Ok - that's a lot of questions, but I will try. Sweet Williams turn into pods that open at the top and you can see the hole. Turn it over and shake it and the seeds will tumble out. Mine are all done and I have harvested the seed. I winter and summer sow these and do not direct sow them. Rudbeckia cones turn brown and the stem just below turns brown. When you tap and shake the cone you get grey/brown splinters that are the seed. You also get a lot of chaff, so look closely and distinguish seed v. fluff. Mine re-seed without my help, so I just let them drop. The smaller ruds have ripe seed - the larger perennials are still blooming. Echinacea grows little white pegs between the long needles on the cones. It's kinda like big dandruff. I winter sow these and they also re-seed, but not to the extent rudbeckia does. Finches really love this plant. Mine are still blooming and do not have ripe seed yet. On lamb's ears you can see the little pods along the stem where the purple blooms were. The pods will open up and you will see little holes that indicate seeds are ready. I cut the stalks and shake them into a big bowl. The round poppy-like seeds tumble out. They should be ready anytime now for harvest if you whacked them back in June. If you just let them go, they might be spent. Give a stalk a whack into a bowl and see what tumbles out. I much with grass clippings, coffee grounds and chopped leaves. My favorite bed prep is lasagna style. Run a search on that and you will find great descriptions. It's easy and cheap. I know I didn't answer all your questions, but maybe you got some answered.

While not as high maintenance as lawn, your wildflower planting will still require monthly maintenance. And yes, the weeds will definitely come back. You'll have to monitor the situation and remove the weeds either by hand, with herbicide or mowing. I wouldn't plant any grass in it. Especially aggressive spreaders like bermuda or you will go out there one day and find that the wildflowers have become lawn. Wildflowers also require water. Not as much as lawn but in a drought situation, germinating seed and having adequate moisture for that much area is going to be a concern. If what you were wanting was a substitute for lawn area and that kind of maintenance, I would suggest a nicely laid out planting of ornamental grasses and shrubs to line the driveway and also some trees that will drape over the drive and provide cooling. You can start out with small one gallon sizes or even smaller mail order sizes because that stuff grows fast.

Good point about seed timing, when I have planted prairie seeds in the spring I usually had them at least in the freezer first or tried to stratify them myself first. I have planted seeds both spring and fall at my former house and some 'empty' land I still own. Where I am now I have a few times smothered patches of dirt with plywood or cardboard and then sown it in the fall with seeds I have saved from other areas of my property, and 2 that I bought (blue flax and purple coneflower.) We do have a LOT of native prairie and woodland plants here, and I assure you they mostly brought themselves here. The land was owned by my family for almost 50 years. I have seen photos from long ago and it was clearly a big cultivated field before my family moved in. If you leave land alone long enough, the native species come out as well as weeds. A combination of seed bank, wind, birds, and animals. I keep finding trilliums popping up here and there, and we have a few nice patches of False Solomon's seal. Those aren't prairie plants, but they are definitely native plants that came to call. We have lovely wild violets everywhere we mow. Besides some lovely types of goldenrod and both white and purple asters, we also have purple prairie clover, violet monarda, cinquefoil, milkweed, yarrow, wild strawberries, coreopsis, white and purplish fleabane, and several things I can't think of the name of right off. Introduced by me were the black-eyed susans and purple coneflower (it's great to give your mother plants and then buy her house later and have them there) and a tenant introduced wild geraniums. We also have some interesting grasses which I cannot name for you, side-oats grama (?) and foxtail are 2 I actually know the name of. I assure you most of the wild plants put themselves here. My family was always into organic gardening, which helped. Wild trees even grow, like wild plum, painful but great smelling this time of year, and blackhaw, which I have found is very rare in WI and only found in 2 counties. We also have many red currant, gooseberry, and high bush cranberry bushes all over, mainly planted by birds. So humans interfered once in a while, my father planted fruit trees all over, and we plant vegies and flowers here and there. Some areas were mowed at some times, mostly just paths, so nature has had a lot of time to do her work. We would mow more now if our mower worked. :-) A non-native specie that I now consider a prairie plant is mullein, which I love, as birds perch on it and eat the seeds. Anyway, what my point was supposed to be is that if given enough time and some native species, you will attract wildlife, and get more native species via them. So it is a matter of gardening by subtraction with occasional strategic additions. Dug, if you like, I can send you some black-eyed susan seeds, these are the tall wild kind, smaller flowers than the modern varieties, but more flowers per plant. In the prairie they are about 2 to 3 feet tall, in a watered garden they get up to 5 feet. They are originally from North Dakota prairie via hubby's great-grandmother, and passed around the family since. They spread themselves very nicely. Marcia

My house in partially on the main road of the neighborhood, which is what the front (though rarely used)door faces, and partially on a dead end, which our side (main) door faces. On the dead end we have a space of dirt which is sort of tiered down, because the neighbors on the other side of the fence sit a bit higher than we do. I was thinking about turning that sunny tiered spot, where the weeds were very pervasive, into a wildflower bonanza. Rather than spend the fifteen dollars on assorted Burpee seeds I spent on my real garden, I thought I would buy two of those large $1 seed packets from Target- one is a wildflower mix and the other is a fragrant flower mix. I thought I would sort of naturalize the process,ad throw the seeds down, put down a layer of dirt, and then thin if something comes up from the effort. Has anyone had luck with bags of wildflowers?