Wildflower Gardening | Sharing Our Lessons Learned After 8 Years | the Nature Connection

Look at our new goat. We need to get them fixed. You're going to become a mother whether you like it or not. Today I'm going to share our wildflower gardens. By no means are we experts at wildflower gardens, but we have been doing these gardens for about eight years, so I do feel like there are a few tips that I can share that would definitely help you. I've had a lot of questions about our wildflower gardens and how we maintain them, how we keep weeds out of them, how we keep the varieties that we actually really like, and there's some secrets that are needed to be done in the first year to two years, and little things that you have to do along the way. So even though you have a beautiful wildflower garden, it doesn't mean that it doesn't need tending anymore. They always need tending because seeds from weeds are constantly spreading through anything. Through birds, through the wind, all those natural little things are spreading the seeds of weeds, and of course they're going to pop up. They strive in any type of condition. So I'm just going to go ahead and share with you just a couple little tricks that we do. There is work to a wildflower garden. It's not just seed it, let it grow, and all of a sudden you just have a wildflower garden. I guess it is kind of, but there are some things that are needed to be done. In our first year of wildflower gardening, we were kind of suckers to the whole idea of buying the pre-mixed wildflower varieties. We learned very quickly that that was not the route we wanted to go after the first year. This is why. The first year that we started wildflower gardens, we used a pre-mixed wildflower seed mix. What we learned is that it was absolutely beautiful in the first year, but by the second year there were only yellow and golds that overtook everything else. One of my least favorite colors of flowers are yellow and golds. Nothing against those. They're sunny, bright, and cheery, but just in little bits for my liking. But that's all I was seeing, and this is why. In a lot of those mixes, there are a lot of annual seeds, which means that those flowers only come back once a year. So every year you'd have to reseed them. They die at the end of winter and they don't return for you. There's also biannuals that come back every year if they reseed themselves. They need to reseed themselves in order to return. And then there's perennials. Perennials will come back every year. Now this always comes down to what your zone is. That's why there's a lot of different mixtures that are based on your gardening zone. So what we quickly learned to do was to no longer use the mixes because by the second year all the beautiful multi-colored flowers were gone because the majority of those were annual seeds. And in the second year there was a good mixture between blues, some purples, but mainly golden yellow. And by the third year it was just golden yellow because it took over aggressively. After that we no longer used the mixes and we learned that the flowers that we didn't love, we either started yanking, not all, but some, so they weren't taking over, especially those yellows and golds. And we were also cutting the flowers that we didn't love for bouquets. I know it sounds crazy, but in the first year that's what we did. And all of those flowers that we loved, that we would have loved to see in a bouquet on the table, we didn't cut those. We left those. We left those so they grew strong and reseeded, so they dropped their seeds. A lot of these are bi-annual, so they need to really reseed themselves. And with the wildflowers that's what you're depending on. So it's always good to allow the flowers that you love to really get established for a couple years. And once they're really established, then you can start cutting. I'm not saying don't cut. That's always your own option. But these are just the little things that we've learned along the way that I feel would be extremely helpful for you. Because once the flowers that you love become established, they're established and you can start cutting. And it's amazing every single year. My favorites are the phlox and the dianthus. They smell so amazing. This dianthus that we have in this wildflower garden is known as the sweet william mix. The dianthus sweet william mix is deer resistant, just like the phlox. This up here is the wild phlox. This is a variety that we did not put up here. Some people call it a wildflower, but it is actually known as being an invasive species. I didn't really know this until a few years into having it in here. And we just went ahead and left it because we actually really like it. But we do manage it. So I feel like as long as you're managing it and making sure that it doesn't take over other varieties, you'll be okay. I love it for bouquets and it actually lasts super long in bouquets. I also love the cornflowers, which are just starting to come into blossom. We have quite a different few blue ones. This variety of cornflower here is an annual variety, but it can also reseed. This variety of cornflower over here is a perennial variety. It can grow in as low as zone three. These little blue flowers are phlox and they're perennial and as low as zones three through ten. I did research on perennials that I absolutely love that I could easily seed start on my own or directly seed within the wildflower gardens. And that's how we kind of created our own wildflower mix. So I scoured online, of course, looking for the most seeds of color. I just wanted tons of color, right? When it comes to the weeds in there, we make sure to cut them. We have to cut them because if the weeds seed out, they'll seed everywhere and those will overtake as well. That's something you do not want. You do not want the weed seeds to take over the seeds that will return the following season. In the beginning, when we first established the garden, the garden was done at the end of summer. We're coming into fall, right? I guess fall would be the time that it was done. We went ahead and we cut it, so that way it was cut all the way down. But that was the only year that we cut it. After that, we basically just left it because we wanted some to reseed, but we also wanted to leave some of the seeds for the birds too. We like to really leave a lot of our gardens in. We don't really cut back. We don't at all cut back or trim back perennials, shrubs, our wildflower gardens, even our raised beds, our window boxes. We leave all of that up. We leave it up for nature. And we found that since we started doing that about seven years ago, I'd say, everything was amazing. Like everything came to life. The nature came. Look, I got this little guy swarming me around here because he wants the flowers. Before I was holding this bouquet and there was this beautiful bumblebee that came over here and I just watched him. They don't bother you. They just want the flowers. So the reason why I love Dianthus isn't just because of the beauty, but the smell. It is the most beautiful, sweet smell. It smells so good. Definitely up there with lilacs and roses for me. And then we've got the phlox. That's also just a really nice little sweet smell. I love it so much. And I know you guys would too. Sometimes I wish that there was like a smell button on the videos. You know, I mean, hasn't AI come far enough to be able to provide a smell button? Well, I guess we'll have to see. They still can't get my Midwest accent right for speech to text. So I guess they can't possibly come up with a smell button. Hey there. And nothing's more beautiful than a fresh bouquet in the garden room. And I could go ahead and arrange these a little bit more fancy, but I'm going to leave them just like they are in nature, a little wild. With all of our beautifully landscaped and planted up containers and raised beds and our whole garden space, it was always odd to me that I had more of a connection with our wildflower gardens and our wild spaces and trails and just like wildflower and wild grass paths. And I started realizing what it was and that was creating more of a space for nature in itself, like to bring that nature into the garden. The gardens have become a lot more wild. We've added a lot of natives which have brought the garden to life in a whole new way. So not only are they bringing nature with it, but they're also amazing for healing. That's been the journey we've really been on and that's the path and direction that we have been going for a long time now. And it's been amazing how much you can learn from the plants, what they can offer you and what you can offer them back. I know that sounds a little odd, but it's very true. We can very much so help each other in a lot of different ways. So by bringing a lot of natives into the garden, a lot more herbs, things for healing, there's a bigger connection. Also kind of just adding things to to just be more of a home for that nature and kind of just allow things to go a little bit more wild rather than so like perfect, right? I guess everybody has a different version of perfection and mine was always perfection like most people would imagine it, like meticulous, perfectly clean. But I like things wild too and that's what the garden was missing, that wildness. And that's what a lot of the natives bring in. Those are things you can seed start on your own. That's one thing that we do is we seed start everything in our raised beds from native plants, perennials, vegetables, all of our flowers. We seed start everything you see on our own unless it's a branded plant. So something that we can't seed on our own. Something like you've seen on some of our other videos with proven winners. We can't seed that stuff. So those are the items that we use in containers. But everything else that you see in our gardens, we do all that ourselves. My favorite time of year is seeding. I love seeing the life start there and watch it grow the whole season here all the way until it's time to give us what we need as well. Whether that's going to be food, whether that's going to be a product that we make for our body or our home or you know anything really. For our teas, for our healing. I mean it's just amazing. Everything has really started to come together and I really encourage all of you to give that a try as well. If any of this resonates with you, if any of this feels like you want that deeper connection, I really hope that I'm inspiring you to look further into your plants. One thing people always constantly complain about are weeds and I get it. I totally understand. But also one of the biggest questions that put me on my journey of healing was why would God create these plants that would take over everything and be able to survive in the most extreme conditions? And that's kind of what put me on the journey of learning about what can heal us and and that's why we're supposed to be tending to gardens to make sure that they're not constantly flowering out. Nobody was using them for healing anymore so of course they're gonna flower out and produce seeds and just spread and go crazy everywhere. They were meant to be used and have some saved to just continue to spread and we weren't using them. And I'm not saying all things are like that but majority if you really think about it and if you want to go deep and really think about it, there's reasons for it. A lot of invasive things that people are complaining about, if you actually look at what they could be benefiting you with, you'd be absolutely shocked and surprised and it starts making you think further like hmm what am I doing that is invasive to them? What am I doing that isn't right? You know like what am I doing that I'm not understanding that they are just constantly spreading? So that's one thing that we need to keep in mind. That's one thing that we need to just continue exploring and and when I say we I mean me. Because that's the journey I'm on. I'm not saying you all have to be on that journey but that's the journey I've been on and it's been an amazing amazing journey. A huge learning experience and I love it and I love sharing it and if you don't like it well I mean you don't have to love everything I share and that's okay. I know there's gonna be a lot of comments saying no you gotta get rid of the weeds. Well yeah I mean we do got to get rid of some of those weeds especially if you're not using them for anything for yourself or for others or in any way that can benefit anything then of course you're going to have so many of them and of course we spent half the summer or spring bent over just pulling weeds between pulling them using the vinegar salt and dish soap mixture and burning the weed like on the stones. All of that works but also like it's mainly just the foliage it takes care of. It's not taking care of those roots you know like it's just going to keep coming back out of that root which is fine too but always keep in mind like everything comes with work and it's okay. So if you're if you're starting a garden for this is for beginners if you're starting a garden always start a little bit smaller to see what you can manage. You don't really want to overextend yourself and get burnt out in the first season. I always say start with your favorites. What do you love to eat? Grow that and pick like two or three things. What is your favorite flower? Grow that. Okay what is your favorite herb? Grow that. And what is one ailment that you suffer with that you would like help with? Research what plants, what herbs, what weeds for foraging could possibly help with that and use that. Grow that or if you have it foraging from a weed then forage it but always make sure it's not somewhere that you sprayed with chemicals before trying to get rid of it within the past three years. So I guess that should probably be it for today. You guys had to sit here and listen to me talk for a while so um but yeah so the next video I'm to share with you guys will be on our front window boxes so I hope to see you guys then. See ya.