How to Landscape With Colorful Wildflowers

Decorate your lawn or garden with vibrant meadow flowers to achieve a beautifully random, informal feel in your outdoor spaces.

Filed under: Wildflowers

This rainbow palette of wildflowers ranges from fiery reds to vibrant purples and should give a dazzling display of color from late spring through to the end of summer. The beauty of this design is that it will grow in a few weeks, and all it costs is the price of a few packets of seeds. All the plants here are annuals except for ox-eye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare), which is a perennial and will establish better if bought as a plug plant. You will need approximately 12x10 feet (4x3 m) of space to grow these plants. These grasses, which are best-suited for an informal garden with sunny borders, prefer free-draining or slightly moist soil and full sun.

Materials Needed:

30 Leucanthemum vulgare (ox-eye daisy) plug plants
2 Papaver rhoeas (annual poppy) packets of seed
2 Agrostemma githago (corncockle) packets of seed
2 Centaurea cyanus (cornflower) packets of seed

2 Glebionis segetum (corn marigold) packets of seed
gardening rake
gardening hose
paper bags

Planting and Aftercare

In early spring, clear any plants or weeds from the site, turn over the soil, and rake it level. It is important to get an even spread of flowers, so mix up all the seed in a bucket, and add sand to it to make distribution easier. Sow the seed evenly, and then gently rake it in. Plant the ox-eye daisy plug plants in among the seed. Water the plants in well, and keep them well watered during the first few weeks. After flowering, allow the seedheads to ripen before either shaking them onto the soil for the following year or collecting them in paper bags to be sown later. Remove all the plants except for the ox-eye daisies, and add them to the compost heap.