Getting rid of a wildflower lawn

aswaldman

I'm looking for advice on removing a wildflower lawn. On a bit of a whim last year, I sowed a sunken area (a few square metres) of my garden with a wildflower lawn seed mix. Sadly this grew into a metre-high mess and it looked terrible. I'd like to replace it with a small area of lawn (somewhere to sit) with planting around the edges to soften it. Can I do this without resorting to glyphosate or should I just bite the bullet? I can remove the plants that are there at the moment – but there will be plenty of seeds waiting to germinate. If I lay turf, will they just poke through it?

Lizzie27

I would imagine that if you just keep mowing it and keeping it fairly short, the grasses would eventually predominate. You could also dig out some of the bigger wild flower clumps, add some topsoil and sow lawn seed instead.

aswaldman

thanks for your suggestion Lizzie, certainly some of the lower growing wildflowers and clovers were pretty and could mix with grass - just not the fireweed, giant daisies, yarrow etc

raisingirl

Yep, just mow it regularly. You'll end up with grass and clover.

Obelixx

And very short yarrow if our grass is anything to go by.  It'll be green tho and won't have time to flower if you keep mowing its heads off.

Big Blue Sky

I’m really envious there. For the last two years I have been trying to establish a wild flower lawn in my small front yard. It still looks like a neat lawn 😩 

Cottage Compost

I always thought it can take a few years to get a wildflower lawn right.  Can you remember what mix you actually used, what species were in it?

Thought you had to cut, rake as much as possible and scarify in the late autumn for a few years to reduce the richness of the soil created by the grass.