The Impatient (Native) Gardener
Spring brings a sense of renewal and excitement for most gardeners. We get to journey outdoors and get our hands dirty in the soil planting flower, vegetables, or whatever strikes our fancy. If you are interested in a pollinator garden you may reach for sunflowers (miner bees!), borage, or easy to grow rudbeckia. It’s only once you step out into the world of Pacific Northwest native wildflowers that you discover this whole other season of planting – autumn.
I first discovered this unlikely planting season when I started researching native wildflowers and how to grow them in my own backyard. My timing was abysmal and it was early January by the time I stumbled across some great planting guides for Pacific Northwest natives. Here I was, fully entrenched in winter, when it turns out I was supposed to have planted my meadow back in October or November. What do you do when you are not only a curious gardener - but an impatient one as well?
One of the main requirements for starting a meadow is to prepare the site. Ideally this means covering your selected spot with a tarp and smothering the undesired plants (hello, grass!) and seeds until you have a seed free, weed free, site to plant your meadow. Experts recommend 7 to 12 months of this treatment.
Nope. Couldn’t wait that long!
"What do you do when you are not only a curious gardener - but an impatient one as well?"
Instead, I decided to just pick a spot in my front yard that was (relatively) weed free to begin with and scatter some Farewell to Spring (Clarkia Amoena) and hope for the best. I also ended up seeding Douglas Meadowfoam, Riverbank Lupine, and Showy Milkweed in various spots throughout our yard. Prior to scattering the seed and hoping for the best I did do some cold stratification (seed packets in the freezer for 24 hours) in an attempt to mimic winter and give my seeds a fake winter all their own to try and coax them out and help them sprout.
No regrets! It was extremely gratifying to wander through my yard throughout March and April and try and figure out what was growing. Here’s a tip – anything that grows fast is a weed. If it’s slow growing and not taking over it is a PNW native wildflower. I very much failed on the Showy Milkweed front. Not a single plant emerged. Douglas Meadowfoam and Farewell to Spring I would count as a success. The Riverbank Lupine was, if anything, too successful! I’ve got a large chunk of it along my fence in the backyard that will need to be hacked back and managed so it doesn’t completely take over.
I did end up tarping (for a few months at least) a section in the side yard and planting a native meadow mix that included grass seeds. The trouble with this is that not only did I impatiently only tarp for about three months, but the mix itself has grasses mixed in. In the right setting grass in your meadow is ideal. It provides habitat for pollinators and structure to help the more delicate wildflowers when they get too tall towards the end of the growing season. The difficulty (when you are an impatient gardener) is that my lackadaisical approach to site prep led to not only beneficial native grasses, but also some regular old lawn grass popping up. I would suggest that if you don’t have the patience to wait out a year of tarping that you forgo the wildflower mixes with grass seeds and stick to flowers alone. That way when grass starts creeping in you have no doubt about ruthlessly yanking it out.
My take aways from my impatient gardening are this:
1. Plant in a weed free(ish) area and commit to pulling grass throughout the growing season
2. Use cold stratification to trick your seeds into germinating if you can’t plant in the autumn
3. Be choosy in your seed mix and select wildflower only mixes
"That way when grass starts creeping in you have no doubt about ruthlessly yanking it out."
Alternatively, plant in large pots with fresh soil from the store and you won’t have to worry about grasses horning in on your flower space.
I still haven’t mastered my patience to the point where I am tarping for the correct time, but I am spending a little more energy on my site prep. This fall we spent a few hours with a sod remover and stripped off the top few inches of sod and dirt from our median strip. After filling in the space with soil purchased at a local nursery, we scattered this seed mix and tamped down and lightly watered (to try and keep seed from blowing away). I’m hopeful that we will get an interesting meadow out in the median this spring, along with the patches of Farewell to Spring, Douglas Meadowfoam, and my elusive Showy Milkweed that I will continue to hand-pull grass from over the winter.
I’ve got a few more weeks of planting season and hope to get a few more wildflower projects going. If you’ve got questions, are looking for seeds, or assistance with turning your patch of earth into a wildflower meadow, please reach out and contact us.
