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Wildflower Garden

Countryside77Countryside77 Posts: 2
in Problem solving
Hey, hoping you can help! We’re in the middle of wanting to do up a perennial/annual wild flower garden. It’s roughly 25 x15m. Currently it’s has loads of naturalised snowdrops which I don’t want to disturb, then comes the grass mixed with weeds.  Was thinking of cutting and lifting grass, spray with glyphosate leave a couple of weeks then cover with a few inches of topsoil and sow wildflower seed.  Would this work? Any opinions/advice would be appreciated!!


Posts

  • ButtercupdaysButtercupdays Posts: 4,546
    How do you distinguish between wildflowers and weeds?  I would say that looks a rather pretty wildflower meadow, perhaps a bit lacking in diversity. You could choose wildflowers suited to your soil and location to buy or grow from seed and add in. Don't make the mistake though of wanting poppies and cornflowers, cornfields are a quite different habitat.
    All wildflowers could be weeds, we just call them weeds if we dislike them for some reason. I have a wild garden and tolerate many plants that other gardeners call weeds because they are good for wildlife or increase diversity. My 'weeds' are mostly  the plants that want to take over the whole place and create a monoculture and some of them are garden plants rather than wild ones.
    What are you calling snowdrops - do you mean the white flowers that I can't see well enough to identify?
    Except I know they aren't snowdrops as those are only a few inches tall and finished flowering in April.


  • Countryside77Countryside77 Posts: 2
    Hello thanks for the reply! I take your point on cornfields! The area is woodland like but gets the the sun from late morning to evening time and drainage is fairly good. The weeds I’m referring to are nettles/docks/sticky weed/grass basically dominating the space. The snowdrops provided a carpet of white in late jan/early feb but are gone by late feb.  The white you can see is cow parsley which I like but what we are wanting to do is to have a varied mix of wildflowers without one or two  varieties taking over. 


  • Mary370Mary370 Posts: 2,003
    Surely you'll kill the snowdrops if you use poison?
  • steephillsteephill Posts: 2,841
    You can reduce the grasses by sowing yellow rattle in Spring. It is semi-parasitic on vigorous grass roots so helps the overall balance. Give it a good mow after the wildflower seeds have fallen and remove all the cut material, scarify to reduce the thatch which will be increasing fertility and encouraging grasses.
    Even if you completely remove all the docks, nettles and sticky willie (goose grass/cleavers) it will blow in again from the surrounding environment.
  • FireFire Posts: 19,096
    "do up a perennial/annual wild flower garden by spraying with glyphosate" ??


  • LoxleyLoxley Posts: 5,698
    Spot treat docks and nettles with glyphosate. You can use plug plants / 9cm pots to diversify the existing sward, probably best done in autumn. You turn a patch of turf upside down to create a bare patch (or you could use glyphosate if feeling lazy) and plant into that. Scarify the surface in strips, and sow seed (no need for grasses just wildflower mixes with yellow rattle).
    "What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour". 
  • Butterfly66Butterfly66 Posts: 970
    Like @Buttercupdays we allow a lot of wildflowers aka weeds to grow in our garden. We also have a largish nettle patch for wildlife.

    We have a (much smaller) area under trees we are currently turning into a wildflower area. We haven’t as much grass as you to contend with but are weeding out some of our garden thugs (alkanet and nettles) and will then use a shady wildflower seed mix and plugs. 

    If you have vigorous grass then the recommendation is to use a systemic weed killer if you want to quickly establish a wildflower meadow as they struggle to compete. Yellow Rattle will help manage a mixed meadow but is erratic and patchy especially if your grass is already dominant. The only thing I would say is that many of our native grasses are beautiful when in flower and benefit a whole range of wildlife and particularly moths. My approach would be to try and work with what you have, avoid any chemicals. 

    Many natural wildflower areas will have some plants that will be in the majority. It may be a case of working out which species particularly like the conditions you have and keeping an eye on the thugs.
     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
    @Countryside77 being a woodland area there are some other options. We have planted foxgloves into our meadow, while the haven't become huge spires they certainly look really good and we'll be adding more this year (I know there biennial). Ox eye daisy's have done well and the grass has seemingly prevented them getting out of hand. Greater knapweed grown to a decent size before planting has also done well. Getting the grass under control and keeping it that way is extremely difficult, glyphosate will kill the grass but it comes back in time it won't work so good on the other broad leaved  plants(everyone says glyphosate kills all green plants and this isn't correct) nettles especially can't be very resistant to it. If you read other threads you'll definitely find others who want to create a perfect meadow but haven't been able to, grass is difficult to overcome. Oh and yellow rattle is an annual plant so you need it to be successful in its own right for it to tackle the grass
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