Wild Flower Hill

by Koleen
(Bloomfield, Indiana, USA)

My husband and I have a steep hill in the back portion of our lot. There are some trees along each edge of the lot as well, and the hill area was difficult to grow grass on and even more difficult to mow.

After browsing the library one day, running out of ideas, I came across a book about wildflowers. I've always loved the bright and beautiful look of a field of wild flowers in bloom, and I thought maybe we could have this look and the added advantage of a no-mow back yard.

I visited the local plant nursery and asked lots of questions, then left with a big bag of mixed wildflower seed that was perfect for our area and climate, and the partly sunny partly shady situation on our backyard hill.

My green-thumbed mother loaned us a manual tiller, and we spent a morning taking turns pushing and sipping lemonade. My husband was sweet enough to handle much of the uphill tilling, the darling.

After the tilling, we used a spade and hoe to break up any larger clumps and get everything crumbly and ready to be seeded. We scattered our seeds by hand, and I imagined being a flower fairy, dancing around in the trees and the sunshine and the shadows, magically creating a field of luscious color and delectable scents.

When we were all done, we laid in our hammock and hoped for a light, gentle rain.

The flower fairies were on our side! We got our nice rain that night, and a sunny spring day to follow.

I tried not to feel to anxious for the results, but I couldn't help peeking at the soil every day to see if anything was happening.

Finally, something did! The little green shoots began to appear, two-leafed in their newness but soon to be true-leafed. We tried to guess which new sprouts would match each happy-looking bloom on the label we had saved from our seed bag.

We had a road trip planned to visit out of state relatives, so we had to leave our little project alone for two weeks.

When we came back--yes, surprise! We had pinks, purples, yellows, oranges, even whites and blues. Delicate in size and petal shape, but hearty in quantity and vigor. The swirl of the flower fairies' brush strokes would change over the course of that spring and early summer, with the whites and pinks dominating to begin with, the purples, yellows, and blues taking over next, and the bright oranges trumpeting their excitement at the crown of the summer.

When fall came, we could mow the area happily, not having had to mow it over the summer, and we could wait and hope for the next spring, knowing our flower friends had dropped their seeds into the soil to cheer us again the next spring. And this time, without any tilling.

There is an explosion of summer color available in a small seed envelope or even a can for just a few dollars. Of course one can spend a lot more getting a custom mix, but the plain old cans of wildflower seeds in the garden department of the big box stores are beautiful too.

I planted wildflower the first time in between my giant sunflowers to take up the space. I bought one or two envelopes of cheap wildflower seeds to populate the spaces between my sunflowers in a planting area that was about two feet by a hundred and five feet. I was pleasantly surprised at what popped up between the sunflowers. My first planting yielded a natural fence of big green sunflower stalks and leaves topped with giant yellow flowers that were like the fence post caps with the wildflowers acting as the boards of the fence.

I would just stand out there and look at the flowers. I remember looking at my natural fence row once while mowing. I was enjoying the view so much that I went off course with the riding tractor! Up popped blues and yellow, and deep hues of red that were so dark they almost looked like a light brown. The colors up close were velvety in some spots, shiny in other, velvety on this wildflower, and glowing on another.

When choosing what wildflowers to plant, just make sure they are hardy to your region. If they are, and you choose the right spot, many will come back next year! Depends on if you mow them down before they go to seed or not. Look on the can or envelopes to make sure there aren't any varieties that will grow to tall or too short for what you want.

If you have a large area to plant, you can make a place of color that will stop traffic! If you have a tiny spot, the color will still be there in a smaller portion. Try a sprinkling of wildflower seeds this year if you have a spot where you want color, but not have to worry about it.

Wildflower Seed on eBay