Wild Flowers
Wild flowers add an attractive and valuable extra dimension to many a garden. They provide an opportunity to add colour and bio-diversity and many wildflowers, especially when sown in drifts, also bring a strong architectural quality too.
Wild flowers are both very effective on the margins of a more formal garden and as more extensive areas in their own right. They are low maintenance and can provide swathes of harmonious and calming colour. Carefully chosen plant types also mean that you can have a variety of blooms from early summer through to autumn. Nor do wild flowers need perfect conditions, so it is also possible to select for different conditions – for shade, dry conditions or low quality soil, for example.
And on top of the visual appeal, wildflowers add considerably to biodiversity. A wildflower zone or a more extensive ‘meadow’ or drift will encourage more and more varied insects, especially bees and other pollinators. In turn these will attract more birdlife. Small mammals will thrive on the seeds and in the security of the longer grass and flower stems.
Choosing a wildflower space – and the flowers
It’s important to choose a suitable space, and plants which will do well once the seeds are sown. Here are some of the options.
Cottage Garden
Carefully selected native seeds enriched with naturalised perennials.
This will usually reflect a typical cottage garden environment, with variety of annuals and perennials that will quickly provide a sense of maturity and a touch of the bucolic – with contrasting colours, shapes and sizes, you’ll get rich diversity of plants that will bring the buzz or bees as well as an enchanting visual display.
Open Meadows
A native perennial mix, suitable for extensive open spaces.
Perennials chosen for their versatility as well as their colour, proving a welcome sense of the great outdoors. Suitable for open spaces, this selection includes robust plants suitable for a variety of soil types. Excellent for encouraging insects, birdlife and small mammals in a managed landscape, this is also good for large open areas near a built environment such those found in corporate grounds.
English Wheatfields
A mix of long flowering wildflowers to provide colour from spring to autumn.
Ideal for splashes of colour and architectural impact, this mix is reminiscent of English wheat fields, with their combination of open spaces and field margins and occasional shade. A long lasting display, and will usually need re-seeding annually.
Shade Tolerant
A selection of native perennials that thrive in areas of shade as well as in the sunshine.
An all UK mix, suitable for many soil types and accommodating of shade. These wildflowers are excellent around and under trees and established hedges, but will also thrive in the open.