Here is the shade meadow progression at Petersen Farm in 2018.
I seeded a couple “pre-fab” shade-tolerant mixes here (mostly non-native species) in Fall 2017, as this strip gets about 4 hours of sun per day.
I had about a dozen species blooming in May, most of which extended through August. There were about five species that started blooming in mid summer, and by September, I still had about five species still blooming. Best performers were California poppy, rose mallow, scarlet flax, and coreopsis. Cornflower was too invasive, I removed most of it before it went to seed.
Overall the meadow was pretty to look at, but the value for bees was marginal this year due to the predominance of non-native annual species. Check back next year when most of the perennials in the mix start to bloom!
