Preston Bissett Nurseries and Country Shop: Why Not Add Native Wildflowers To Your Garden?

Monday, 14 March 2022

Why Not Add Native Wildflowers To Your Garden?

A few notes on wildflowers from Tina James our Garden Designer

Planting wildflowers is an easy way to introduce reliable, colourful and wildlife-friendly plants to your plot. Choose wildflowers that will enjoy your aspect and conditions and avoid feeding, as this can encourage vigorous grasses to take over.

Here are 3 ways to grow wildflowers

1) Seed - scatter wildflower seeds thinly over bare patches of watered soil or in rows in a seedbed to transplant later as small clumps. Barely cover seeds when sown in rows. Or, sow tiny pinches of seed directly into small modules of seed compost and plant as ‘plugs

2) Planting plugs - First cut grass short, then remove divots of turf (use a bulb planter), part-fill with seed compost then plant a group of three plugs together and water.

3) For a tiny area, lay wildflower turf over raked and firmed but unfed bare soil. For larger plots, dot single wildflower turves throughout normal meadow turves. To introduce into existing turf, cut out sections and slot halved or quartered wildflower turves throughout the area, after cutting the original grass short. Water in.

Here are 20 UK native wildflowers you could grow.