Seeding Fields This Fall for Spring Wildflowers

Most properties in the Los Altos Hills have wide swatches of wild grass, essential elements of the town's coveted "rural" look. Is there a way to dress them up ?

You can love the look of hillsides covered with wild grass and still want to add sprinkles of yellow, pink, red, white, purple, and blue. 

How? With wildflowers. You can scatter seeds and let nature water them with our winter rains.

The look of flowers-in-wild-grass is more natural than a cultivated garden and, consequently, far easier to achieve and maintain. With a town-wide zoning of one-acre per household, residents need to consider the best use of resources. Water rates are expected to rise steeply in the coming years because of repair work to aging pipes and the delivery systems of most water wholesalers. Even on a smaller lot, ecological and financial considerations might push you toward the artistry of naturalness.

If you scatter wildflower seeds in fields this fall, next spring you may get the effortless-looking effect cultivated by Stanford University. 

Since 2000, for beautification and naturalization, Stanford has been sowing wildflowers in meridians along the main arteries of campus and letting the wild grass grow there. If you have driven through campus in the spring, you may have noticed the poppies along the road. The poppies are not accidental.  

WHAT TO SOW and HOW MUCH

Darryl Furuichi, co-proprietor of Los Altos Nursery on Hawthorne Avenue, recommends sowing foxglove, delphinium, lupine, gloriosa daisy (black eye susan), and mostly California Golden poppies (the same thing as orange poppies). California Golden poppies are the state flower and thrive here. They can grow without your watering at all and also do fine in an irrigated garden. 

Golden California Poppies grow like weeds; other kinds and colors of poppies are more vulnerable to being eaten by snails. Lupines are also natural here and come in blue, yellow, pink, red and white. Los Altos Nursery carries packets of mixed-color Lupine seeds. Delphiniums, also called larkspur, come in white, blue, lavender, purple and green.

You may be inclined to create a controlled look with specific colors. Resist! This might be an opportunity to release that control and let nature take its course.

Los Altos Nursery will close for the winter at the end of October. When they reopen in the spring, they will have canisters of wildflower seeds for planting in fall 2011.

Mary Nolan, Academic Maintenance Supervisor at Stanford, recommends seeding with "California Coastal Wildflower Mix," which you can order for around $49 per pound through Common Ground, the longtime local leader in organic gardening. One pound is enough to seed a field 50 feet by 50 feet, about 1/16th of an acre.

Nolan said that Stanford uses 15 to 18 pounds of seed per acre and buys wholesale from Pacific Coast Seed Company and S and S Seeds, sister companies specializing in natural landscaping. Pacific Coast, according to a spokesperson there, prefers not to sell to the public but sometimes will, with a minimum order of $200—enough seed, at $23 a pound, to seed half an acre.

Perhaps you would rather start on a smaller scale. You can buy a little packet of seeds and scatter them in your yard and see what happens. If you like the effect, you can go a little bigger next year.

Summer Winds Nursery on San Antonio Avenue near Middlefield Road carries a 12-gram packet of California poppy seeds for $3.49, enough to cover 180 square feet.

In addition to offering bulk special orders, Common Ground carries a good variety of wildflower seed, including a 4-ounce packet of poppy seeds for $13.95 and native wild mix at $7.95/ounce (~31 grams).

You can order wildflower seeds online from a variety of dealers, but notice the  shipping charge before you click "Check out Now."

Don't worry about getting the exact right amount of seed—there is no exact right amount of seed. The numbers above are just to give you a ballpark idea of how much seed you need for the best possible results. Nature does not weight amounts of seeds. The natural way is to take what you have and scatter them where you want.

WHEN TO SOW

Sow wildflower seeds when the rains come, usually around Thanksgiving. When you see the the fields turn green, scatter seed. Or, to be on the safe side, watch the first wild grass come up, then wait to see if it dies back because of a dry spell. Sow your seeds when the next big rain is coming.

Wildflowers are flowering plants that survive without human care. Their basic survival skill is to put down a lengthy tap root, in order to obtain water when the surface has dried. They use our winter rains to grow strong.

HOW TO SOW

Just scatter the seeds on the surface of your dirt. You do not need to dig them in. Stanford's Nolan recommends, "Try a little patch, and next year, try a bigger patch."

WHEN TO MOW

After the rains stop in late spring, wild grass will dry out and turn blond-tan (the famous golden hills of California). The dry grasses are a fire hazard. In Los Altos and Los Altos Hills, you must, by law, mow down your wild grass (usually with a hand-held motorized weed whacker). Wait as long as you can because you want the wildflowers to go to seed before you mow them down with the grass. The longer the plants are allowed to go to seed, the less seed you need to add next year.

If you do your own mowing or have a savvy gardener, you can mow around the poppies. They will continue to bloom well into summer.

WHY WILDFLOWERS

Wildflowers are a natural delight.

About This Column: Each week Pam Walatka will explore the rural character of Los Altos Hills. Contact her at pamwalatka@yahoo.com or visit pamwalatka.com.

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