Taming wildflowers - wildflower gardening - includes related articles on wildflowers

Sunset, Nov, 1996 by Jim McCausland, Lauren Bonar Swezey

Forget grand meadows. Today's wildflowers grow attractively in small beds and even in pots. New seed mixes make it possible

A dozen or so years ago, it was a romantic notion: wildflower seeds packaged in cans could create instant meadows. Gardeners across the country, sparked by visions of dazzling blooms and meadow grasses carpeting their backyards, bought into the dream. And cans of these promising seed mixes flew off nursery shelves.

Then reality hit. Gardeners - especially in the West - didn't find their backyards large enough for meadows. And many of the mixes contained mostly grass seed; the grasses and weeds usually grew faster than the wildflowers. In most cases, the meadows weren't pretty sights.

These days, gardeners want seed mixes that provide impressive floral displays through a long season. Seed companies are responding by blending seeds for specific uses - to attract birds and butterflies, for cut flowers, for shade, and for fragrance - and providing for a succession of blooms by combining annuals and perennials.

Wildflower gardens no longer need acres of land to look attractive. You can plant them in more confined spaces - in small planting beds, around mailboxes, in raised beds, and even in containers. Such areas are easy to plant, weed, water, and keep cleaned of old flowers.

With today's seed mixes, it's even possible to sow wildflowers among perennials in a bed or border, or between newly planted shrubs as temporary fillers.

"It's a carefree style of gardening that's colorful and gives a tremendous bang for the dollar," says Michael Landis, owner of the Wildflower Seed Company in St. Helena, California, and designer of numerous wildflower gardens. "And you can bring that carefree style indoors when they're used as cut flowers."

In many areas of the West, November is prime time to sow wildflowers, so plants have time to get well established for strong bloom in spring.

CUTTING GARDENS AND MORE

Landis often uses wildflowers as most gardeners would use bedding plants ("but they're a lot less expensive"). He sows an annual cut-flower mix in raised beds, where the soil is good, plants are easy to maintain, and flowers are convenient to cut. He plants his bird-and-butterfly mix near the edge of a patio where the flowers - and the wildlife they attract - can be enjoyed. And he uses his woodland mix in the light shade under high trees (no wildflower mix is suitable for dense shade). Since a mix contains perennials such as ox-eye daisy, Landis says the show is often more spectacular the second year.

Ken and Donna Erickson of Port Orchard, Washington, created an island of wildflowers that doubles as a cutting garden. It's situated in their backyard and provides a handsome background for their vegetable garden's mostly green plants.

Becky Schaff of Moon Mountain Wildflowers in Carpinteria, California, uses wildflowers more liberally in her small Santa Barbara front yard. She sows them between Mexican bush sage and rockrose. The planting "is so spectacular, people stop and take photos," says Schaff. "And my neighbors are starting to redo their landscapes with wildflowers now."

Because she wants her front yard to always look good, she sows seeds year-round (not just in fall). A succession of bloom keeps her in wildflowers for about nine months (the colder the winter, the fewer months successively planted wildflowers can bloom). The key to attractive wildflower beds, she says, is to keep them maintained. If you let them go, they'll look ragged fast.

Schaff's major planting is in September or October. She tills the soil between existing perennials, then sows the seeds. Her first flowers appear in January. To keep flowers coming, she waters once or twice a week, removes faded flowers constantly, and tosses any seeds they've set back into the soil.

Around May, when the first show starts to fade, she pulls out dead annuals such as linaria and shakes the seeds around the garden beds. She cuts back perennials and long-blooming annuals such as dianthus, evening primrose, and rudbeckia so they'll rebloom.

To extend the bloom show into fall, Schaff overhauls her wildflower plantings in July. She pulls out faded annuals, then tills the bare soil and reseeds with quick annuals such as African daisy and flax (Linum). Her quietest blooming period is in November and December.

GETTING STARTED

When you see the fabulous displays of California poppies and goldfields growing in the desert, you'd think they could grow like that anywhere. But it just isn't so. In the wild, such displays are subject to the whims of weather and may not come back like that every year. Wildflower seeds give a vastly superior performance in well-prepared, weeded, and watered garden soil. Plant them in waste places and you'll get scruffy-looking, short-lived plants. That's also usually the case if you plant under trees (especially oak, eucalyptus, pine, and walnut).

Prepare wildflower beds as you'd prepare soil for a vegetable garden: dig or till in a 3-inch layer of rotted manure or compost, then level the soil surface and water. After about three weeks, hoe or pull the weeds that come up. Then you're ready to plant.