A meadow is 90% grass, dotted with patches of wildflower colour. 
If what you are imagining is wall-to-wall poppies and cornflowers, that's a wildflower patch (see below) not a meadow.
The grass is critical - half of our butterflies lay their eggs on grasses, and the grass is food, shelter and a micro-climate for the rest of the ecosystem. In many cases it forms a symbiosis with the other plants. The green grass also shows off the colour of wildflowers better than any other backdrop.

HOW: Your site must be low in nutrients, in full sun and well-drained. Sites covered in nettle, dock  thistle and other dominant weeds, or grasses growing above waist height, are unlikely to be suitable.
You can email us for advice if you are not sure, but we need the site to have been left wild for at least 6 months, and photos, to advise properly.
There are some exceptions such as wetland or grazed meadows - contact us for more advice as these are rather specialist habitats to create and maintain.
You cannot just chuck seed onto existing grassland, even if you rake or harrow it. The grass will overwhelm 99.9% of what you sow. And don't be fooled into thinking seed is a cheap option - it costs over £500 to properly seed half an acre! 
You can plug our large plants into grassland - see our section on delivery and aftercare, or you can sow special native grass/wildflower seed mixes. We don't sell these as we've found planting much more effective, but you can do a mix of both. Sowing requires meticulous soil preparation. We can advise (you don't have to buy anything from us).

VARIETIES: We do a collection specifically for grassland meadows in our shop, but around 70% of the varieties we sell can can work.  Click on each different product to reveal a key on growing preferences. It tells you whether it can work in a meadow, or not.

EXPECTATIONS/AFTERCARE: Meadows are low maintenance once established but can take a decade to get to their best, especially from sowing. Many people give up way too soon. Keep adding more plants and varieties every Spring or Autumn, year after year. We have many meadows that took 5 years to even begin to look good. Plants need help and replenishment to get a foothold. Once they do, they can look after themselves, but you HAVE to cut a meadow at least once a year. See our Delivery + Aftercare sections, or read our blogs.





This is essentially a wildflower meadow that is regularly cut.
It won't have escaped anyone's notice that all but the most meticulously maintained and treated lawns, end up with a swathe of Lawn Daisy, Creeping Buttercup and other wildflowers that don't mind a regular haircut.
So for those who would like wildflowers and colour, but don't want tall grass and any natural untidiness, a flowering lawn is an excellent alternative. You just have to choose wildflowers that don't mind this harsh treatment. Indeed, some species prefer regular cutting (which mimics natural heavy grazing) as it allows them to compete for light, and not get overwhelmed.

HOW: 
This is best done by plugging wildflowers into a part of your existing lawn. If you don't have existing lawn, you can lay turf and plug wildflowers into this. You can also plug wildflowers into prepared earth and sow grass seed.

VARIETIES: We do a collection specifically for a flowering lawn in our shop. You can see more detail on each named variety, by clicking on the individual photos.

EXPECTATIONS/AFTERCARE: Flowering lawns take a long time to establish (a minimum of 5 years to look their best). However, the varieties we recommend should spread, so you start with fairly sparse colour and end up with great patches of colour, if it works as expected.
You need to mow in the same way as a normal lawn, but not 'golf-course short' - set the blade a little higher. Remove cuttings. 
Do this from March to October (basically the same period as you'd mow any normal lawn), but leave 10-21 days between cuts, to enable flowering. You won't harm the plants by mowing more frequently, you'll just get less colour. 
Obviously DO NOT treat the lawn with a weed+feed mix as this will kill your wildflowers. You shouldn't need to fertilise at all.





This is a fabulous alternative solution for sites that are much too fertile/full of weeds for a wildflower meadow or border (or for existing gravelled areas). Examples include sites over-run with established nettles, docks or other pernicious weeds.

HOW: Treat or strim the existing vegetation back to soil level, then lay a semi-permeable membrane (available from all good garden centres, and online). On top of this lay your choice of gravel to a depth of 10cm/3inch.
Into this set up you can plug in wildflowers, by cutting an entry hole into the membrane and planting the plug root-ball into the soil below. The gravel and membrane prevent weed growth but allow sufficient water to the roots of your wildflowers to allow them to establish. You end up with a gravel garden rather like those seen in Mediterranean gardens.

VARIETIES: You can try most of the varieties in our shop with this kind of set up, and it can work in sun or shade.

EXPECTATIONS/AFTERCARE: This approach is particularly good for small gardens, but it can be done at scale or in raised beds and containers. It can look very stylish and is a good compromise for those who want wildflowers with a little less of the 'wild look', because you have such control of the way it looks. Plants will only grow where you plug them in, and not much can establish in the gaps covered by gravel.
You will still need to cut your wildflowers back in late summer / early autumn, once they stop flowering and start to look tatty. They may disappear for the winter but should return each year, with each established plant getting strong and bigger each season.






Many people don't want a meadow but do want the colour and wildlife benefits of native wildflowers. Whether it is a strip of wildflowers on an allotment, a prepared border in the garden, or a raised bed on a patio, the approach is the same.

HOW: You can either do this by sowing or planting plugs, or a mixture of both. We often get shown photographs of wildflower borders that customers want to replicate. A large percentage of these are full of annual wildflowers, particularly Cornflower and Poppy. Not all are native (only the blue Cornflower and Red / some Yellow Poppy varieties are UK native), and annual wildflowers require a particular approach. You have to prepare the soil to bare earth, and sow a seed mix in either late Autumn or Spring. 
However, the majority of wildflowers are perennial (coming again year after year) - with some biennials (flowering in their second year, then dying), and only a few do well from sowing direct. This is because many of our wildflowers require stratification (over-wintering before they will start to germinate), and many grow very slowly initially. Due to this, sown projects often get overwhelmed by weeds or one dominant variety in the seed mix, before they can establish sufficiently to provide ground cover. That's why our big plugs are so good - you speed up the process considerably - you can plant exactly where you want to plant, and have total control - and you can shade out weeds pretty much straight away by planting close together.

Many people assume that wildflowers must be sown, but if you think about it, there is no other area of your garden (be it a rockery, herbaceous border or veg plot) that you would try to create simply by randomly chucking seed onto the soil. Wild borders are no different - it's a good investment to do it properly first time, even if it costs a little more.
It is also good aesthetics to have taller varieties at the back of a border, and shorter ones at the front. For obvious reasons. This is impossible to achieve by simply sowing, as it is random.

What you are aiming for is to plant densely enough to create a carpet of wildflowers (also called 'ground cover') to prevent weeds taking over the plot.

VARIETIES: You can try most of the varieties in our shop with this kind of set up, and it can work in sun or shade. There is a height guide on the key for each species.

EXPECTATIONS/AFTERCARE: Wild borders based on annual wildflowers need resowing / re-working every autumn, to help the plants re-seed themselves.
Borders made up mostly of perennial species, need a single cut in Autumn, down to about 5 cm (two inches), once the plant has browned and started to die off for the winter. This is important for regeneration, but it is possible to leave seed heads of some varieties to over-winter, to provide important food for birds, and cover for mini-beasts.







Not only is it possible to grow wildflowers in beds, pots, baskets and containers, but certain varieties work superbly well and are more robust than many non-native nursery plants.
You can even combine wildflowers and native grasses to create a mini-meadow.

HOW: You simply choose your container / make your raised bed, then use a normal compost. If the container is larger, then a mix of subsoil/sand/gravel and normal compost works better. You can use garden soil, but if this is rich (a loam or a clay) then you will end up with big weeds.
To recreate a mini-meadow, simply sow native grass seeds (available online) alongside your wildflowers.

VARIETIES: You can try most of the varieties in our shop with this kind of set up, and it can work in sun or shade. To help, we have a collection in a shop specifically selected for container growing.

EXPECTATIONS/AFTERCARE: The main thing you have to keep on eye on in any container - more so if it is small (i.e. pots or hanging baskets) is watering. All plants - even tough wildflowers - need some level of care in a container, because access to moisture is artificially restricted. 
In very hot weather, small containers need daily watering, and to make it easier, place a pot-tray/saucer under your pot and keep that topped up with water. This way the plants can take up what water they need.
LOTS of inexperienced gardeners kill their plants by underwatering containers. Rain is usually insufficient as so little of it actually hits and penetrates the container surface. Be generous.
It will prolong your display if you dead-head your wildflowers post-flowering, and it will really help to cut back the whole lot in late autumn (to a couple of inches / five cm).