Wildflowers

This spring/summer, exhausted by the news cycle, the vibe of the country and stressors in my personal life, I turned to gardening as a reprieve. Instead of watching one minute of cable, I turned to Gardeners World. The singular focus of plants and the joy of gardening presented by Monty Don and crew completely uplifted me, every single time I watched it. I got very excited about my garden.  

My sister came to visit and we built a second wooden walkway with recycled cedar boards from my fence, which I recently replaced with something taller. This little walkway allows me to walk around to the far side of the hot tub without tramping on a now fully planted area. *First wooden walkway construction process here.

In this small little section which measures about 15x10 feet, I planted a new standard apple tree to replace the two dwarfs previously there, which I moved to my roof (which also got a complete planting overhaul -to be posted about later). Then, I added a few large grasses (Karl Foerster) and transplanted some Mexican Feathergrass which self propagate like mad. 

And then, I seeded the area with a California Wildflower mix that I bought online. I watered daily until it sprouted and wow, magic. Weeks and weeks and weeks of blooms, changing all the time as some came into bloom before others. I'm so used to buying plants and not growing anything from seed so this was just spectacular for me, and what an eye opener, economically speaking -72 bucks for all this fun.


Here in San Francisco, we have about 6 to 8 more weeks of summer-ish weather until the fall rain sets in (usually at Halloween). The Mountain Garland is still hanging in there, as are some other unknown species), but I plan to sow some native grass in this area to transition through to winter. I'll need to chop back the flowers to do this (apparently a necessity for a meadow) and I haven't yet been able to bring myself to do it.

Any tips? Do tell.