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Wild flowers make a great addition to any type of garden. They look extremely pretty, are hardy and add more variety for wildlife to enjoy. They can be added into lawns, windowsill boxes, pots or amongst cultivated plants in your much loved flower beds.
After the last frosts you can sow your seeds, in England it's a bit hard to know exactly when that might be. Many seed packets show February as the earliest time to start sowing, but frost can still happen right up to the third week in May. The earlier you can sow the better, giving the seeds plenty of time to get established.
If you are using seed balls, just pop them on to soil free of weeds and grass and keep well watered.
Seeds also need to be sown into soil free of weeds and grass, then a thin layer of soil pushed over the top of them. They can also be put into pots with drainage holes to ensure the roots are not sitting in water, but make sure they don't completely dry out. Wild flower seeds should never be sown too deeply under soil, poppies just need the soil to be disturbed, the seeds are tiny and if buried too deep they will run out of energy before they break the surface.
If sowing in pots then the best compost to use is seed compost as it has the least nutrients of the bagged composts. The plants will prefer growing and remaining in this soil throughout their life as they thrive in poorer soils.
Some wild flowers will race ahead of others (Oxeye daisy) while others will start later in the summer (Birdsfoot Trefoil and Yarrow). Some may not bloom until their second year (Foxgloves).
So be patient with your wild flowers and enjoy them year on year as their display will get better over time.
Some wild flowers such as Red Campion and clover die back over winter and new green shoots will reappear as soon as the temperature starts to warm up, so don't go digging everything up or throwing away your pots.
Wild flowers are past their best at the end of summer, this is when you can cut them back and collect the seeds for fresh sowing in Autumn or the following spring. However, Goldfinches adore Cornflower seeds so you might want to leave a few seed heads for the birds. If you don't mind a wild looking garden, don't cut them back and let them naturally cover the ground as they die back which is great for insects and wildlife. You can always put a sign up if the neighbours don't like the look - 'It's Not Messy It's Wild'
This is the normal time for wild flowers to drop their seeds, so now is the time to start scattering your collected seeds. You can scatter seeds from August to October and simply water in. Don't worry if your newly sown seeds start to sprout, they have started to do this because Autumn can still feel like summer, they are naturally hardy and will start to grow again when Spring arrives.
It's a great idea to leave some wild flowers with their seed heads. This gives shelter to insects and some tiny caterpillars that like to feed on the seeds. Now is the time to plan how you want your wild areas to look next summer, and think about ordering seeds.
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