Planting wildflowers is an easy way to introduce reliable, colourful and wildlife-friendly plants to your plot.
There are plenty of ways to do it, including laying wildflower turf, or simply starting right from seed, but whichever you choose, it’s essential to create the right conditions. Choose wildflowers that will enjoy your aspect and conditions and avoid feeding, as this can encourage vigorous grasses to take over. Here are 20 UK native wildflowers you could grow.
Discover three simple ways of planting wildflowers, below.
Sowing 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’. Take a look at our instructions for sowing wildflower seeds in trays.
Planting plugs
Plug plants are available in spring by post or from garden centres. 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.
Using wildflower turf
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.
