Flowers in the lawn (UK)

Question

The garden where we're moving to is mostly mud where there once was lawn. We are going to relay the lawn but I would very much like to have those tiny daisies and buttercups growing in the lawn as well as perhaps violets and some crocuses. Is it sensible, or even possible, to plant any of these under the lawn, right before we lay the turf... or should we scatter seeds after laying the lawn and hope the birds don't scoff them all? Thanks.

Answer 1

I may be wrong but I doubt if the seeds would germinate through turf. Scattering the seed over recently laid turf probably won't work either. You have several options. You could use wildflower turf, but that would be more expensive than ordinary turf. You could just let nature take its course and wait for wild flowers colonise the lawn by themselves (some people - not me - call them weeds). You could plant wildflowers into the lawn after its established. You could forget about turfing and sow a wildflower meadow. Think about how you are going to maintain the lawn. Are you happy to treat part of it as a wildflower meadow, which means not cutting it until the taller flowers have set seed? If you're going to plant bulbs, you need to leave the foliage six weeks after flowering before mowing, so maybe confine them to an area where you don't mind doing this. For inspiration, maybe take a look at Christopher Lloyd's book on meadow gardening here.