Why Your Garden Needs Wildflowers (And How I’m Adding Them to Mine)

ad. I’ve always had a soft spot for wildflowers. At our old house, we dug a border at the front and planted a wildflower mix there, and it was one of my favourite things about that garden — low maintenance, beautiful, and absolutely buzzing with bees all summer. When we moved last year into a house with a much bigger garden, more wildflowers on our large garden was high on the list. Yesterday, I finally got around to it.

I’ve been sent two wildflower seed mixes from Unwins to try — the Easy Wildflower Mix and the Shady Wildflower Mix — and if you’ve been thinking about adding wildflowers to your outdoor space, here’s everything you need to know, plus what I’m actually doing in my own garden.

Why Wildflowers Deserve a Spot in Your Garden

Before I get into the planting, it’s worth talking about why a wildflower garden is such a good idea in the first place, because there are more reasons than just the fact that they look lovely.

Wildflowers are a vital food source for beneficial insects — bees, butterflies, hoverflies — particularly during the hungry gap in early spring and again in late summer when other flowers aren’t in bloom. Native wildflowers and native plants in particular are brilliant for your local ecosystem because the insects in your area have evolved alongside them. A border full of wildflower species does more for your garden’s biodiversity than almost anything else you can plant.

They’re also genuinely low maintenance. Unlike a lot of garden plants, wildflowers are adapted to grow in poor soil and dry soil conditions — they don’t need fertile soil, they don’t need much water, and they don’t need much care once they’re established. If you’ve got a sunny area or even a shady spot that you’re not sure what to do with, wildflowers are almost always the answer.

What I’m Planting and Where

I have two borders that run along the front of the house — one by the kitchen window, one by the living room window. Both already have existing flowers growing in them: snowdrops, daffodils, crocus, muscari, tulips, asters and more, so there’s already a good mix of things coming up through the year. I’ve weeded out what needed to go and kept what was worth keeping, and yesterday I scattered the Unwins Easy Wildflower Mix into both borders to fill in the gaps and add colour through the growing season.

The Easy Wildflower Mix is designed for full sun and well-drained soil, which suits both of those borders well. It contains a mix of annual wildflowers and perennial species, so you get flowers in the first year from the annuals while the perennial wildflowers establish their root systems, ready to come back and spread the following spring. It’s a really good mix for borders where you already have some existing vegetation and just want to add more life and natural beauty to what’s already there.

I’m also going to be using the Unwins Shady Wildflower Mix on a part of the garden that doesn’t get much sun. Shade can feel like a problem area in a garden, but wildflowers that are bred for partial shade and woodland conditions are perfect for it — I just need to get the weeds up first before I can get the seeds down (a job for the weekend). The shady mix is brilliant for those trickier spots that a lot of standard seed mixes won’t touch.

How to Plant Wildflower Seeds — A Quick FAQ

When is the best time to plant wildflower seeds?

Early spring and late autumn are both good times. Planting in early spring means the seeds get the warmth of the coming growing season. Late autumn planting works well too, as the seeds go through a natural cold period over the winter months and germinate the following spring. I planted mine yesterday in mid-March, which is a great time to get them in.

Do wildflowers grow in poor soil?

Yes — and they often prefer it. Fertile soil actually encourages weeds and grasses to take over, which can crowd out your wildflowers. If you have clay soil or dry soil, don’t worry too much. Good drainage matters more than rich soil.

Are wildflowers annual or perennial?

Both! Annual wildflowers like California poppies grow, flower, set seed and die in one season — but they drop an abundance of seeds so they often come back the following year anyway. Perennial species like purple coneflowers and black-eyed susan come back year after year from the same root systems. Most wildflower seed mixes, including the Unwins ones, contain a mix of both so you get the best of both worlds.

How much maintenance do wildflowers need?

Not much. That’s the whole point. Clear the area, scatter the seeds onto the soil surface, water in, and let nature do the rest. In subsequent years, you can cut back in late summer after the seeds have set, and that’s largely it.

Do wildflowers need full sun?

Most wildflower species prefer a sunny area with several hours of direct sunlight, but there are plenty of wildflower mixes specifically designed for partial shade — which is exactly why I’m using the Unwins Shady Mix for that shadier corner of my garden.

The Unwins Seed Mixes

Both mixes come in a 3.6kg box, which covers a generous area (18 square metres!) — plenty for borders, large areas of lawn, or even a roof garden. Unwins have been around since 1806 so they know what they’re doing with seeds. I’ll be sharing updates on how things are coming along through the season — I’m particularly excited about what the shady mix does with that tricky corner.

You can find the Easy Wildflower Mix here and the Shady Wildflower Mix here — I’ll have affiliate links in both.

If you want to read more about what’s been going on in my garden, my spring gardening checklist is a good place to start, and I also wrote about what to plant in your spring garden if you’re looking for more ideas. I’ve been documenting last year’s new garden over here too if you want to see where it all started, and if you’re into growing your own, my Pot Gang post gets a lot of traffic so worth a read!

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• Getting Your Container Garden Ready to Plant