Cultivating Wildflowers

Wildflowers are beautiful—and they’re hardworking allies in the garden. By attracting and sustaining pollinators, wildflowers help our veg grow bigger, tastier, and more abundant. Our dream is to establish a wildflower patch that eventually spreads on its own across the scruffy edges of the Victory Garden. We started last Spring, sowing a wide mix of seeds and digging in transplants, curious to discover which species thrive in our particular patch of stubborn soil.  If you have suggestions for wildflowers in Marion, please let us know.   A few poppies poked up and bloomed summer through fall, so that was a start.

Wildflowers have two mortal enemies.

The first is herbicides. They’re everywhere—lurking in “weed-and-feed” lawn products and sprayed across virtually every commercial farm. Cornflowers earned their name because they once danced along the edges of cornfields; then glyphosate (Round-Up) arrived and banished them. In the world of manicured lawns and industrial agriculture, if a plant isn’t on the approved list, it gets sentenced to death.

The second enemy is grass. Grass looks innocent, but its dense, thirsty roots strangle tender wildflowers without mercy. That’s why even when a field is mowed down to keep shrubbery from crowding out wildflowers—over time, grass  wins the field.

There’s a local legend that the most spectacular wildflower display anyone around here ever saw bloomed on the exact spot where Mattapoisett’s new fire station now stands, just east of the traffic lights. Why? Because that was where the traveling circus used to pitch its three giant Big Top tents. The heavy canvas and constant foot and hoof traffic killed the grass completely, leaving behind an expanse of bare land. The following spring, the ground erupted in color.

Inspired by that story, we intend to kill the grass on our own plot every winter. After some debate—plastic or landscape fabric?—we compromised and did both, turning wildflower meadow prep into an experiment. Half the bed is smothered under black plastic (leftover from our Japanese knotweed wars), the other half under breathable filter fabric. Come spring, we’ll lift the covers and see which method gives the wildflowers the better head start.

Art, ever practical, questioned why we were bothering with tarps at all. “I just pull the grass by hand,” he said. And he’s right—there’s no single “correct” way to grow things. Sometimes,  the meditative rhythm of hand-weeding feels Zen.    I keep a tiny herb garden right outside my kitchen door.  As I clip a bit of rosemary or thyme, pinching a weed is effortless and restores calm to the garden. But the wildflower patch is farther away. Out of sight is out of mind. Without the tarp, weeds will win the day, and seeding is for naught.

For now, the bed lies quiet under its patchwork of black and cloth. In spring we’ll peel everything back, scatter more seed, add a light blanket of straw, and let the pollinators take over.

I can’t wait to see what comes up.