Create a Field of Flowers With Native and Naturalized Plants

While taking a short walk, you may come across an abandoned field filled with beautiful wildflowers! How easy it is to be amazed by such a beautiful composition. The colors of the flowers, the textures, the shapes. Everything is perfect! It’s as if a landscaper had fun planting everything with so much talent that you’d think it was natural!

With a little work, you can recreate parts of this landscape at home. The laidback idea behind flower fields is that once established, they require almost no maintenance. Watching it grow will become your only mission! Well, almost.

The meadow undeniably has several advantages that go beyond limiting mowing. A flowery field full of native and naturalized plants is a great contributor to biodiversity, whether plant, animal or fungal! It becomes an oasis for pollinators and nectar seekers. Bees, butterflies and birds find a wonderful sanctuary there.

It would be wrong to claim that creating a field of wildflowers is effortless. The first two or three years require special attention, especially when it comes to weeding, in order to control undesirable plants. It is also necessary to resow or replant what was less successful.

Also called flower meadows, this type of development is increasingly popular. Mixtures of meadow flower seeds can be found in all good stores. Several seed companies specializing in native plants also offer interesting mixtures. You can even buy plants plugs or more developed ones.

Several municipalities which have turned to differentiated management of green spaces have opted for flower meadows. They are appearing everywhere in parks!

Encourage Native Plants …and Some Introduced Ones

The essential thing to create a successful meadow is to wisely choose the plants that you will install. You must, as much as possible, encourage native plants, that is to say plants that have grown naturally in your area for millennia! Native plants are well adapted to your climate and are in perfect harmony with their environment.

However, limiting yourself to native plants, especially in Canada, means depriving yourself of several other naturalized and very interesting plants. For example, ox-eye daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare) which grow everywhere in fields are not native to North America. It’s an introduced plant. That is to say, it arrived from Europe with the first colonizers. But, it has blended into the landscape, so well that you would believe it from here! This is called a naturalized introduced plant.

It is good to bring up the subject, because some introduced plants do not behave at all with the delicacy of daisies. These are unwanted invasive plants, those which destroy the natural environment to take total control of the space. We only have to think of Japanese knotweed (Reynoutria japonica). Don’t invite these into your flower field!

First and Foremost, Don’t Reinvent the Wheel!

When creating a flower field, the best advice to give for selecting plants is to see what nature has to offer, nearby. Yes, the answers are all there, in the fields, vacant lots and even on the sides of the roads and highways in your area. These plants, right there under your nose. There it is, the color palette to create your own painting at home.

It’s a simple question of logic. You have to look for plants that are best suited to the environment. Those which are established without invading the entire space, those which coexist well with each other. A simple observation and taking notes of what is already happening in a nearby environment is equivalent to all the stages of analyzing the soil, its pH, its draining quality.  

Sow or Plant

There are two ways to start a flower field. The first is to sow. This involves removing the entire lawn and starting with bare ground. The best time to sow a flower meadow is in the fall, as the majority of our native plants need a cold period to germinate properly in the spring. Planting a flower field from seed requires a lot of patience. It can take 3 years before the first flowers appear. To explore the subject further, Edith Smeester’s flower meadow is simply inspiring.

Personally, I like the laidback option which is to start with a lawn that you simply stop mowing and in which you plant a few natives, here and there, just to make the picture more interesting.

Create a Flowery Field Like a Real Laidback Girl!

As you may know, I am a great optimist! I have the greatest trust in the forces of nature. I know that invariably if we do nothing… nature comes back at a gallop! I know for a fact that without any intervention, native flowers will appear on their own. And better yet, I have no doubt that what will grow back there are the best plants for this location!

Then, you can help the meadow gain floral beauty, by adding plants well adapted to the environment. Encourage the presence of yarrow, New England asters and milkweed, three valuable plants that adapt to many conditions!

But… I also know that introduced plants tend to be invasive are also keeping watch! This is why you must keep a constant eye out to detect the slightest attempt by an undesirable one to occupy the space. To achieve this, of course, you need a keen knowledge of plants!

As a basic inspiration, here is an overview of some native or naturalized plants that are interesting for Northeastern North America, depending on the soil type. Remember that the best selection will be locally specific!  

Plants for a Flower Field in Dry Soil

• Butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa)
• Common Yarrow (Achillea millefolium)
• Common Pearly Everlasting (Anaphalis margaritacea)
• Fragrant cudweed (Pseudognaphalium obtusifolium)
• Grey-headed prairie coneflower (Ratibida pinnata)
• Wild chicory (Cichorium intybus)    

Plants for a Flower Field in Average Soil

• Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca )
• New England Aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae )
• Fireweed (Chamaenerion angustifolium)
• Wild Bergamot (Monarda fistulosa )
• Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta )
• Grass-leaved goldenrod (Euthamia graminifolia ) – monitor its expansion  

Plants for a Flower Field in Moist Soil

• Flat-top White aster (Doellingeria umbellata)
• Swamp Milkweed (Asclepias incarnata )
• White turtlehead (Chelone glabra )
• Harlequin blue flag (Iris versicolor )
• Tall meadow-rue (Thalictrum pubescens )
• Blue verbena (Verbena hastata )

This is a basic proposition to which dozens of other species can be added. Also, some plants are interchangeable from one category to another. In short, with a few initial interventions and a little occasional monitoring, the flower field can become a new attraction of the garden which is intended to be in harmony with nature!