Have you ever wanted a wild flower garden? A wild flower garden is not just a garden that has gone wild, in fact it is quite the opposite.
A garden that has become wild normally looks a bit of a muddle, whereas a wild flower has to have a closely controlled environment.
Garden flowers have been hardened, so to speak.
They have been cultivated and crossed so that they can put up with not being taken care of all that well by the average gardener who does not know much about gardening, although there are some very delicate garden plants too.
However, wild flowers have never had this treatment, they grow only where the circumstances are right or they do not grow at all.
It is practically impossible to grow wild flowers where they would not naturally grow.
This is why many people's attempts at creating a wild flower garden flop so miserably - they have expected the wild flowers to 'just grow wild' without having made the correct environment.
Therefore, if you want to create such a flower garden, you will first have to determine what kind of flowers you want to grow.
Do you want meadow flowers, woodland flowers, hedgerow flowers, marsh or riverside flowers? You can amalgamate some of these styles, of course.
You could merge meadow and hedgerow varieties, if you put a hedge border around your garden.
After you have chosen which types of flowers you want to or can grow, you need to set about creating the correct environment.
One of the nicest wild flower gardens, if your climate is suitable, is an orchid garden.
In Thailand, a lot of the orchids grow on the bark of live or fallen trees, so we have a few uprooted tree stumps in shaded areas of the garden with dozens of wild orchids growing on them.
The easiest wild flower garden for most people to create would be waterside, meadow and hedgerow combined.
Therefore, first you will have to create a suitable pond and start growing wild hedges around your perimeters.
Then plant a coarse grass on the rest of the soil.
The pond can have a brick border, but at least one edge should be muddy - just wet mud leading into a shallow edge of the pond.
When these micro environments are ready, but not before, you can go out and forage for plants from similar environments to transplant into your wild flower garden.
One note of caution here: please check that the flowers that you want to collect are not protected before you uproot them and never denude an area of a variety.
If there are only one or two plants of a type, do not take them.
Remember that your wild flowers are not that resilient, so you should have prepared their new home before you went collecting and you must replant them as soon as you get back.
Try not to leave it until the following day.
It is preferable to collect flowers just after they have flowered and are commencing to die back.
When you have found a flower that you want, carefully dig it up with a trowel and include a good sized lump of soil with its roots.
You can put this into a plastic bag and place this in a basket.
It is a good suggestion to take few photos of the flower in its original surroundings, so that you can do a bit of fine-tuning when you get back.
It will also help you remember what that flower likes to live with when you go out collecting for your wild flower garden next time.
A garden that has become wild normally looks a bit of a muddle, whereas a wild flower has to have a closely controlled environment.
Garden flowers have been hardened, so to speak.
They have been cultivated and crossed so that they can put up with not being taken care of all that well by the average gardener who does not know much about gardening, although there are some very delicate garden plants too.
However, wild flowers have never had this treatment, they grow only where the circumstances are right or they do not grow at all.
It is practically impossible to grow wild flowers where they would not naturally grow.
This is why many people's attempts at creating a wild flower garden flop so miserably - they have expected the wild flowers to 'just grow wild' without having made the correct environment.
Therefore, if you want to create such a flower garden, you will first have to determine what kind of flowers you want to grow.
Do you want meadow flowers, woodland flowers, hedgerow flowers, marsh or riverside flowers? You can amalgamate some of these styles, of course.
You could merge meadow and hedgerow varieties, if you put a hedge border around your garden.
After you have chosen which types of flowers you want to or can grow, you need to set about creating the correct environment.
One of the nicest wild flower gardens, if your climate is suitable, is an orchid garden.
In Thailand, a lot of the orchids grow on the bark of live or fallen trees, so we have a few uprooted tree stumps in shaded areas of the garden with dozens of wild orchids growing on them.
The easiest wild flower garden for most people to create would be waterside, meadow and hedgerow combined.
Therefore, first you will have to create a suitable pond and start growing wild hedges around your perimeters.
Then plant a coarse grass on the rest of the soil.
The pond can have a brick border, but at least one edge should be muddy - just wet mud leading into a shallow edge of the pond.
When these micro environments are ready, but not before, you can go out and forage for plants from similar environments to transplant into your wild flower garden.
One note of caution here: please check that the flowers that you want to collect are not protected before you uproot them and never denude an area of a variety.
If there are only one or two plants of a type, do not take them.
Remember that your wild flowers are not that resilient, so you should have prepared their new home before you went collecting and you must replant them as soon as you get back.
Try not to leave it until the following day.
It is preferable to collect flowers just after they have flowered and are commencing to die back.
When you have found a flower that you want, carefully dig it up with a trowel and include a good sized lump of soil with its roots.
You can put this into a plastic bag and place this in a basket.
It is a good suggestion to take few photos of the flower in its original surroundings, so that you can do a bit of fine-tuning when you get back.
It will also help you remember what that flower likes to live with when you go out collecting for your wild flower garden next time.
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