How To Prepare A Wildflower Garden For Winter

To keep your wildflower garden looking neat and helping it blend in with your yard add a hardscape feature such as a mowing strip or brick edging.

How to prepare a wildflower garden for winter. In arid climates or during drought conditions up to 12 inch of supplemental water per week may be required to maintain an optimal display. You might want to turn some of your lawn or an old flower border into your new wildflower meadow. A wildflower garden usually doesnt require you to prepare the soil to any great degree but bad soil can benefit from some compost mulch or other organic m.

Arbors and benches also help integrate wildflowers and make them look like they were planted with intent. Consider leaving a small patch of wildflowers unmowed or better yet leave the mowed stems and seed heads in place throughout the winter then rake them up in spring. TOP WILDLIFE GARDENING TIPS Spread fallen leaves over your flowerbeds.

Rake onto a large sheet or tarp then drag to a corner of your yard to give pollinators some winter cover. A thick layer of mulch around root vegetables left in the garden for your fall and winter harvest can also buffer against hard frosts and prolong your crop. The top surface of the soil is lightly roughened by the scalper and makes a good seed bed.

As well as providing a rich mulch they create a superb foraging habitat for thrushes and blackbirds in winter. Pile mulch up on unused beds place it around existing flowers or root vegetables youre leaving in the soil for the winter and add it around the base of rose bushes shrubs and trees. Mix sand with the seed mixture.

The best time to create and sow your meadow is in autumn. As an example Digitalis foxglove Achillea yarrow Salvia sage and Dianthus pinks can all be sown in pots in the greenhouse from January onwards. Wildflower meadows grow better on unproductive soil where vigorous grasses dont out-compete the flowers.

As a group hybrid tea roses are the most vulnerable to winter cold and need the most preparation. Use a scalper to remove the dead thatch and scratch up the soil surface. Frogs and invertebrates also like to overwinter among damp leaves you can make your own frog hibernaculum using just leaves shrub clippings and a grow bag.