January 11, 2012 – 3:46 pm
Keep your indoor décor green all year round with Eco-Lawn! A blend of seven fine fescue grasses developed by Wildflower Farm, Eco-Lawn is a drought tolerant, low maintenance turf grass that looks amazing in containers! Its emerald green blades are soft, green and inviting. Because Eco-Lawn grows well in full sun, part shade or deep shade it thrives as an elegant houseplant in your living room, office or kitchen. Craving Spring? Combine Eco-Lawn with bulbs for an instant Springtime effect.
Instructions to seed Eco-Lawn in containers:
1) Fill container with moistened potting soil or growing mix
2) Press soil down with flattened fingers to create even, flat surface
3) Cover entire surface with Eco-Lawn
3) Mist the Seed
4) Keep seed damp with repeated mistings
5) Will germinate in 6-14 days.
6) Eco-Lawn germinates best at 60 – 70 degrees F.
Your Eco-Lawn container will thrive in full sun, part shade and even deep shade!!!
September 22, 2011 – 12:46 pm
At the end of the month Wildflower Farm presents ‘Grow Your Own Wildflower Meadow’ on September 24 at 11am. In the seminar Paul Jenkins, owner and co-founder of Wildflower Farm will be sharing his experiences and expertise on wildflower meadows. This seminar has always be a popular one and is one of our favourite to host, but unfortunately not all of you meadow enthusiasts can attend so I am hoping this post will make for a good substitute.
Wildflower meadows are a large part of what we do at Wildflower Farm. With over 15 years experience doing it, we’ve learned what works and what does not.
I started making my own wildflower mixes 15 years ago after purchasing an off the shelf ‘wildflower mix’, which I now call ‘scam in can’. The ‘wildflower’ garden looked great in the first couple years, than it started to become sparse and eventually died off. What I figured out later was that the mix I bought, and what many ‘wildflower mixes’ are made up of, are annuals and exotic perennials. The annuals and many of the perennials were not hardy and many of them did not come back the following year or did not self sow. So I thought I can do better than this and that’s how I started making my own meadow mixes that work!” – Paul Jenkins
We formulate our wildflower mixes for specific soil types or growing conditions. It isn’t a one size fits all approach. We offer 10 unique mixes that range from dry soil to wetland to septic beds. We will also formulate meadow mixes custom order for your specification.
All of our wildflower mixes are formulated with North American native perennial wildflowers and grasses that are hardy to zone 3.
We’ve given special attention to including not only a variety of colour, but providing species that bloom all season from spring to fall.
We provide all the information you need have a beautiful wildflower meadow of your own. Within each native wildflower meadow mix box we include full instructions, way beyond scatter and enjoy.
We would be happy to assist you make the right native wildflower meadow choice for your upcoming project. Feel free to give us a call 1-866-476-9453. Our knowledgeable staff are available Monday through Friday, 9am-5pm EST.
Please be patient. True native wildflower meadows take a few years to become established. In the first two years it is likely that you will see more ’green’ than blooms, but don’t give up hope! With a minimal amount of maintenance your native wildflower meadow will begin to mature and bloom in its third year. Visit the Country Gardenerto see Yvonne Cunnington’s meadow Wildflower Farm installed over 10 years ago.
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Start with bare soil or as free of vegetation as possible. Eliminating the vegetation from the site will give your native wildflowers and grasses free reign to germinate and avoid the competition of the unwanted existing vegetation.
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 Mix the wildflowers with inert material such as peat moss, compost, sawdust or sand- according to the written instructions. Once you have mixed your seed and soil divide it into half. Spread half of your mix walking north to south, then take the second half and spread it walking east to west. This will give you a good even distribution of seed.
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Lightly rake the seed into the soil (1/8 to 1/4 inch deep), then roll the site with a lawn roller. Keeping in mind if the site is wet, wait until it dries out before you roll.
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Watering in the first 4-6 weeks of spring will increase germination and seedling survival.
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Keep the site trimmed at a height of 6 inches in the first year with a weed-eater or flail-type mower. This will stop the annual rye nurse crop and any unwanted weeds from going to seed. Don’t worry about the native grasses and wildflowers since they will be growing slowly in the first year, focusing most of their energy into growing deep roots.
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In the spring of the second year cut back the meadow right to the ground and rake off the cuttings. You may need to trim back your meadow in the second year if you are seeing that weeds remain a problem.
Avoid the temptation to pull weeds. Wildflower seedlings remain very small the first year, and can be easily pulled up right along with the weeds.
Make your native wildflower meadow unique
- Be creative with your site; it doesn’t have to be square block. Add some curves or have it border a focal point in the landscape like a tree or garden sculpture.
Want to know more?
There’s a lot more on www.wildflowerfarm.com or click the topics below
August 9, 2011 – 11:16 am
Butterfly gardens, pollinator patches or honey bee havens. Whatever you want to call then butterfly gardens have been well explored in the garden and for many are well situated into the ’been there done that’ pile of gardening. Just a simple google search will illustrate how anyone with a shovel and a garden blog is a butterfly garden expert. However, despite the quantity of information out there most of the advice is uninformative and redundant to say the least. My favourite example being that “butterflies are attracted to flowers that are pink, purple, orange, yellow, red, blue or white. “ So don’t plant grey flowers?
 - White Admiral Butterfly on Lanceleaf Coreopsis
Most articles focus on the nectar-rich plants, which although are important, they are by no means all that is needed. What about the host plants, and no I don’t just mean milkweeds? Remember that there are hundreds of other butterfly species. Monarchs are fantastic and have done wonders for pollinator awareness but I think it’s safe to move past the Monarch and embrace all the other butterflies out there that host on a variety of trees, shrubs, grasses, and flowering perennials.
 - Black Swallowtail Butterfly
And don’t forget to take into consideration your location. A lot of the information out there on butterfly gardens is so general that you don’t really get much use out of them. Try finding an article on Butterfly gardening for your area; it can be done but you have to sift through a lot of useless articles to get there. More locally appropriate and habitat specific articles need to be written. Is your garden surrounded by forest, or perhaps you are in the suburbs or on a farm? As regions and ecosystems vary so will the types of butterflies. So pick up a field guide, do some research and find what butterflies are in your area, or what butterflies may need a helping a hand. Perhaps if gardeners were as aware as they are now about the importance of including wildlife habitat maybe Ontario wouldn’t have lost one of it’s most stunning butterflies, the Karner Blue. With a bit of time and research spent on finding what butterflies are in your area you will get even more enjoyment out of your garden the first time you see a Painted Lady landing on your Pearly Everlasting.
Beyond Milkweed, Other Larval Host Plants
Informative Butterfly Gardening Resources
 Turk's Cap Lily (Lilium superbum) Next to home and work the majority of our time is spent in the car. Even more so in the Summer when all we want to do is get in the car and go to the beach, cottage or the closest ice cream stand. So with all the time spent driving from one place to the next it’s understandable that a lot of our familiarity with the local landscape is roadside.
Unfortunately many of our roadside flowers, although pretty are not native. They have either naturalized from gardens or have been planted by the ministry of transportation because they are tolerant to drought, salt, acidic soils and heavy metals.
There are seven seed mixes that the MTO uses to re-vegetate a roadside. Unfortunately all the mixes with the exception of the Old Field Mix use alien species. Alien species that are often found on invasive species list even within the Canadian or Ontario Government.
 Blue Flax (Linum lewisii) Many of the plants grow roadside because they are opportunistic and adaptable. They may grow deep roots to fight against salt and drought or self seed in vast numbers knowing that many of the seeds will not be able to germinate in the poor soil. This may be ideal for the roadside but not necessarily for your garden. Often garden beds have better (if not only somewhat slightly) soil, less pollutants and less disturbance. This gives these roadside rogues a better chance to thrive, and thrive they will in your garden. Crown vetch, planted by the MTO for erosion control is extremely invasive and near impossible to get rid of once planted. I have had numerous people ask how to get rid of the crown vetch on their property because it is taking over. So the next time you are driving and see a lovely roadside bloom think long and hard if you want that in your garden because it will likely be there and everywhere for a long time. For alternatives to those roadside aliens check out the list below.
Native Plant Alternatives to Alien Roadside Flowers
Grow Me Instead - A handy resource that suggests alternative
plants to those pesky invasive garden plants.
By miriamwildflr
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Posted in Posts
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Tagged alien, chicory, crown vetch, daylily, drought tolerant, flowers, low maintenance, native plants, noxious weed, ox-eye daisy, phragmites, purple loosestrife, queen ann's lace, roadside, viper's bugloss, wild carrot, wildflower, wildflower farm
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 As a gardener this is my favourite time of year; the time of year to be a garden voyeur. I love sizing up other gardens, mentally taking note of unique plant choices, combinations or design elements. A good garden tour will leave me not only feeling awed and envious but inspired and renewed. It gives me the pull to get my hands back in the dirt to try something new.
Every year the gardens at Wildflower Farm grow and we are always wanting to try out something different and fun. Two years ago we did a Scree Garden and this year we are putting in a Children’s Garden and will be revamping the store front gardens. Expanding our gardens and pushing the boundaries of our plants (like in the Scree Garden) makes it fun for us when we give tours, which we do daily. Showing off the garden is without doubt my favourite part of my job. I will happily show off our plants and gardens to anyone. From large groups to just someone that popped in; tours are free. I love touring visitors around showing them the beauty and tenacity of our native plants. So the next time you are in the mood to take part in horticultural voyeurism come by Wildflower Farm for a garden tour and be inspired and renewed.
Our plants are low-maintenance which if you visited us at Wildflower Farm or grown native perennials you will already know. So it is no surprise to say that we don’t water or fertilize our gardens EVER and that our plants thrive. But what may surprise you, since it frankly surprised us is how some of our plants thrive in the most inhospitable conditions we could create.
 Scree Garden
Two years ago we built a scree garden to showcase our dry soil plants like prickly pear cactus, beardtongue and purple poppy mallow. The scree garden was simple to build, just a pile of gravel and rock with a smattering of soil and a few large rocks for interest. We planted our hardy natives and watched as they not only thrived but flourished.
 - Purple Poppy Mallow
We knew our plants could cope with what little hospitality the scree pile offered. But what really surprised us was how the dry soil plants actually looked better in the scree garden then in our regular gardens. The major standout being Purple Poppy Mallow
Callirhoe involucrata. This stunning ground cover blooms from June to September and is the definite show stopper for our Scree Garden. It appears that our plants are not only low-maintenance they are gluttons for punishment and neglect.
 Building the Scree Garden
 Pasque Flower
 Prairie Smoke
Scree Garden Wildflowers and Grasses:
Pasque Flower,Prairie Smoke, Beardtongue, Harebell, Prickly Pear Cactus, Purple Poppy Mallow, Wild Stonecrop, Wild Columbine, June Grass
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