Wildflower meadow: every neighborhood should have one!

I see them every year in the big-box home improvement stores: large bags or even small buckets of seed mixes that promise an instant wildflower meadow. The idea is fantastic, and yet how many such meadows have you actually encountered? I bet very few.

I don’t know how the meadow you see in this post came about, but I noticed it last spring. Eventually it was mowed down and then looked like so many other empty lots you drive by in your everyday life. But now it’s back and it’s better than ever.

Clearly whoever owns this lot—I’m sure not if it belongs to the city or is part of the house on the corner—let the flowers go to seed last summer. They then lay dormant throughout our abnormally dry fall and winter and made a riotous return after the rains in March.

It’s impossible to walk or drive by this lot and not have a smile on your face.

There are California poppies (Eschscholzia californica), field poppies (Papaver rhoeas), blue flax (Linum usitatissimum), scarlet flax (Linum grandiflorum ‘Rubrum’) and I’m sure a few others.

I wish more empty lots would be turned into wildflower meadows instead of ceding them to the relentless army of weeds that comes marching through every year. I’m mighty tempted to do some seed bombing this fall to get the revolution started!