'Wildflower gardening' is in vogue but arguably a contradiction in terms. If plants are being deliberately cultivated is that wild? Nonetheless it is possible to garden to good effect using species more usually found in the wild.

 The sentiment isn't new. William Robinson's book of 1870 'The Wild Garden' was one of if not the first gardening books to advocate 'naturalistic' planting using native species. Earlier still the cottage gardens of old would surely have included wildflowers of the locality propagated as garden plants. The 'flowery mead' of mediaeval times was a lawn of fine turf dotted with flowers. Mead derives from the Old English "maed" -a clearing (i.e. meadow) where animals graze. No doubt this connection was reflected in the choice of plants.

 I planted a wildflower patch on the allotment using various natives I bought bare root from Shipton Bulbs. I also scattered seeds of a good many wild species though in my experience that approach is very hit and miss. Some species are now propagating themselves by self-seeding not just on the patch but around the allotment. To these we must add those wildflowers which go by another name: weeds. How desirable or undesirable they are is a matter of personal choice but it must be noted that weeds are the plants that want to be growing in that spot whether we like it or not.

 Which brings me to the question of how to garden for wildflowers and how is that different to standard garden maintenance? Today I weeded the wildflower patch mainly to dig out couch grass which will rapidly outcompete most of the wildflowers. I left buttercups and dandelions but couch grass is too wild if you want flowers. 

 I probably dug over some wildflower seedlings as I did so. Never mind, I will also have stirred up seeds in the soil that thrive on disturbed ground. Where I grubbed up a young plant by accident I popped it back in the earth as an instant bare root. I deliberately lifted several mature plants to tease out the thread-like roots of couch grass. 

 Wildflower gardening is a mixture of intervention and leaving things be. On a larger scale that is characteristic of many "natural" habitats; a hay meadow for example or a coppiced wood or a chalk hillside grazed by sheep. Their flora and fauna have a symbiotic relationship with human activity. The wild gardener needs to learn from both the mead and the maed.