Planting a wildflower meadow in your front or back yard can set you free!
Watch: Graham Ross visits the east coast wildflower farm
Once used for animal grazing or haymaking, wildflower meadow gardens, these days are becoming more popular in a domestic garden.
Why not replace your lawn with soft, waving grasses and a tapestry of flowers that reach above your knees. This style of garden is at once playful, wistful and whimsical and inspires longed-for periods of idleness and daydreaming.
Give your view of a flat lawn a rest and plant a field of lavender – the scent will be intoxicating. Then, team the lavender up with helenium, so every summer you get the eye-catching combination of purple and orange!
Create a grass path through your meadow to a small retreat where you can stock up the bird feeder and tend to a ‘hotel’ for solitary native bees and other pollinating insects, as here.
Providing protection for wildlife is one of the benefits of ‘rewilding’ your garden.
Mix waving ornamental grasses with your flowers so your garden appears more natural.
Fill in spaces around the flowering plants, which are usually an invitation to weeds, with these grasses. They also provide support for tall flowers, and on a slope they help prevent soil erosion.
Better tip: Clumping ornamental grasses are easier to manage than those that run through a garden.
When a troupe of colourful cosmos flowers dances around the purple balls of verbena and salvia spires, they’re sending a message to the birds and the bees: “Kiss me! Kiss me, instead!”
Simple, open wildflowers are nectar-rich and easy for insects to access.
The main function of early wildflower gardens around quaint rural English cottages was to attract pollinators for the essential herbs and vegetables that also grew there.
It’s a romantic look that evolved over the centuries into the fully ornamental cottage garden.
The beauty of a meadow is that it’s untamed.
Start your annual meadow in spring with a bare, weed-free, tilled ground – try a colourful mix of field poppies, foxgloves, cornflowers and forget-me-nots.
Mix your seeds with dry sand so they’re easier to scatter, then press the soil firm with the back of a metal rake. Gently water weekly.
Find space in your meadow for a daydreaming garden bench where you can also watch and listen to the buzz, hum and chirp of insects and birds that will visit all day. It’s an immersion into another world!
Why plant a wildflower garden meadow:
- It’s great for pollinators – bees, butterflies and other pollinators feast on the pollen and nectar.
- There’s less work in that you don’t have a lawn to mow, or your lawn is greatly reduced.
- It’s a clever and pretty way to cover steep or sloping land where mowing may be difficult and terracing can be expensive.
- When established, a wildflower meadow mostly looks after itself as many plants, especially natives, require little water or fertiliser.
- Many wildflower plants are self-pollinators.
- A wildflower meadow suppresses weeds as taller plants shade out common weeds found in lawns.
- As plants die, they return organic material to your soil.
Aussie natives for your wildflower meadow
You may think of planting exotic flowering plants and grasses such as agastache, cornflowers, cosmos, daisies, marigold, poppy, alyssum and calendula, but consider Aussie natives – think of how beautiful the desert blooms are after rain!
Try our unique flowering plants such as strawflowers, everlasting and paper daisies, billy buttons, kangaroo paws, flannel flowers and Sturt’s Desert peas, and grasses such as lomandra, dianella and kangaroo grass.
Dianella or native flax lily, offer a pop of purple with their bright berries that grow in spring and summer.
Kangaroo paw provides great shape and texture to your garden. There’s nothing better than the velvety feel of this plant!
Billy buttons are as cute as their name, and add beautiful pops of yellow to a wildflower garden.
Strawflowers are an Aussie favourite, with their paper like flowers and bursting colours that can last year round.
How do you grow wildflower meadow in Australia?
The best way to grow wildflowers in Australia is by planting them in a sunny location that is free from overshadowing trees. It is always recommended to plant Australian natives more than other plants, as a way to increase biodiversity.
How do you prepare ground for wildflower meadow?
Wildflowers surprisingly grow best in low quality soil. There’s no need for extensive fertiliser or compost use for your meadow, instead focus on pulling weeds and other grasses that can dominate your flowers.
How long does it take to establish a wildflower meadow?
The only down-side of a wildflower garden is that it can take a while to establish. While you will see blooms in the first year of planting, it can take up to three years to be properly grown.
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