Connecting the Dots with Wildflowers

Planting wildflowers is a good way to fill in the extra spaces in your garden. Some people even like to plant wildflowers en masse. When I lived in Michigan, I had a neighbor who cordoned off a whole section of his yard for wildflowers. His house was on the main road and driving by was as stunning as watching fireworks; everyone ooohed and ahhed as they passed. In my cottage-garden-in-progress, I’ve chosen to fill in the extra spaces with wildflowers but you might choose to bedizen a hillside with them.

Since wildflowers grow well from seed, using wildflowers is an inexpensive way to add color to your garden. Wildflower seeds often go on sale in the spring. This spring I purchased a large box of cottage garden wildflower seed at Ace Hardware for $1 (after the $3 rebate) The easiest way to use wildflowers is to choose a mix that you like. I chose a perennial wildflower mix and Cottage Garden Wildflower Blend (Plantation Products). A cottage garden is a conglomeration of different kinds of plants grouped very closely together to crowd out weeds.

Choose your location and prepare soil

Decide which spaces in your garden could use some beautifying. Make sure these areas receive enough sunlight. Perennial and cottage garden wildflower mix require full sun. Prepare the area where you want to plant wildflowers. If you have good soil, simply use a handrake to weed and ensure that seed is planted deeply enough. If your soil is clay-like or sandy, I’d suggest purchasing loam or potting soil as the quality of your soil will determine the success of many kinds of wildflowers. I’ve found that the two mixes mentioned above wildflowers grow the best in a loam/compost mix.

Once you plant wildflower seed, don’t weed!

After you plant the wildflowers, you’ll want to make sure that you don’t pull them out once they start to grow. Before they flower, wildflowers look a lot like weeds. The first year I planted wildflowers from seed, I pulled a lot of them up before I realized they weren’t weeds! My rule of thumb is if I’m not positive it’s a weed, I let it grow and wait to see if it flowers. Daisy wildflowers especially look weedlike. They are very tall and leafy and until they produce flower buds are tempting to uproot.

Complement roses with wildflowers

You can use wildflowers to bring out the color in other plants or to add additional color. For example, I planted perennial wildflower mix around my Graham Thomas English rose. This helped to fill in the extra space and to crowd out the grass! Adding wooly thyme also helped stop grass in its tracks!

My perennial wildflower mix consisted of lupines, sweet williams, coneflowers, widow’s tears (spiderwort), daisies, and one very tall plant with yellow flowers that I’m unable to identify. I added forget-me-not seeds for some extra blue. The wildflowers also acted as a buffer for the roses against the scorching sun this summer when we had twenty-four days of ninety plus degree weather.

Wildflowers grown from my cottage garden mix encircled my Abraham Darby English rose. A blend of perennials and annuals, the mix included some well-known plants such as sweet william, coneflowers, delphinium, black-eyed Susans, foxglove, lupines, poppies, and cosmos.

It also contained some wild flowers that I am less familiar with. I’ve included links with information on these wildflowers below.

California poppy

summer pheasant’s eye (believed to be poisonous)

pot marigold

garden cornflower

golden tickseed

blue flax or blue sapphire

Whether you choose to utilize wildflowers to fill in the empty spaces in your yard, or to plant them en masse, you won’t be disappointed by the results.