Coastal flowering meadow from seed: plant specification

Zaidée Penhaligon

Published: 11/10/19

The next stage in creating my flowering meadow was choosing which plants to use, always the best bit! The starting point was my vision for how the area will look: colourful flowering plants interwoven with textural grasses and seed heads, mainly at a similar height to create a meadow-like feel with a few taller emergents.

Meadow Style Planting

I didn’t want to restrict myself to native plants, mainly because I wanted a larger palette of species to play with. The garden where I’m creating this meadow is a typical Cornish subtropical garden containing many non-native ‘exotic’ species, including nearby Kniphofia from which I took the peachy-orange colour scheme.

Kniphofia

I didn’t want to restrict myself to native plants, mainly because I wanted a larger palette of species to play with. The garden where I’m creating this meadow is a typical Cornish subtropical garden containing many non-native ‘exotic’ species, including nearby Kniphofia from which I took the peachy-orange colour scheme.

I created a long list of plants I wanted to include, some old favourites that I’ve used previously (although in different contexts) and some new varieties to keep things interesting! I then eliminated species that did not fit the site analysis performed in my last post: i.e. plants that would not tolerate drought or acidic soil, any that were too palatable to slugs, and any seed that I couldn’t easily obtain.

From this short list I selected three plants for each season that would complement each other, so that the scheme would progress gracefully from spring through to autumn. I’ve chosen one taller emergent, Eryngium yuccifolium, to provide added height and drama in late summer.

I’ve only chosen one grass (Festuca mairei) which makes me slightly nervous as I usually design with more, but I wanted the border to be really impactful. Festuca mairei is evergreen, drought tolerant and has a gorgeous warm tone in autumn.

Final species selection

Once chosen, I ordered my seeds from Jelitto Seeds, a company based in Germany who have lots of useful information on their website including emergence rates.

Jelitto seeds have arrived!

Now my seeds have arrived it’s time to prep the site and get ready for autumn sowing!