Rewilding My Lot

In my last post about sowing native wildflower seeds for taller plants in the rear part of the back yard, I wrote about the reasons for my strategy so I won’t repeat them here.

Here I describe the shorter plants that are being sown in the two areas closer to the house. Some I have purchased, and others were given as gifts. Not all the gift seeds are native, but I’m throwing them in the mix anyway to see how they do.

• Firewheel aka Indian Blanket (Gaillardia pulchella). Annual. Orange & yellow.
• Mealy Blue Sage (Salvia farinacea). Perennial. Blue.
• White Prairie Clover (Dalea candida). Nitrogen-fixing. Perennial. White.
• (GIFT) Texas Wildflower Mix. Contains Texas Bluebonnet, Mexican Hat, Prairie Coneflower, Black-Eyed Susan, Indian Blanket, Lemon Mint, Plains Corepsis, Clasping Coneflower.
• (GIFT, variety unknown) Zinnia.
• (GIFT, not native) Lobelia – Cambridge Blue (Lobelia erinus).

As before, I mixed seeds with soil, scattered them, then scattered more soil, and stomped the area. Fortunately at the moment we are getting heavy dews, so the ground is getting a nice misting of moisture every morning.

This is the view from the patio. The closer dark areas on either side of the pathway are the “short” seeds that are described here. The far central area is where I sowed “tall” seeds a day earlier. Pale areas are unseeded because I’ll use those spaces for access or future projects.