Zanthan Gardens
About This Garden: 4. Wild for Wildflowers

September 10th, 2006
4. Wild for Wildflowers

2005-04-17. The one year the meadow came together: white from cilantro, purples (and height) from larkspur, dark blue from bluebonnets, pink from pink evening primrose, and yellow from Engelmann’s daisy.

That first year, after a 40 foot cedar elm split in half during a summer thunderstorm, we saw something in our yard that we’d never seen before. Sunlight. The entire north third of our backyard (about 30×60 feet) received glaring afternoon sun. I transplanted some canna near the house. They baked to a crisp in the reflected heat off the wall. The St. Augustine lawn died.

I decided to fill the space with annuals until I could think of what to do. Bluebonnets, the state flower of Texas, were a natural first choice. Drive the highways of Central Texas in March or April and you can’t help but be amazed by the carpets of blue planted by the road crews after construction and then left to reseed on their own. (Thank you, Lady Bird Johnson). Bluebonnets belong to the lupine family which means they have nitrogen-fixing nodules on their roots–they enrich the soil.

Yes, I thought. If those roadsides can grow beautifully on their own, then I need to do something similar; provide the correct conditons to get a meadow established and then sit back and watch it grow. So grows the theoretical landscape. Are you laughing yet?

At least I wasn’t silly enough to buy one of the “meadows in a can”. Wildseed Farms is only 90 miles west of Austin in Fredericksburg and they supply all the local nurseries with wildflowers seeds. I’ve had the best success with bluebonnets, larkspur which come back every year. I planted short flowering bulbs, rainlilies, fall crocus, and species tulips. For a meadow to be meadow it has to have grass–so I planted the buffalograss ‘Top Gun’ which greens up early and stays green long into fall.

From the beginning the meadow suffered from two big problems. First, I considered it a garden and other people considered it a lawn. Other people were always stepping on seedlings and bulbs that they did not recognize as flowers about to make their entrance. I made paths based on where we walked, first with hay and then with mulch. I didn’t want it to look too defined, too artificial. When mulched paths didn’t work I began defining the beds with wood from a demolished privacy fence and rocks.

The second problem was that the meadow looks fantastic in April and May. In June it looks weedy as the seeds for next year mature. The other nine months of the year it looks like a vacant lot. I wouldn’t mind the lack of flowers but the buffalograss has been shaded out.

2003-09-16. Fall rains bring out the flowers on rainlilies and garlic chives but otherwise the meadow looks like a vacant lot. In the photo, I’m trying to decide whether to plant out the potted sago. I did.

2006-04-16. Notice how the original back half of the meadow is plunged into deep shade when the cedar elms leaf out in March.

To deal with the death of the buffalograss I turned the far end of the meadow into flower beds lined with irises. Again, borders of the beds and the paths through them change as the light changes over the years. It’s amazing to watch plants jump a path and establish themselves where they’re happiest. I try not to fight them.

2006-04-24. By 2006, what had been the upper meadow was coming into its own as a perennial bed. Unfortunately, it gets too much shade most of the year except July when it’s in full sun all afternoon.

In the midst of my meadow adventures I began receiving print catalogs from Marilyn Barlow’s Select Seeds. About the same time I was reading about Celia Thaxter’s Island Garden and I met Felder Rushing and bought his book (cowritten with Steve Bender) Passalong Plants. I could not resist the charms of those cottage garden plants which Marilyn Barlow referred to as the flowers grandmother grew.

I became enamoured of sweetpeas, poppies (corn, Shirley, California, and Icelandic), hyacinth bean vine, moonvine, morning glory, selected daturas, apple of peru, black-eyed Susan vine, feverfew, heliotrope, four o’clocks, clammy weed, clove pinks, viola, love-in-a-mist, amaranth, cosmos, and sunflowers.

The ones that succeeded best over the years were the overwintering annuals…in the south flowers planted in the fall that grow through the winter and bloom in the spring.

My one complete failure has been ornamental grasses. I love the look but I can’t keep them alive for more than a year or two. I even killed Mexican feather grass which seeds like a weed for everyone else.

Lessons Learned

I am already in the process of changing the meadow. Because the garden elsewhere has grown and grown, I’ve spent less and less time experimenting with plants I have to grow from seed. However, I’d like to go back to that approach. I miss the sweetpeas, especially and there are many flowers still to try. In fact, two weeks ago I sprouted some hyacinth beans and they are already two feet tall. I’ve seeded some cosmos in hopes of having some flowers in the meadow this fall.


1998. Over the years I’ve documented the meadow by making overlay drawings on tracing paper. These are not plans for a garden but maps of the existing garden.

2001. Notice how the paths and beds shift shape because the trees have grown and cast their shade differently. The green shows the buffalograss just 5 years ago. In 2006, all that’s left is a 5-foot swathe along the bottom of the meadow.

by M Sinclair Stevens