A BOHEMIAN FLOURISH
Everyone can sow meadow f lowers, even with no meadow
SNot surprisingly, their success launched a popular trend. Nowadays, informal carpets of annuals are grown in open spaces across the country. When well-planned, they’re movingly beautiful. What’s more, the flowers benefit bees and other pollinators.
Anyone can create an annual flower meadow. The seeds are direct sown in spring for flowers from mid-summer. And as April is the optimum sowing month, there’s time to try it this year.
Normally, it is best done in early April. But bad weather set us all back this spring — so there’s still plenty of time. If you sow seeds within the next ten days, you can expect colour from mid-summer onwards.
These are not true meadows. Those have permanent grass, originally for hay or grazing livestock. True meadow plants are therefore perennial. But grass meadows take years to develop and are long-term.
Annual ‘meadows’, in contrast, bloom within weeks of sowing. Purists would sow truly wild annuals. But a wider mix of varieties can give more colour without looking too unnatural.
SIZE DOESN’T MATTER
AN ANNUAL meadow can be any size. You can create minimeadows in half-tubs or smaller containers, or cultivate and sow a football pitch.
In the countryside, wild annuals pop up wherever ground is disturbed.
To survive, they must flower, seed and die in a single growing season. As individuals, they may look frail and insubstantial. But if grown in a balanced mixture, the carpeting effect is enchanting.
Add less common species, such as pink corn-cockle or yellow corn marigold, and the effect is even better. But in gardens we can pep those up with improved strains such as Shirley poppies, or coloured cornflowers.
Non-native annual species belong here, too. Bees love foraging in blue-mauve phacelia
tanacetifolia which looks superb with orange eschscholzias or calendulas. You can include annual grasses, such as quaking grass Briza maxima and hare’s tail lagurus ovatus.
If you’re not sure which annuals to blend, leave it to the experts. You can buy mixtures from Pictorial Meadows (pictorial
meadows.co.uk) which offers a wide range. Remember to choose Annual Meadow Seeds.
SEEDS OF SUCCESS
IT’S IMPORTANT to give your seeds a good start. If you’re using half tubs, that’s simple. Make sure they drain, fill each with potting compost and scatter mixed seed sparsely. Cover with a thin layer of potting compost and water.
For growing in the ground, prepare a seedbed. Soil should be crumbly and lightly dry. Scatter your mixed seeds, or sow individual varieties to create merging drifts.
Give sown areas a light rake over, and await results. If the weather stays dry after sowing, irrigate with care.
If seedlings come too thickly, thin them by hand. If they grow rapidly, trim up to half of them back. Do that before the end of May, reducing the height of each selected plant by about a third. Plants trimmed that way will branch more freely and extend the season of colour. OMe of the best features at the London Olympics were the amazing flower meadows. Vast areas of colourful annuals waved in the breeze like an ocean of flowers.
Have you started your dahlia tubers in pots? Then it’s time to move them outside. Plant them in the best soil possible, in full sun. Set each deeply enough to cover the bottom portions of any shoots which have sprouted.
Good drainage is essential, particularly if your soil is heavy. Compost mixed into the soil can improve both drainage and nutrition. On thin or hungry soil, mix a handful of slowrelease fertiliser or bonemeal into the planting hole. Water thoroughly after planting.
You can also plant dry tubers now. They will take a lot longer to emerge than dahlias which have been started off in pots, so mark where you’ve planted them and be patient.
They may start late but will flower right up to November. If late frost is forecast, protect freshly emerged dahlia shoots by laying fleece over them overnight. Slugs or snails are gluttons for dahlias, so treat the ground with nematode slug killer or use wildlife friendly slug pellets.
LATE BULB CARE
SPRING bulbs will be going over now. allow the leaves to wither and die back naturally, returning nutrients to the bulbs for storage. Small plants such as crocuses,
scillas and chionodoxas will disappear relatively quickly. Many of them spread by seed so allow that to shed before you tidy up any dead material.
Daffodils and narcissus naturalised in grass should wither and die before you mow or cut back. That can take until June. If you must cut earlier, leave the foliage unharmed for six weeks after flowering.