Have you got space for wildflowers in your garden?

I spent some time in my own garden today, - I even had some help from a new friend (thanks Brenda) and I feel slightly more on top of things now. I was finally getting round to planting some pots of perennials in the front garden border that have been hanging around for ages, drying out and looking sorry for themselves, when someone pulled up in the road outside, wound down the window and said " I just wanted to say that I love this and I've been looking at it every time I go past and I just wanted to let you know" - The this that she was talking about was my Wildflower verge, on the roadside outside my house.

Of course being English, I blushed and said thank you, but really what I wanted to tell her was
" I only did it because I didn't want to mow the grass."

This patch of ground outside my front fence is really poor soil, that was made worse last year from all the tradesmen parking on it when we had the plumbing and electrics sorted.  My neighbours all have grass verges, which need mowing every week and it's pretty obvious if you've been neglecting it as we are the main road through the village.  My solution when we finally banished the last workman was to tip 4 packets of wildflower seed into my measured grass seed pack, and broadcast sow the whole lot onto the raked verge back in early March. I've also planted a lot of bulbs, so hopefully i''ll have several seasons of interest, and at this time of the year I can enjoy the compliments safe in the knowledge that I have until the 3rd week of July before I have to do any cutting, - at which point on a dry day i'll get out the strimmer, let the flower seeds fall where they are and see what comes up next year. If you've got a strip of poor land in full sun, that you'd like to ignore for most of the year, why don't you have a try?

Comments

[Lou in Surbiton]

That's so pretty!

I don't understand why anyone would want perfectly manicured lawn out the front of the house when they could have that instead. And don't get me started on paving over the front garden...

I'd love a wildflower garden, but our garden is too small to dedicate a specific area to it. So instead, we mixed in some wildflower seeds with grass seed when we reseeded the patchy parts of the lawn we've inherited, but so far I can't see anything coming through. Though, yes, it will be interesting deciding whether to mow the lawn or not, once we start to see flowers coming through and the whole thing gets two foot high!