Planting Seeds - It's Not the Whole Story

Stokes aster - Stokesia laevis

Stokes aster in my landscape - January 31 2020

My wildflower garden is taking shape. Where once I could pull just about everything out that emerged from my planting area as being something I did not plant or want, I now have a great many seedlings of the plants I originally planted. The garden is on autopilot. It is self organizing and that is the way it was planned. I still have weeds that I need to remove periodically, but the huge seedbank of unwanted species is now mostly exhausted and what is mostly coming up are the wildflowers that I let go to seed.
I have learned a few things over the many years that I have been doing this - here and elsewhere. It is not practical to start a new wildflower "meadow" by simply casting seeds in a barren area - at least not one like the one I created from my former lawn. The seeds of my lawn weeds were aggressive and plentiful. The only thing I left alone were those of the Canadian toadflax (Linaria canadensis). I now have at least 100 plants in this area, but I see no reason to remove them. They are a short-lived annual and they will not compete with the wildflowers and native grasses that I added on purpose. They also have some limited value to my pollinators that right now have very little else to visit. Everything else that emerged on its own during my first growing season was unwanted and detrimental to the space my desirable plants needed.
I frequently see posts from new gardeners wanting seed to sow and seemingly taking what they view as the inexpensive/easy approach. It is not easier. In my experience, it is much more difficult to establish a pollinator garden of native plants from seed sown on bare ground in a former yard. Removing the weeds, native or otherwise, after a landscape has been sown with native plant seed is nearly impossible - certainly a lot more difficult than removing them first and then planting. It is very unrealistic to think that the bare soil in a former disturbed site has any appreciable number of desirable plant seeds in the seed bank. Weeds are always the first thing to germinate from bare soil and weeds can be native or not. That is not really what we should be targeting. The question really is more about fostering those species that will do the most good and weeds are weeds because they spread and multiply quickly.
I've left a few of the weeds that serve as host plants for butterflies in patches outside my planted area. The cudweed (Gnapthalium spp.). for example is the host for painted ladies and the pellitory (Parietaria spp.) serves as the host for red admirals. In my planted area, however, they would not play nice with the other plants I've added on purpose. I've weeded them out of this area very aggressively. What's left are the plants I've planned for.
One of these are the Stokes asters (Stokesia laevis) pictured above. They have taken off in this planting, but they didn't do this without weeding nor did they get this way by scattering seed on the bare soil I prepared in October 2018.  Stokes aster, as well as my purple and yellow coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea and Ratibida pinnata) and many others were purchased first as plants. Over the years, I've learned that purchasing a few plants first and then collecting their seed is the most effective way to produce the results I want. It may take a little longer, but it is far more efficacious.  I've never understood the urgency to plant everything right away. I have time to get the results I want or I don't - and then it doesn't really matter...... It may seem expensive to purchase plants, but it really isn't. Some of my plants self-sow.  The goldenrods (Solidago spp.) certainly do as do the black-eyed susans (Rudbeckia spp.), but even these were planted originally from plants I purchased. Others. like these Stokes asters will not very easily self-sow. For these, I purchased 5-6 plants, collected their seed and sowed it in flats with potting soil. By this year, I have hundreds of seedlings ready to plant - far more than I can use which is one reason why I started my wildflower nursery Hawthorn Hill.
Sowing the seed of these directly into my new garden might have netted me a few plants, but often not. Most seeds in nature do not make it to adult plants - especially when they are competing with things already established like lawn weeds. Adding plants, grown from native plant nurseries, is actually a far quicker means to an end. You just don't have to purchase dozens if your budget is like mine. If your plants do well, they will bloom and make seed. Don't scatter this either, unless it is a plant that aggressively reseeds like the goldenrods. Collect it, plant it in a flat of potting soil, and then use the plants that result. I now have at least 100 purple coneflower seedlings to add or sell, for example, and more than 100 butterfly milkweeds (Asclepias tuberosa). It just took a year to get to this point. The wait was well worth it. You can't speed up the process if you want to be as effective in your landscape as possible and if you really aren't interested in being effective I do not understand what you are trying to accomplish in the first place. Nature needs us to maximize the effectiveness of our landscapes and it is not done by letting nature take its course but by our conscious planting decisions, our aggressive weeding/management, and our patience to then let things develop. Right now, I am very pleased with what has developed here and I am waiting to see what all of it means as a new growing season begins.