Garden Medley

One of the simplest looks to a flower garden is the wildflower garden. I love these simply because you don’t have to be so orderly with wildflowers. It’s also often easier to find native wildflowers to limit the amount of care your garden needs.

In general, wildflowers cope better with adverse conditions. They have not been bred, after all, for perfect soil and watering. You can get a glorious range of colors and shapes even when the growing season has not been kind to your other plants.

Most wildflowers love a bright, sunny spot. Remove all weeds and loosen the soil, then plant the seeds according to package directions. Plant them in spring for best results, but you may be able to get away with a summertime planting in some areas.

To prepare your seeds for planting, mix them at about 2:1 sand to seed ratio with a fine sand and vermiculite mixture. This will help with distribution.

You don’t have to be very neat about planting wildflowers. You can scatter them randomly, just as they would scatter randomly in nature. Use a rake to cover them just a quarter inch or so deep in the soil.

Keep the soil moist to encourage germination. Once the plants are growing, they will still need some water, but probably less than other flowers.

You can encourage seeds to drop for the next year by waiting until about October or when the flowers are done blooming, then cutting or mowing the plants down. If cutting, try to make sure to shake the seeds loose. Mowing, of course, is rough enough that they should fall out on their own.

You’ll probably have to battle some weeds each year, of course, but at least with wildflowers you should not have to buy new plants every year.

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