour and allows wildflowers the chance to get going.

    in year 2 or 3, when your YR is established and your grass is weakened you can then plant wildflower plugs (either buy them that way or sow your own in seed trays and let them get to be small plants before you plant them).

    Well worth the effort, even if it isn’t an instant fix.  We love our meadow, and so do the insects, bees and butterflies 🦋 
  • Butterfly66Butterfly66 Posts: 970
    I’m halfway through a series of webinars by the Wildflower Turf company which are very interesting. You don’t need to remove the top soil. It’s an urban myth that wildflowers like poor soil. The reason it is sometimes done is because it reduces competition from grass and the most thuggish wildflowers aka weeds. They don’t recommend it, they do however recommend that you remove grass if you are trying to establish a wildflower meadow and if using seed don’t use a mix with higher % grass than wildflower seed. Wildflowers struggle to compete with grass. Yellow Rattle can help but its effect is also likely to be patchy so you may always have more grass than flowers - it depends what look you want to achieve.
     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
  • WilderbeastWilderbeast Posts: 1,415
    I think wildflower meadows come into the category of gardening that requires black magic. We wanted to do this but all the advice from different sources was that it is extremely difficult to get them going when competing with grass. We decided against and planted 2000 bulbs into the intended area then added ox eye daisy, greater knapweed and fox gloves. This has really worked for us and we now have quite an abundance of meadow flowers appearing on there own. in the same village there is also 1 very successful meadow from scratch with no apparent effort and  another that is leaving the garden owner tearing her hair out after 5 years of failure. 
  • sam bevingtonsam bevington Posts: 130
    Yesterday I was talking to a guy with 30 years of grounds maintenance experience. He showed me some photos of municipal areas where he had created wild flower meadows- poppies, cornflowers etc, they were beautiful. His advice  - they rotivated the soil, scattered the mix, lightly raked then watered. He did emphasise the importance of the mix quality, saying that a kilo will put you back £170!
  • ButtercupdaysButtercupdays Posts: 4,546
    Poppies and cornflowers  naturally grow in cornfields, a very different habitat to the grass meadow that the OP is asking about. @SamBevington

    You are more likely to succeed if you match your plants to your soil and conditions, as the plants are more likely to thrive, but be aware that if they are really happy you may need to control some of them, as many of the prettiest plants have thuggish potential!

  • maggiemew1maggiemew1 Posts: 35
    thank you all for the replies. I will sit with it for another while!


  • maggiemew1maggiemew1 Posts: 35
    But what is Yellow Rattle?
    I dont want to get rid of the grass using weedkiller so I am stuck for options.
  • LiriodendronLiriodendron Posts: 8,328
    Yellow rattle is Rhinanthus minor, a native annual plant which is semi-parasitic on grass, weakening it so that the wild flowers can compete more easily.  

    You can dig up any really rampant grasses as well, giving the yellow rattle a bit of a head start.
    Since 2019 I've lived in east Clare, in the west of Ireland.
  • Blue OnionBlue Onion Posts: 2,995
    Bob Flowerdew mentioned something years ago about putting flat cement step stones over parts of the grass for a few months to kill it off, then planting pot sown meadow flowers out in the spot.. moving the stones to a new location for next years plantings.  You could try that as an 'easy' method.  Grass with flowers sown new each year.  If you have the type right, it would probably stay established in those areas.. and possibly self seeding elsewhere.  
    Utah, USA.
  • Butterfly66Butterfly66 Posts: 970
    Whoops just realised I mistyped - they advise a higher % wildflower seed than grass not the other way round - sorry. They also said it can take 3-4 years to get your meadow established if starting with seed. Quality of seed is important but apparently germination of wildflower seed is highly erratic as it’s highly effected by the weather during the (parents) growing season not just the conditions the seeds are sown/growing in. You only need a couple of grams per square metre so a kg is far more than you would need for a domestic garden.


    We are going to try and establish a shade mix in one area of our garden and will be using a 100% wildflower mix. On the seed packet it says germination can be very erratic and some may not appear the first year. Some of the plants typically in a shade mix are Geum urbinum, hedge garlic and foxgloves luckily we have those in the garden anyway so can also transplant some. 
     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
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