Having read several articles on creating wildflower meadows which involved removing the topsoil layer and reducing soil fertility, I thought it would be really difficult and arduous to produce an area full of flowers that bloomed for weeks on end, but I was wrong. Last year I plucked up the courage and had a go, but doing something much more simple and involving less work.

It all started off when we moved the trampoline off the grass and discovered that there was a large bare patch of earth left underneath where it had be sited. An so, rather than re-seeding it with grass I decided we would have a go at creating something colourful and a bit wild in its design.

We removed the dead grass and also any bits which were trying to regrow, but we didn’t dig the earth up as such. Then it was raked and the clods of earth broken down to make a sort of large seedbed.

After that came the seed sowing, mainly done by my daughter and her friend.

We had several packets of very old seeds that I had been keeping, and given up hope of using, and so these were added to the mix of new packets of annual flowers like Californian poppies, Nigella and Sunflowers. We also used seeds that I had collected from annual flowers grown in the garden the previous year. They were pressed into the ground using our feet. In some places a very light scattering of compost was added to cover them.

We have cats, and so I had to make a cat deterrent, otherwise they would have used it to roll around in and worse things. So we assembled a web of string wound around short bamboo and other sticks. And the whole thing was watered well for several days as there was no rain for well over two weeks.

So this was the result after a few weeks. We were surprised by how fast it all grew and the wonderful thing was that it was a constantly changing area. The cornflowers came up quickly whilst the sunflowers grew taller and then poppies took centre stage with mallows and stock adding to the mix.

And this went on for weeks, right through summer until September. Needless to say, we’ll be doing this again this year, starting next month. Give it a go, it’s not difficult, and really rewarding. One thing I would suggest is that if you are going to do a circle, make sure the centre is easy to reach so that you can weed out the odd unwanted plant without trampling over the rest. Better still, create two areas with a bit in the middle where you can sit and be surrounded by the flowers. Enjoy.