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You need more prep to get a wildflower meadow going. The Royal Horticultural Society has a good guide here: https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?PID=436 https:

You need more prep to get a wildflower meadow going. The Royal Horticultural Society has a good guide here: https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?PID=436 https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?PID=436

WalterBright 7y ago
Thank you, but that looks like a lot of work :-( and I have a brown thumb (everything I plant turns brown). It seems reasonable to me that native plants should grow without intensive assistance (else they would go extinct). Why does this not happen?
- timclark 7y ago
  My key reading from the article was over-fertility leads to mono-culture, so paradoxically you need to reduce soil fertility to encourage diversity. Reducing soil fertility probably needs intervention to remove rotting vegetation etc. I am guessing that at one point in time native plants would have had animals and insects that were eating them and maybe reducing soil fertility.
  - pfdietz 7y ago
    I think the reduced fertility was because the fields were being used to make hay, rather than being cut and the cuttings allowed to rot in place. The minerals in the hay were removed from the field, gradually depleting the soil.
  - noelwelsh 7y ago
    ^This (which is the same thing both the original article and the RHS article said). Grass will out compete wild flowers if the fertility of the soil is too high. Either: - get rid of the grass - mow it very short and then plant wild flowers. Just throwing seeds onto the lawn will do nothing. To get rid of grass either: - dig it out (easy in the right soil; very hard in clay which is a lot of the UK) - cover it with cardboard, cover the cardboard with soil, and plant on top. I'm currently converting our front lawn to wild flowers. Luckily we don't have clay so I'm able to dig out the grass.
- pvaldes 7y ago
  > I have a brown thumb Definitely could help with that. Send me a mail with some close photos of the weeds in the area, and basic info about the continent and climate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardiness_zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardiness_zone) You can cut the house or recognisable parts in the photos. I don't care about that and I don't need your exact location. Soil, exposition (sun?, deep shadow?) and climate is much more important. Of course if your neighbours or administration throw weed killers to the soil or water systematically, nothing will grow, no matter what you try. Nothing except the more badass plants, but then you would have bigger problems than brown thumbs.

You need more prep to get a wildflower meadow going. The Royal Horticultural Society has a good guide here: https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?PID=436 https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?PID=436

WalterBright 7y ago

Thank you, but that looks like a lot of work :-( and I have a brown thumb (everything I plant turns brown). It seems reasonable to me that native plants should grow without intensive assistance (else they would go extinct). Why does this not happen?

timclark 7y ago
My key reading from the article was over-fertility leads to mono-culture, so paradoxically you need to reduce soil fertility to encourage diversity. Reducing soil fertility probably needs intervention to remove rotting vegetation etc. I am guessing that at one point in time native plants would have had animals and insects that were eating them and maybe reducing soil fertility.
- pfdietz 7y ago
  I think the reduced fertility was because the fields were being used to make hay, rather than being cut and the cuttings allowed to rot in place. The minerals in the hay were removed from the field, gradually depleting the soil.
- noelwelsh 7y ago
  ^This (which is the same thing both the original article and the RHS article said). Grass will out compete wild flowers if the fertility of the soil is too high. Either: - get rid of the grass - mow it very short and then plant wild flowers. Just throwing seeds onto the lawn will do nothing. To get rid of grass either: - dig it out (easy in the right soil; very hard in clay which is a lot of the UK) - cover it with cardboard, cover the cardboard with soil, and plant on top. I'm currently converting our front lawn to wild flowers. Luckily we don't have clay so I'm able to dig out the grass.
pvaldes 7y ago
> I have a brown thumb Definitely could help with that. Send me a mail with some close photos of the weeds in the area, and basic info about the continent and climate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardiness_zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardiness_zone) You can cut the house or recognisable parts in the photos. I don't care about that and I don't need your exact location. Soil, exposition (sun?, deep shadow?) and climate is much more important. Of course if your neighbours or administration throw weed killers to the soil or water systematically, nothing will grow, no matter what you try. Nothing except the more badass plants, but then you would have bigger problems than brown thumbs.