Anyone familiar with my blog knows that I love a short-cut. I also think it’s important to introduce as many native plants into my garden as possible. And if I can combine a task that’s easy and/or fast with more beneficial plants as a result, well, I’m all in. Which is why planting wildflowers by seed can be so rewarding. So many of our native wildflowers can be added to a garden by the direct sow method (seeds go straight into the ground) in the fall–no pots or transplanting needed.

This year I went to my usual go-to for wildflower seeds–the aptly named Wildflower Farm. Situated near Coldwater in Ontario, this wonderful wildflower-growing farm specializes in native plants that thrive in our region as well as the rest of North America. I can use their Seed Selector tool to find wildflowers that thrive in Ontario and with my particular situation including sunlight and moisture conditions. They also have seeds for most every other province in Canada as well as the United States. For instance, they have 9 suggestions for gardeners living in Alaska. They’ve got 75 options for Ontario residents. They’ve got a whopping 86 for Illinois.

Not only can you order seeds through the site for mail delivery, it’s really useful as a font of information about growing wildflowers. For instance, they cover how to create your own wildflower meadow, how to design a garden highlighting native grasses and flowers and a long list of both host plants and nectar plants to support Monarch butterflies.

Check out the Seed Mix selections, too, even if you don’t need a lot of seed. For instance, if you live in Ontario cottage country, you’re likely to have a septic tank. They’re not all that much of a problem really except for the fact that they’re hard to disguise. Shallowly buried and then covered in a thin layer of soil, septic tanks are often simply topped with non-native grass seed resulting in a huge, not-terribly-subtle emerald green hump. Who knew there are wildflowers that can thrive on septic tanks? They have a mix especially curated for owners of septic tanks. These plants:

• grow in sand and gravel (typical fill for septic beds)
• their roots don’t interfere with the tank’s pipes
• they absorb nutrients from the septic bed

My choices this year (shown above) happen to do well in part shade. I’ve done well with Aquilegia in the past and I’m curious to see how Nodding Onion and Rudbeckia will do now that we’ve got a larger patch of afternoon sunlight on our property thanks to some trees being felled to make way for a garage.

Which native wildflower seeds will you fling this fall into your garden?

For seed inspirations, including descriptions and how-to’s for 9 terrific Canadian native wildflowers ideal for planting by seed in fall, go to my captivatingly titled Planting Flower Seeds In Fall.

Check out The Needs Of Seeds if you need more info on planting seeds in fall, including:

• the amount of light that your seeds really need

• how to tell if your seeds are too old (meaning no longer viable)

• the difference between treated and untreated seeds

• what to do with leftover seed as in properly storing seed.