Instructions to seed Eco-Lawn in containers:

2)      Press soil down with flattened fingers to create even, flat surface

3)      Cover entire surface with Eco-Lawn

3)      Mist the Seed

4)      Keep seed damp with repeated mistings

5)      Will germinate in 6-14 days.

6)      Eco-Lawn germinates best at 60 – 70 degrees F.

Your Eco-Lawn container will thrive in full sun, part shade and even deep shade!!!

Wildflower meadows are a large part of what we do at Wildflower Farm.  With over 15 years experience doing it, we’ve learned what works and what does not.

I started making my own wildflower mixes 15 years ago after purchasing an off the shelf ‘wildflower mix’, which I now call ‘scam in can’.  The ‘wildflower’ garden looked great in the first couple years, than it started to become sparse and eventually died off.  What I figured out later was that the mix I bought, and what many ‘wildflower mixes’ are made up of, are annuals and exotic perennials. The annuals and many of the perennials were not hardy and many of them did not come back the following year or did not self sow.  So I thought I can do better than this and that’s how I started making my own meadow mixes that work!” – Paul Jenkins

What sets our wildflower meadow mixes apart

Key elements to starting your own native wildflower meadow

• Start with bare soil or as free of vegetation as possible.  Eliminating the vegetation from the site will give your native wildflowers and grasses free reign to germinate and avoid the competition of the unwanted existing vegetation.
• Sow your native wildflower mix in late fall.  Native wildflower and grass seeds are programmed to need a cycle of cold and wet weather to germinate.
• Mix the wildflowers with inert material such as peat moss, compost, sawdust or sand- according to the written instructions. Once you have mixed your seed and soil divide it into half.  Spread half of your mix walking north to south, then take the second half and spread it walking east to west.  This will give you a good even distribution of seed.
•  Lightly rake the seed into the soil (1/8 to 1/4 inch deep), then roll the site with a lawn roller.  Keeping in mind if the site is wet, wait until it dries out before you roll.
• Watering in the first 4-6 weeks of spring will increase germination and seedling survival.
• Keep the site trimmed at a height of 6 inches in the first year with a weed-eater or flail-type mower.  This will stop the annual rye nurse crop and any unwanted weeds from going to seed.  Don’t worry about the native grasses and wildflowers since they will be growing slowly in the first year, focusing most of their energy into growing deep roots.
• In the spring of the second year cut back the meadow right to the ground and rake off the cuttings.  You may need to trim back your meadow in the second year if you are seeing that weeds remain a problem.

• Feel free to add your favourite native wildflower seed to the mix if it is suitable or sow separately in large swaths to make an impact.

• Create pathways with some well placed benches throughout your meadow so that you can enjoy your meadow from within.   Eco-Lawn makes an ideal low-maintenance path for wildflower meadows.  It’s soft, lush growth will feel great underneath your bare feet.

• Be creative with your site; it doesn’t have to be square block.  Add some curves or have it border a focal point in the landscape like a tree or garden sculpture.

Want to know more?

There’s a lot more on www.wildflowerfarm.com or click the topics below

 

• Guide to establishing a wildflower meadow
• Meadow ecology
• Meadow seeding and management
• Designing a wildflower meadow
• Site preparation
• Understanding your soil

Most articles focus on the nectar-rich plants, which although are important, they are by no means all that is needed.  What about the host plants, and no I don’t just mean milkweeds?  Remember that there are hundreds of other butterfly species.  Monarchs are fantastic and have done wonders for pollinator awareness but I think it’s safe to move past the Monarch and embrace all the other butterflies out there that host on a variety of trees, shrubs, grasses, and flowering perennials. 

 And don’t forget to take into consideration your location.   A lot of the information out there on butterfly gardens is so general that you don’t really get much use out of them.  Try finding an article on Butterfly gardening for your area; it can be done but you have to sift through a lot of useless articles to get there.  More locally appropriate and habitat specific articles need to be written.  Is your garden surrounded by forest, or perhaps you are in the suburbs or on a farm?  As regions and ecosystems vary so will the types of butterflies.  So pick up a field guide, do some research and find what butterflies are in your area, or what butterflies may need a helping a hand.  Perhaps if gardeners were as aware as they are now about the importance of including wildlife habitat maybe Ontario wouldn’t have lost one of it’s most stunning butterflies, the Karner Blue.  With a bit of time and research spent on finding what butterflies are in your area you will get even more enjoyment out of your garden the first time you see a Painted Lady landing on your Pearly Everlasting.

Informative Butterfly Gardening Resources 

• Butterfly Gardening for the Great Lakes Watershed
•  North American Butterfly Association’s Regional Butterfly Gardening Guide.  (Unfortunately Canada is left out of this one.)
• Government of Canada site on Butterflies - Lists species and where they are found.  Downside you can’t search your location then species, you have to go through the species to see where their habitat is.
• Government of Canada Index to Larval Food Plants
• Butterfly Gardening as the Canadian Government sees it

Turk's Cap Lily (Lilium superbum)

Next to home and work the majority of our time is spent in the car.  Even more so in the Summer when all we want to do is get in the car and go to the beach, cottage or the closest  ice cream stand.  So with all the time spent driving from one place to the next it’s understandable that a lot of our familiarity with the local landscape is roadside. 

Unfortunately many of our roadside flowers, although pretty are not native.  They have either naturalized from gardens or have been planted by the ministry of transportation because they are tolerant to drought, salt, acidic soils and heavy metals.  

There are seven seed mixes that the MTO uses to re-vegetate a roadside.  Unfortunately all the mixes with the exception of the Old Field Mix use alien species.  Alien species that are often found on invasive species list even within the Canadian or Ontario Government. 

Blue Flax (Linum lewisii)

Many of the plants grow roadside because they are opportunistic and adaptable.  They may grow deep roots to fight against salt and drought or self seed in vast numbers knowing that many of the seeds will not be able to germinate in the poor soil.  This may be ideal for the roadside but not necessarily for your garden.  Often garden beds have better (if not only somewhat slightly) soil, less pollutants and less disturbance.  This gives these roadside rogues a better chance to thrive, and thrive they will in your garden.  Crown vetch, planted by the MTO for erosion control is extremely invasive and near impossible to get rid of once planted.  I have had numerous people ask how to get rid of the crown vetch on their property because it is taking over.  So the next time you are driving and see a lovely roadside bloom think long and hard if you want that in your garden because it will likely be there and everywhere for a long time.  For alternatives to those roadside aliens check out the list below.

Native Plant Alternatives to Alien Roadside Flowers

Roadside Aliens	Hardy Native Alternatives
Chicory	Blue Flax
Queen Anne’s Lace	White Yarrow
Ox-Eye Daisy	White Aster
Viper’s Bugloss	Wild Lupine or Great Blue Lobelia
Orange Daylily	Turk’s Cap Lily or Butterflyweed
Purple Loosestrife	Prairie Blazingstar or Meadow Blazingstar or Blue Vervain
Phragmites	Indian Grass
Crown Vetch	Wild Petunia or Purple Poppy Mallow

 

Grow Me Instead  -  A handy resource that suggests alternative
plants to those pesky invasive garden plants.

Every year the gardens at Wildflower Farm grow and we are always wanting to try out something different and fun.  Two years ago we did a Scree Garden and this year we are putting in a Children’s Garden and will be revamping the store front gardens.  Expanding our gardens and pushing the boundaries of our plants (like in the Scree Garden) makes it fun for us when we give tours, which we do daily.  Showing off the garden is without doubt my favourite part of my job.   I will happily show off our plants and gardens to anyone.  From large groups to just someone that popped in; tours are free.  I love touring visitors around showing them the beauty and tenacity of our native plants.  So the next time you are in the mood to take part in horticultural voyeurism come by Wildflower Farm for a garden tour and be inspired and renewed.

Two years ago we built a scree garden to showcase our dry soil plants like prickly pear cactus, beardtongue and purple poppy mallow.  The scree garden was simple to build, just a pile of gravel and rock with a smattering of soil and a few large rocks for interest.  We planted our hardy natives and watched as they not only thrived but flourished.

We knew our plants could cope with what little hospitality the scree pile offered.  But what really surprised us was how the dry soil plants actually looked better in the scree garden then in our regular gardens.  The major standout being Purple Poppy Mallow

Callirhoe involucrata.  This stunning ground cover blooms from June to September and is the definite show stopper for our Scree Garden.  It appears that our plants are not only low-maintenance they are gluttons for punishment and neglect. 

Building the Scree Garden

Pasque Flower

Prairie Smoke

 Scree Garden Wildflowers and Grasses:

Pasque Flower,Prairie Smoke, Beardtongue, Harebell, Prickly Pear Cactus, Purple Poppy Mallow, Wild Stonecrop, Wild Columbine, June Grass

Annual Fleabane

Ok so it is hot … very hot and sticky.  I can’t remember it being so hot so early, made hotter only by the not so distant bout of cool wet weather we had this Spring.  This year it appears to be feast or famine with the weather, but don’t worry I am not going to prattle on about the weather.  I just wanted to set the mood for the last few days … hot and sticky, making work in the garden feel onerous.  And to those who say ‘oh just wait until it passes’ or ‘weed in the evenings’.  I reply that unfortunately the weeds do not wait until cooler weather and as much as I love where I work I don’t think I could muster the energy to come back to work after dinner to weed.  So I plopped on the sun hat and slathered on the sun screen and made the most of it.  I moved around the garden yanking out whatever didn’t belong and before long I realized that I was seeking out certain weeds in the garden because they were easy and gratifying to weed.  Call it lazy if you will, but I prefer to call it bliss weeding.  My most sought after undesirable was Annual Fleabane Erigeron annuus.   It doesn’t develop a big root system so it is easy to pull out and grows quickly so I generally have something satisfying to plunk into my wheelbarrow.  It is also an annual, as mentioned so I know that every one I pull before it goes to seed is several less next year.  It’s like a hat trick of weeding bliss.  Just thinking of it

Fleabane Free Garden!

makes me want to put on the gloves and getting pulling.  So when you are out in the garden weeding and feeling like sitting on that lawn chair in the shade with a cold cold mojito just get your weed bliss on and starting pulling.

Monarchs feasting on a Meadow Blazingstar

During late July to September Wildflower Farm hosts thousands of Monarch Butterflies.  They come in the hundreds and swarm our Meadow Blazingstar plants (Liatris ligulistylis) to the point that the flowers droop with the weight of dozens of Monarchs.

Up until now we had not known why the Monarchs vied for the Meadow Blazingstar  more than its sibling, Prairie Blazingstar or any of our other delectable wildflowers.  Sure the Monarchs did all the rounds, visiting the coneflowers, bergamot, rudebeckias, ironweeds and so on.  But by far they preferred the Meadow Blazingstars. 

I had always thought the nectar of the Meadow Blazingstar was richer, but as it turns out it isn’t just the richness of the nectar (if that plays a role at all), its the way the nectar is offered.  Liatris ligulistylis belongs to the asteraceae family, which includes over 22,000 species such as sunflowers, coneflowers and no surprise asters.  One of the defining characteristics of the asteraceae family is that the flowers are made up of tiny little florets, providing the butterfly with an all you can eat smorgasbord.  Instead of flying from flower to flower, the butterfly can ‘just dip its proboscis into one floret after another’.  Meadow Blazingstars ‘are packed with these thin, soft, tubular florets’ that are tailor-made for the monarch’s proboscis making them the garden favourite. So for now a part of the Monarch Mystery is solved.  If anyone knows moreon why butterflies choose certain flowers over another please let us know.

This revelation was revealed by flipping through one of my favourite sunday morning magazines, Birds & Blooms.  Fuzzy Thinking by Sally Roth in the April-May 2011 Issue.

Great Runner-ups for a Butterfly Garden

•  Joe Pye Weed
• Milkweed (Red or Common)
• Butterflyweed
• Purple Coneflower
• Bergamot
• Ironweed

For more info on what is in the Wildflower Farm garden or where the monarchs are in their migration visit the Beyond Blooms: Birds, Butterflies & Other Garden Visitors

It is National Wildflower Week in the United States.  A week (May2-8) when the mighty wildflower is praised and adored across the 51 states, whether it  be the Bluebonnets of Texas, the Pasque Flower in South Dakota or the Black-Eyed Susan in Maryland.   They are revered for their ability to provide essential habitat and food to wildlife all the while looking picturesque.  National Wildflower Week is a seven day extravaganza of events throughout America where people share and explore the benefits of native wildflowers.  I did a google search and was blown away by all the seminars, events, photo contests, planting parties and general excitement about wildflowers.  Unfortunately I did not see mention of a Canadian National Wildflower Week.  Surely we Canadians adore our wildflowers too.  Mention trilliums to Ontarians or lupines to P.E.I’ers and surely they will be overcome with pride.  So why not have a national wildflower week or at the very least a day in Canada?