How to create a wildflower meadow in your garden

The Eden Project is home to the National Wildflower Centre, we want to encourage people to connect with the natural world and create their own wildflower habitats. 

The simple way to encourage wildflowers into your patch is to stop mowing. Say ‘no to the mow’!

Adopt a two-cut approach to your lawn, mowing once in autumn and then again in spring, removing all of the cut grass. This will lower fertility and give perennial wildflowers a chance to push through the grass.

You’ll soon see species such as rough hawkbit, yarrow and selfheal coming through, depending on your soil type. Your once sterile lawn will soon be buzzing with life – and you’ll have the time to enjoy it, now you’re not doing all that mowing.

Use seeds to raise plug plants yourself by planting the seeds into pots or a small nursery bed. If don’t have much outside space, you can grow our wildflowers in pots or window boxes.

You can get your wildflower seeds from the Eden Project online shop. 

For a display of wildflowers in a bed or border, lay a couple of inches of inert substrate, such as sand and simply sow direct at a sowing rate of 2g per square metre. Sand helps to keep competing grasses at bay and your wildflowers will thrive in these nutrient-poor conditions, creating a garden that the bees will love you for.