How to Plan a Wildflower Garden

Prepare for bright, festive blooms when you plan a wildflower garden.

Embrace the natural beauty of America's wildflowers by dedicating a garden specifically to growing native plants. Whether the garden is tucked away in a sunny corner of your yard or spread across the entire front of your property, expect an exuberant array of colors and textures. Plan the garden in advance to ensure the wildflowers thrive from the beginning, and if you wish, put on a repeat performance next year.

Difficulty:

Moderate

Instructions

1. Select a garden spot where your favorite wildflowers can be in sun and shade conditions similar to their native habitats. For woodland flowers such as columbine and violets, mark out a space that receives morning sun and is shaded during the hottest parts of the day. Identify a sunny location for flowers that normally grow in open fields and meadows, such as wild sunflowers, yarrow and coreopsis.

2. Refine your wildflower garden location plans to accommodate the plants' moisture requirements. Bright red cardinal flowers, for example, grow in sunny locations but require consistent moisture at root level to thrive. Mark a space for these types of plants near a pond, stream or close to a water source that you can easily access for watering by hand.

3. Schedule soil preparation for the garden in stages. Three months before planting, plan on mowing and raking the area to expose bare soil and repeating the process a month later. For particularly weedy sections, cover the ground for two or three months with clear plastic sheets to kill the vegetation underneath. Collect shredded leaves, bark and other organic matter to work into the soil for a shady, woodland-type garden.

4. Review the list of flower seeds included in commercially available wildflower seed mixes. Choose a mix that has a high representation of flowers that are natives of your region to ensure the best germination, growth and flowering over the entire season. If you plan to grow perennial wildflower plants, visit several nurseries to locate the varieties best suited for the growing environment you plan to create.

5. Target a date two weeks before your area's last projected frost in the spring to spread wildflower seeds in your new garden if it is located in U.S. Department of Agriculture plant hardiness zones 2 through 7. This allows the seedlings to emerge without the threat of damage from cold weather. If your garden is in zones 8 through 10, schedule a planting date in late autumn to take advantage of cooler temperatures and winter rainfall.

Tips & Warnings

• Avoid digging up the area you plan to seed with wildflowers. Disturbing the soil can bring dormant weed seeds and rhizomes to the surface where they grow quickly and crowd out tender new wildflower seedlings

References

• Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center: A Guide to Native Plant Gardening
• University of Missouri Extension; Wildflowers in the Home Landscape; David H. Trinklein; June 2010
• National Gardening Association; Wild for Wildflowers; Michael MacCaskey