Many wildflowers, including some of the choicest, can be grown in limited space and enjoyed at close range without making an elaborate wild garden.
In fact, when handled individually and planted where they can be tended properly, they frequently develop into better specimens than in the wild.
This is particularly true of such rarities as the fringed gentian, pink lady’s slipper, or mocassin flower and trailing arbutus.
Growing Different Plants Together
There is great diversity in the natural conditions under which wildings do their best. This creates a gardening problem, which can be more easily met when each kind of plant is grown separately, with due regard for its particular preferences.
This makes success more certain because it is easy to regulate soil, sunlight, shade, and moisture preferences of each kind.
There are times, of course, when two entirely different kinds of plants can be grown to advantage to complement one another.
Snow trillium (Trillium grandiflorum), for example, can be grown successfully with Virginia bluebells (Alertensia virginica), since both like part shade and damp, woodsy soil.
Wildflower Cultural Requirements
No group of plants is more exacting in their cultural requirements than wildflowers, yet none is more rewarding when these needs are provided.
Trailing arbutus or mayflower (Epigaea repeus) is an excellent example because more have probably failed with it than with any other native woodland plant.
Yet when sizable pot-grown plants are set in a shady area, chances of success are greater.
Trailing Arbutus
I have found that trailing arbutus does best when given a carefully chosen location by itself, where it can be soaked thoroughly in dry weather and where the unusually high acidity of the soil can be maintained constantly.
An ideal location is under an overhanging branch of old hemlock that offers a northern exposure.
Trailing arbutus heads the list as a test of skill and patience in wildflower gardening, but a well-established patch in full fragrance in the early spring is worth the extra effort.
Pink Lady’s Slipper “Moccasin Flower”
The pink lady’s slipper or moccasin flower (Cypripedium acaule) is as charming as it is challenging. It, too, demands acid soil.
Though not a bog plant, it must not be allowed to become dry at any time.
This temperamental beauty will sometimes grow and bloom in the garden for a year or two and then die out suddenly, probably because of unusually intense summer heat and lack of sufficient soil acidity.
Importance Of Learning Individual Needs And Growing Conditions
Aside from a certain sense of achievement in growing wildflowers to near perfection, there is satisfaction in learning about their individual needs and growing conditions.
t took me two years to learn that sharp-lobe hepatica (Hepatica acutiloba) requires a natural or slightly alkaline soil. In contrast, the round-lobe hepatica (Hepatica americana) prefers an acid one.
Only then could I succeed in growing them. Both respond readily to cultivation and will produce thrifty clumps, with as many as 40 or 50 blooms at one time.
Proper Soil Conditions
The importance of maintaining proper soil conditions is well illustrated by the lovely Colorado or Rocky Mountain columbine (Aquilegia caerulea), which will invariably dwindle and disappear after a season or two unless grown in highly acid soil.
In alkaline soil, it will not thrive at all. On the other hand, fringed gentian (Gentiana crinita) must have a neutral or preferably slightly alkaline soil, for it simply will not tolerate an acid condition.
In attempting to provide the degree of acidity or alkalinity preferred by various wildflowers, a soil testing kit helps to eliminate guesswork and possible failures.
Sometimes wildflowers thrive for a season or two when brought into the garden and then languish and disappear.
In many cases, this is due to a lack of maintenance of proper soil conditions.
Light Requirements
Not all wildings are moisture lovers, nor are they all partial to shade. Some types actually prefer a dry, sunny situation.
For instance, butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) is at its best on a dry hillside, making it useful in dry garden areas where few other flowers will succeed.
Its vivid reddish-orange blossoms, striking in appearance, are long-lasting.
The same situation is preferred by the sundial or eastern blue lupine (Lupinus perennis).
It is especially good in dry, sandy soils. Most of the baptisias are also well suited to arid conditions. They are long-lived and can be relied upon for substantial bloom.
Soil Acidity
To acidify the soil, I depend mainly on leaf mold collected from oak and pine forests, plus heavy mulches of oak leaves and pine needles in autumn.
When first preparing the soil, peat moss is worked into it, with occasional small amounts of coarse sand added.
Cottonseed meal, also used, tends to maintain acidity and supply food simultaneously.
Aluminum sulfate is valuable, though it should be used with caution.
There is a considerable difference of opinion as to whether or not the demand by acid-soil plants is for the acidity itself or other conditions accompanying it.
My experience has been that the prolonged use of such natural materials as peat moss, thoroughly decayed oak leaves and pine needles, a little cottonseed meal, and plenty of wood’s earth produces a type of soil that is friable and light, moist, and largely organic.
This, in other words, is the kind of soil usually found in a deep forest, where the choicest wild flowers grow.
To increase alkalinity, the old standby is lime or ground limestone.
A bone meal is also of value for counteracting acidity. However, lime applications must be renewed continuously since rains gradually wash them away.
Growing Wildflowers Successfully
There is no magic formula to grow wildflowers successfully, but with good gardening.
The important point to learn is what the plants need in growing conditions. Then try to reproduce these conditions as closely as possible.
44659 by Kenneth Meyer