Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Today we're going to talk about wildflowers. Here in New England when a forest is disturbed,
either by lightning strike or man-made activity, openings in the forest occur and the first
species that come into that situation are called "pioneer species". It starts with herbaceous
plants a lot like the perennial wildflowers that we're looking at here. But, it doesn't
take long for them to get shaded out by young, *** plants of different sorts, and for those
plants then to be overtaken by other species of *** plants. What it is all trying to
do is become an oak, beech, hickory forest. But for our situation here, where there is
lawn interspersed with planting beds, what I've tried to do is take as much lawn out
of circulation and transfer it to other kinds of plantings. When you have a turf grass lawn
you are mowing the lawn virtually every week of the growing season and its a monoculture,
so often one pathogen will affect large expanses of your landscape. The root systems are not
that extensive, so if you can plant something alternative to lawn - either a ground cover
or in this case, a great planting of wildflowers; instead of mowing it every week - we cut this
down in the fall and we let the chaff just lay where it is to reseed itself in for the
subsequent years. So we are not mowing it every week. We also have this beautiful display
in May, June and July of wildflowers. The daisies. The Sweet William, a lovely, fragrant
plant. There are some foxglove blooming here, Digitalis. There is a Lupine or two down below.
These are all planted from seeds. If there is a bare spot in our planting we actually
come in in subsequent years and plug in some young, perennial plants to fill out that area.
A couple of things I wanted to point out as I stand in the middle of our second wildflower
planting here at Marsh Botanical Gardens. One is that many plants that are included
in seed mixes are not actually American Native wildflowers. For instance, the Foxglove- Digitalis
Purpurea is a native of Europe but sometimes you will find them in the mixes for American
Native wildflowers. This one was a pioneer, a volunteer that came in from another planting
up the hill. I have left it for purely aesthetic reasons. In a wildflower planting, what you
are working against is the seeding-in of grasses, often non-native species and you are also
working against the incursion of *** plants into the planting. Many of these *** plants
are non-native, invasive species - but there are also many native species that will tend
to seed in and want to grow in your wildflower planting. So one of the aspects of wildflower
planting is that you have to go through once in a while and remove the *** plants that
will shade out your wildflowers. In this planting, I have purposely planted three American Native
*** plants. There is an American Smokebush, there is a Sourwood and I also have a Sumac
growing behind me. So I encourage you to think of lawn alternatives, including wildflowers.
For wildflowers it is important to plant in the spring. The best way to do it and the
cheapest way to do it is to plant a good seed mix. Plant the seed on ground that has been
harrowed, or raked, or tilled, so there is good seed to soil contact. Water the first
few weeks if it is dry. Then enjoy a great display for many years to come.