How to Grow Wildflowers Indoors

If you don’t have a lawn or garden to plant your wildflowers, you still have options for growing them. I’m going to explain how to grow wildflowers indoors, but it’s always better to grow these flowers outdoors because they’re great for pollinators, such as bees.

And with bee colonies falling 39% in a single year, it’s so important to do everything you can for them.

However, if you don’t have the space to grow, you have two main options:

Grow them in a plantar box
Grow them indoors

Growing indoors is often the only option people have for their wildflowers, and there are a lot of benefits to this, too. You can control the environment indoors, and this means that you can have beautiful blooms, less concern over weather fluctuations, drought, sunburn or leaf scorch.

With that said, let’s dive into growing your wildflowers.

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In This Article

How to Grow Wildflowers Indoors in 5 Easy Steps

1. Start With the Right Soil Foundation

Whether you choose to use a nursery tray, a pot or a container, you’ll need:

Soil / potting mix
To fill until the container is 3/4 filled with soil

Now, it’s important to leave the soil loose and not to compact it. Compacting the soil will impact root development and aeration.

2. Sow Your Seeds

Next, sow your seeds. Ideally, you’ll mix your seeds with a bit of compost and then spread them as evenly as possible in your tray/container. You’ll want to ensure that the seeds are at most 1/4 – 1/8 inch deep.

You don’t have to worry about birds or other animals running off with the seeds with this depth, but you do want to ensure that the flowers can break through the surface and sprout.

The wildflower packet that you buy will have directions on how to space your seeds properly.

3. Gently Push the Seeds Into the Soil

Once you have your seeds spread evenly, you’ll want to gently push them into the soil and try your best to have compost mixed in. You want to use high quality compost because it will feed your seeds the nutrients they need to have a successful bloom.

I compost at my house, and it’s something I recommend you do if you can. Composting at home allows me to:

Waste less food scraps
Reduce the amount of waste we produce at home
Save money on compost

If you don’t have compost, you can find some at gardening centers or even online. Some potting mix will come with the compost mixed in already.

4. Water, Water, Water

During the initial weeks of growth, you’ll want to water your seeds daily or every other day. Touch the soil to make sure that it’s moist and not too dry for proper growth. Also, feel free to use some type of liquid fertilizer if you want to encourage growth.

However, it’s not necessary to use fertilizer if you have good compost.

5. Place in the Sun

Finally, place your container(s) in the sun in an area that receives full sunshine. Since you’re indoors, you’ll want to be cautious of your heating system. When we were experimenting with growing flowers indoors, we found the perfect sun-filled spot, but then noticed that the soil dried up quickly.

Why?

We had the pot really close to the HVAC vent.

Don’t make this mistake.

Instead, find a good spot that offers full sun or 6+ hours of sunlight per day.

If you want, you can transplant these seedlings outdoors after they’ve become established. However, this is a time-consuming process and not something I would recommend. Seed packets contain so many seeds that it makes the most sense to sow them directly in the ground, if you’re considering transplanting them in the future.

Tools for Growing Wildflowers Indoors

We mentioned a lot of different items that you’ll need for your wildflowers. Amazon has a lot of these items for sale, or you can go to your local garden store to find these items. A few of these items, include:

And, you’ll need to have wildflower seeds, too. We recommend reading our guide on buying wildflower seeds to find the right packets for your needs.

Note: All of the links are for general Amazon searches for these products. You can work through the reviews and pricing to find something perfect for your needs.

Personally, I prefer growing wildflowers outdoors because they attract bees, butterflies and other insects. Add in the fact that we have a vegetable garden, and the flowers attract honeybees, which will also pollinate our garden.

All in all, while it’s nice to know how to grow wildflowers indoors, we personally have the space to grow them outdoors. There are just so many benefits of planting wildflowers outdoors that it makes sense to choose this location if you can.

However, growing indoors is something we’ve tried, and it’s really nice to have flowers all around the house and add some color to our space. If you opt to grow indoors, you won’t be disappointed with the results.

Wildflower colors are fantastic and the blooms are much healthier, too, when growing indoors.

Michael DeFelice

Mike’s an obsessive gnome, always worried about bettering himself, overcoming physical limitations and trying to grow his homestead. He’s a former computer programmer, turned researcher/writer with a focus on health and wellness.