How to establish wildflowers in part to full-shade (part one)

With no weeding, watering or ground preparation

After the mow - our firepit area which is a wilder garden of only indigenous plants (plus existing ornamental daffodils)

The fire pit area of our garden, which sits below the polytunnel and main garden, has been my fun experiment area with wildflowers for the last five years. It’s slow growing - this is not instant gardening - but I have been able to observe first-hand how many different species of wild plant do or don’t establish.

Part of the issue with this area, which is the size of a large suburban garden, are the beautiful trees surrounding it. In the five years we’ve been here, they’ve grown noticeably and are starting to shade what was a sunny open mini-meadow. This along with their leaves making the ground very fertile, means meadow planting is no longer suitable. I need to shake things up and I’m going to lean into wild shade planting.

No ground preparation or weeding

I dug up an ox-eye daisy seedling and planted it into rough grass, a year later it is well established

The number one rule in this area is that I do not weed at all or prepare any soil before planting. The most I do is dig a hole and plonk the plant in before patting it back down. This is truly survival of the fittest - this is the wild way of gardening. It is also true low maintenance. For most wildflowers I can already assure you this works! As long as they have roots and leaves they will grow perfectly well because most are tough as old boots.

One afternoon of maintenance

The only maintenance in this area is to cut down and rake off as much of the grass and nettle patches in early autumn as possible. That’s a few hours once a year.

In spring and summer I might cut back more of the nettles in future to allow light in to the other plants because our nettles are really vigorous. My aim one day is to stop doing this entirely once the wildflowers take over from the nettles and rough grasses.

Here you can see I have cut, raked and then cut again trying to remove as many clippings as possible. It is particularly muddy because it is becoming so shaded, favouring woodland plants over meadow plants.

Making the right choices of plant

Pink campion leaves

One of the happiest plants in this area is pink campion, this thrives in almost impossible shade and part-shade forming dense mats and flowering no matter how many nettles grow around it. In addition, hedge wound-wort is spreading down along the hedges of our main garden and these make a lovely pair of pink and purple all summer.

A few years ago I grew wild ferns from spores and these young plants are still getting going in the shadiest fringes. I love ferns as a strong evergreen foliage plant and I’m hoping they will grow larger soon.

Around the entire area I’ve been dividing and spreading primroses, however I suspect our original plant is sterile as they aren’t self seeding. So I am going to add a few more plugs to add more genetic diversity to try and jump start self seeding next year.

Common hogweed also does well in this area, though curiously struggled a bit this year for the first time.

The only large plants I’ve added in this area are three wild broom seedlings, two of which are now sizeable adding a big pop of yellow in spring and early summer. They seem pretty happy in part-shade, though they do prefer full sun - we’ll see how they do longterm.

Since moving here I’ve been propagating leaf cuttings of cuckoo flower from our farm’s lone plant. I love this flower and have been adding some in this shady area as well as to our top meadow. Interestingly it is performing best in this shady spot. I plan to repeat this process, adding 20 or so new plants every year.

These are the leaves of musk mallow from a tiny bit of root I stuck into the ground. I know because it’s taken, next year it will be a big plant. It prefers full sun but we have it growing in part-shade spots happily too.

I would love to have lots of foxgloves in this area but try as I might spreading their seeds around, they struggle to grow here due to the competition. Their tiny seeds need bare soil to get started. So it was with delight that a couple of plants have appeared in the firepit itself! Bare from a fire last winter this year I’ll let the foxgloves be the flames.

Other plants to add

This year I’d like to add cow slips as well as the new primrose plugs I mentioned and betony, Stachys officinalis. From the lawn in our main garden I will move some Prunella vulgaris, self heal, this is a great low ground cover that seems to tolerate some shade.

I have a tiny local wood sorrel, Oxalis acetosella, to plant out I divided from a plant higher up. Wood sorrel is one of my top plants, it is so impossibly beautiful and loves wet shade.

As for the sun lovers like Ox-eye daisy, yarrow and one Geum rivale I’ve planted, water avens. Well, I’ll leave them to grow in the sunniest spot and see what happens.

With ferns, I would like lots more, they make for easy static plants to help reduce nettles. I’m trying to establish Blechnum spicant, another local wild species, but it’s been struggling. I might try growing it from spore this year for many more plants.

I will need to keep cutting back the stinging nettles in summer, which are prolific here, for the first few years until the wildflowers are numerous and established enough. Some of the key plants to outcompete the nettles will be many more ferns, red campion and hedge wound-wort. Although small, primroses are excellent groundcover in their small spots too and can help block nettle shoots.

Get started in your garden

You can speed this process up in your garden by buying lots of inexpensive plug plants and / or seeds. This is a great way of having big impact quickly for insects in low diversity gardens. I recommend starting with plug plants for the most guaranteed results.

I find seeds on the ground can be hit or miss due to competition from other plants so you either need to rake or hoe back to earth. Even then, young seedlings in plugs will almost always grow.

This is a ragged robin seedling I sowed in peat free compost a couple of months ago. Destined for our sunny top meadow.

Or as I prefer to do, start wildflower seeds yourself in small pots or plugs of peat free compost and then plant out once growing. Even when tiny, I find it’s that very early germination stage that is the decider. Once they have leaves and roots most wildflowers will just grow, no matter where or how you plant them.

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As for our garden, apart from a few new primula and betony plugs I plan to order, the rest I’ll divide and sow myself. It’s very slow progress this way, but for me it is the fun of experimenting and seeing if a plant takes. Then, if it takes, does it naturally multiply? Because if it does those two things, I know the future holds a beautiful garden. With or without me.

p.s. if you’re still struggling with peat free compost, please check my new peat free compost advice, it may be more to do with watering...

p.p.s. I’ve started adding my artwork to my online shop, please check it out, they look great framed. Paid subscribers to the Wild Way receive 20% off everything as a special thank you.

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