Which Wildflower Seed Should I Buy?

Take Care When You Buy Wildflower Seed

It turns out there are relatively few suppliers of wildflower seed in the UK. There are a lot of more or less good resellers, and a lot of people claiming their mixes are UK wildflowers when they're not. Be careful - it's a very poorly regulated area. It's worth doing some homework before you make a decision you might regret! 

What is a wildflower?

I know this sounds like a daft question, but lots of seed packets are mislabelled. To my mind it's a flower which occurs naturally in the UK and is grown from British seed, harvested in the UK. You often find plants like Cosmos and Californian poppies in "wildflower" mixes sold on Amazon or Ebay, or even by well known seed merchants. They're lovely and long living flowers, helpful to pollinators - but UK wildflowers they ain't. There are also "Pictorial meadow" mixes, which routinely include non-native species.

Most of the wildflower seed sold in the UK clearly isn't harvested here. Does that matter? We think so, but even if you don't, you have the right to know - it should say on the packet!

Some mixes (see below) include wildflower cultivars, which isn't brilliant either. This is true of some agricultural mixes, for example for herbal leys. You'll also find them potentially being slipped in when there's a shortage of the native seed. Cultivars won't be as helpful for the local ecosystem and often aren't as resilient or long lived as native species. They are, however, generally much cheaper.   

What Kind of Wildflower Seed Mix Should I Buy?

Essentially, you will find four different types of mixes available from reputable suppliers:

Cornfield Annuals: These are the wildflowers that used to be a common site in arable fields - cornflowers, poppies etc.. As they are annuals they need a different management technique and work to make sure they keep setting seed and producing flowers year after year. They have a relatively short flowering window and the assemblage of the standard mixes isn't the sort of thing you'd see naturally, but they are incredibly easy and reliable and produce an amazing albeit brief display of vibrant colour. They're good for pollinators, but not for anything needing to over-winter. They are not found in wildflower meadows as the sward is permanent.

Direct Harvest Mixes: These are seeds harvested from existing donor meadows. They're a combination of wild grasses and perennial wildflowers. Experienced harvesters will take more than one sweep across a meadow during a season, usually using a brush harvester, and the seed is dried and cleaned before sale. The better mixes can be drilled, but sometimes - particularly if sourced from smaller harvesters - they can be chaffy. Meadows aren't harvested every year, and the process is fully sustainable. They are often only available in limited quantities or sometimes only to order.

These are my favourite mixes; they usually have a high ratio of wildflowers to grasses at a good price, offer a massive diversity of species, and have precise provenance. Perhaps counter-intuitively they are less prone to contamination than constructed mixes, in my experience. If you can find a mix harvested in your area which will also do well on your site, bingo. There's a strong case for buying a mix like this even if it is harvested a way away from you. Some donor sites will have organic certification, but all of them will have had either no pesticides at all used on them or very limited, targeted application of herbicide.

Generic Seed Mixes: These are mixes which have been artificially combined - put together species by species. You know exactly what you're getting, and they can be constructed to give you the right species for your soil type or site. You will find a range of these too on our website, which for larger projects can be produced to design. They're really intended as a starting point; they have a relatively limited number of wildflower species included which occur naturally across the UK (at least from reputable suppliers!). This means you miss out on anything slightly unusual or particularly local. Because the wildflower element of these mixes is produced as a crop - i.e. cultivated - you do get much less genetic variation.

Generic mixes can be made up of wildflowers only or a meadow mix, which includes grasses. The grass element will usually consist of certified meadow grass cultivars, although sometimes you might find a supplier who can use grass seed sourced from the wild. Usually the meadow mixes are supplied at a ratio of 80% grasses to 20% wildflowers. Ours are 30% wildflowers as we find that the effects of soil nitrification mean that higher wildflower %s are preferable. 

Agricultural mixes: Don't be tempted by cheaper mixes produced for agri-environmental schemes which only have 10% wildflowers. This isn't just a question of having fewer wildflowers; %s like this may produce just grass. Generally the higher the wildflower element the more expensive a mix is.  

You might also find that the "wildflowers" in these mixes are in fact cultivars. Does this matter? You bet. "Wild red clover" is going to give pollinators better forage than "red clover". Birdsfoot trefoil lasts much longer than its much bigger cultivars. Arguably these more vigorous plants are going to be more likely to establish, but they will be less helpful and to my eye less attractive. Suppliers may use herbicide in the preparation of seedbeds to produce this seed.

How Can I check the Seeds' Quality? 

There's no quality assurance scheme for wildflower seeds. There used to be an industry standard set by Flora Locale, but that's long gone. DEFRA issue licences to market seed; your supplier should definitely have one of these, although they're pretty meaningless.

The supplier should know the seeds' provenance and origin - i.e. where it came from and where it originated in the first place. If you're seeding a large project I would ask for an independent test for content and viability; these don't take long or cost a great deal. We use a seed testing lab called SeedLab100. 

There are several factors impacting on seed germination rates, including its freshness and the way it has been stored. It's not really possible for you to check this. The best answer is to find what looks like a reputable supplier with full transparency as to the seeds' sourcing. A good place to start is www.BritishWildflowerMeadowSeeds.co.uk .

Where Is This Seed From?

If you are buying meadow seed do please check it has been produced in the UK from UK stock. Knowing about where it's from is a good way of guaranteeing how it has been produced - you might want to know about pesticide use or year of harvest, for example. There are other good ecological reasons for wanting UK seeds too, ideally the more local the better. Seed mixes harvested from the wild in the UK bought in bulk should have pink labels attached; otherwise they will be green. This isn't very helpful; a mix of UK origin and provenance wildflower seed and certified grasses would have a green label, for example. The kind of small packets you might buy in a garden centre tell you nothing about the seeds' provenance at all.

Do I Need Wildflower Seed At All?

To seed a wildflower meadow area you need to clear the grasses and weeds from the area of your lawn / paddock / field before you start. Just a thought - do you really want to do this? If your lawn is anything like ours you've potentially got a mini-meadow in your garden already. I let areas of it get a bit higher in the summer to allow the daisies, self-heal, clovers, dandelions, black medick and ground ivy (etc!) to flower.

If you have a field or paddock the chances are it has aggressive modern grasses in it. If you're very lucky and it doesn't, you might be able just to add Yellow Rattle in the autumn. Sit back and see what comes up when it takes effect the following year, when the grasses get knocked back. You might not need any more seed at all.