A close up of the wildflowers at the the Eden Project

How to create a wildflower meadow in your garden

Find out how to create a beautiful piece of wildflower meadow in your own garden that's buzzing with life – with advice from the Eden Project.

Relax and go wild

The Eden Project is home to the National Wildflower Centre, we want to encourage people to connect with the natural world and create their own wildflower habitats.

The simple way to encourage wildflowers into your patch is to stop mowing. Say ‘no to the mow’!

Adopt a two-cut approach to your lawn, mowing once in autumn and then again in spring, removing all of the cut grass. This will lower fertility and give perennial wildflowers a chance to push through the grass.

You’ll soon see species such as rough hawkbit, yarrow and selfheal coming through, depending on your soil type. Your once sterile lawn will soon be buzzing with life – and you’ll have the time to enjoy it, now you’re not doing all that mowing.

A picture of the wildflowers growing in a meadow

Diversify with plug plants

You might want to give your meadow a bit of a hand by planting some wildflower plug plants. Plugs are available online – don’t forget to check they’re from a UK source. Plant plugs directly into your lawn after your autumn or spring cut. Planting plugs of the semi-parasitic yellow rattle can help to reduce the vigour of your grass.

Start from seed

Use seeds to raise plug plants yourself by planting the seeds into pots or a small nursery bed. If don’t have much outside space, you can grow our wildflowers in pots or window boxes.

You can get your wildflower seeds from the Eden Project online shop.

For a display of wildflowers in a bed or border, lay a couple of inches of inert substrate, such as sand and simply sow direct at a sowing rate of 2g per square metre. Sand helps to keep competing grasses at bay and your wildflowers will thrive in these nutrient-poor conditions, creating a garden that the bees will love you for.