Wildflower Alley

Wildflower Alley Update from this past week.

Daisy's and Wallflower (at least I'm pretty sure that the orange is wallflower)


Blue Flax is the feathery blue in the foreground. Can you imagine that in ancient times people made linen out of that? I sincerely hope it grows larger in Mesopotamia! The pink and red are (I think) Sweet William.


Dame's Rocket is just stunning, especially with the orange wallflowers underneath. I secretly love it when folks drive around the corner and slow down to see these flowers.

I've actually had a love affair with Dame's Rocket for a few years and never knew it. This lovely showy flower grows wild next to a creek along my drive to work. Every spring for the past 3 years, I've driven by them and thought "one of these days I should figure out what those are so I can plant them in my garden." I was absolutely thrilled when they started shooting up this spring!

Wildflower Alley

One of the first things we did in the Maple Tree Garden was kill grass. There's a section of right of way that has an awful hill to mow and it's outside the fence and right next to a road. So grass there is pretty much pointless. So we killed it, tilled it, and planted wildflowers. I think our neighbors thought we were nuts.... until they saw this


We had folks slowing down to look at the flowers, which is a really good thing because it's kind of a blind corner and lots of kids walk back there. We even had a few people come up to the front door and knock to tell us how pretty the flowers were. And this spring we were out there pulling up baby maple trees (story of my gardening life) and folks were stopping to ask if the flowers were coming back.

It looked a little hopeless and weedy in mid March

And then a little better in Early April

Mid April was filling in.

End of April it is looking much more like a flower garden.

The evolution of the wildflowers is so neat to me. I love how last year there were so many annuals (I'm actually going to reseed annuals this year. American Meadows has great seeds!) and this year the perennials are starting to show their combinations. If the rain will ever stop, I'd love to post another wildflower alley update, it has changed even more from that photo! Now doesn't that look better than grass?