List of native plants for naturalizing

Coriolanus

Hi,
I'm going to clear a 1/4 acre or so at the back of the house that's completely overgrown with nettles, thistles and brambles. I don't particularly want to maintain it a "lawn" so thought I might try my hand at naturalizing the area and leaving intervention to removing "undesirables" and just mowing access paths or something.
A long term plan is to do a bit of beekeeping so I'd love to seed this area with as many wildflowers as it can hold and hopefully have the area flowering throughout the year.

Is there a list of native flowers that are good for naturalizing? I wouldn't be digging bulbs back up preferably.

The lot at the moment is pretty rugged. 2-3 ft grasses grown into hardpacked thatch as well as the brambles etc. I'm guessing I'll have to cut right down to give the flowers a chance to compete but after that will I still need to maybe strim down the grasses periodically? Obviously I'll be pulling the thistles etc when I see them.

planetX

Hi, if you have nettles and big grasses growing it indicates that your land is quite fertile. For a wildflower meadow you would need to take off the topsoil to bring down the fertility - big job involving heavy machines. What about what they call a flowering lawn you would probably get some clover and buttercup. It will be high maintenance for a while though, as the nettles and brambles will have to be controlled or they'll take over again. Or what about clearing off what's there and putting in a few trees, killing the big weeds but keeping the grass long?
Best indication of what wildflowers to grow is always what you find growing around near you. Look in the wild areas nearby, that will show you what suits your soil type.

Oldtree

Would be an English wild flower meadow you are trying to create, remove topsoil and glyphosate? An irish one is more rugged. Gerry Daly had a bit to say on the subject a while back so I'll try and find it for you.

I have naturalised about a third of an acre over a ten year period and then on a much bigger scale. I didnt glyphosate and sowed native wild flower seed mix which came up for the first year but mostly local stuff after that.

I have 17 different types of grasses, I dont mow as I leave a thatch for the insects and all sorts of things get killed with a mow. I have mowed paths that are kept short but were not seeded with grass. I did pull up all the reeds but learned to live with many other plants.

Take the dreadded dock for example, ruins the effect of the wind across the grass heads, I spent two years pulling it up, as no weedkiller was to be used. Backbreaking work. then I discovered that a gold beetle laid eggs on it and therefore it had a use, so what to do? the insect had finished with the plant just as the seed started to go ripe so I pruned off the seed head at that time each year, about mid July, to stop the spred but retain the plants, and piled it up in a corner to allow anything to escape. A dock has thousands of seeds and they can persist in the soil for years. This seemed like a good management idea but I have come a bit unstuck as the plants do not live forever and I have only a few dock in the garden now! So I am going to have to let them go to seed and get a few more back into the garden for the beetle.

Bull finches and others love the thistle seeds in the autumn.

looksee

Fair play to you for observation Oldtree, I don't have enough room for a wild area (tho you would never guess looking at it at the moment!) but I am happy for nice 'weeds' to do their thing here and there - I think my violets are actually wild ones, they are very willing to grow!

In some places cranesbill gets pulled up for a weed - very satisfying to pull up, you can weed an entire bed by pulling one plant , in others its given a bit of leeway.

Biggest pests are montbretia and Spanish bluebells which were actually planted :eek: at one stage. I do a blitz on them at intervals but they still come up!

Edit - the yellow montbretia is fine as it stays in a clump, the orange stuff is very pretty but spreads everywhere and takes over.

Oldtree

When I lived in london and had a tiny garden and I found an old coal bucket and in that was my wild garden nettles and all, dosn't have to be big to be beauitiful

Coriolanus

planetX wrote: »

Hi, if you have nettles and big grasses growing it indicates that your land is quite fertile. For a wildflower meadow you would need to take off the topsoil to bring down the fertility - big job involving heavy machines. What about what they call a flowering lawn you would probably get some clover and buttercup. It will be high maintenance for a while though, as the nettles and brambles will have to be controlled or they'll take over again. Or what about clearing off what's there and putting in a few trees, killing the big weeds but keeping the grass long?
Best indication of what wildflowers to grow is always what you find growing around near you. Look in the wild areas nearby, that will show you what suits your soil type.

Ok, other than thistles, nettles and brambles, stuff that I can identify is dock leaves, forget me nots in a good few patches under the laylandii that are around the site. There are some pink things under the leylandi and some white things in the middle.
I think the area might have been fertilizsed in the past, it was originally a paddock for horses and before that cows were on it, so likely it was fertilized.
Not really sold on having trees. There's a couple saplings already that I'll leave in place and maybe coppice but the whole site has leylandii around it, about 30 ft at this stage. I'll be cutting them well down and in in the Autumn but that's a whole other thread.

I'm quickly realizing I need a book on flowers or something <<

Oldtree wrote: »

Would be an English wild flower meadow you are trying to create, remove topsoil and glyphosate? An irish one is more rugged. Gerry Daly had a bit to say on the subject a while back so I'll try and find it for you.

I have naturalised about a third of an acre over a ten year period and then on a much bigger scale. I didnt glyphosate and sowed native wild flower seed mix which came up for the first year but mostly local stuff after that.

I have 17 different types of grasses, I dont mow as I leave a thatch for the insects and all sorts of things get killed with a mow. I have mowed paths that are kept short but were not seeded with grass. I did pull up all the reeds but learned to live with many other plants.

Take the dreadded dock for example, ruins the effect of the wind across the grass heads, I spent two years pulling it up, as no weedkiller was to be used. Backbreaking work. then I discovered that a gold beetle laid eggs on it and therefore it had a use, so what to do? the insect had finished with the plant just as the seed started to go ripe so I pruned off the seed head at that time each year, about mid July, to stop the spred but retain the plants, and piled it up in a corner to allow anything to escape. A dock has thousands of seeds and they can persist in the soil for years. This seemed like a good management idea but I have come a bit unstuck as the plants do not live forever and I have only a few dock in the garden now! So I am going to have to let them go to seed and get a few more back into the garden for the beetle.

Bull finches and others love the thistle seeds in the autumn.

glyphosphate = roundup? If so, about a quarter of the area was already done, not by me and I'm not happy about it since three months later it's still dead, just a few dandelions coming up. Really don't want to go about stripping the topsoil off either.

Sonnenblumen

OP - you'll find it hard to beat a meadow planted with Leucanthemum Vulgare (Ox-eye Daisy), a prolific self seeding Daisy, which does not require any significant cultivation. Best to kick start project with some plants and allow the prolific seeder to naturalise.

Easy peasy with stunning results.