This is somewhat a chain of wishful thinking. The paper you're speaking of is pretty thin so won't be much of a barrier to perennial weeds for long. It would be better to use (free!) cardboard from dumpsters. What is suppressing weed seeds is primarily lack of light. Still, new ones are always blowing in, so until you get a weed-free crop of wildflowers on top, you'll need to be vigilant about weed sprouts. The cardboard will be an impediment to the wildflower roots. Usually, this method is used when one is going to install small plants in holes which they create in the cardboard. Or the method is used one season ahead of when it's needed. You could spout seeds and transplant them to holes which you punch in the cardboard. After the cardboard is wet, it's easy to make holes in it. If the area is sizable, 2" of soil on top of the cardboard could be quite a bit. Usually, people put mulch on the cardboard to hold and cover it.

Unless you live in an area where meadows naturally occur, and can manage to duplicate that, wildflower gardens are *gardens*. They will require much the same sort of tending as any garden - including weeding. However, since a lot of wildflowers are annuals or biennials, mulching will stop a lot of desirable plants from reseeding.

Have you seen the wildflower patches along the Garden State Parkway? I would guess they tilled before planting the seeds, but I'm sure no one from the state DOT goes around pulling weeds or watering. And somehow these flowers come back year after year. Some are perennials and some are annuals that re-seed. I wonder how these patches have thrived with no tending. Just lovely.

@jerseygirl I think to a large extent it depends on what one's expectations are. I don't know what's been planted on the Garden State but here in VA, the widlflowers planted in the medians appear to be one or two varieties that look great and really hold their own against other weeds. They look awesome at 70 mph, but when stopped at the side of the road (because you walked the dog before leaving and she steadfastly refused to do anything and you just knew this was going to happen) you realize that there's a LOT of funk and mess growing in there too. What looks good from the car whizzing past doesn't look near as good on foot, 8 feet away - and this is the problem a lot of home gardeners discover with wildflower plantings.

What I've found with backyard wildflower meadows is that if they're professionally burned, planted, and maintained, they look amazing. If they're tilled and shaken from a can, they last about 2-3 seasons before the homeowner gets sick of all the tougher weeds taking over and the pretty flowers not coming back because they get outcompeted, and they mow the whole thing over and figure out plan B.

@marcinde you're probably right about medians looking good at 70 mph. Close up in my own garden, I wouldn't be able to tolerate any weeds.

I grew a small patch of ornamental corn that way once. Five(ish) layers of newspaper with a inch of compost over it. It worked very well.

Know that while it lasts, the newspaper seperates the growing medium from the rest of the soil. Be careful to provide proper watering until roots penetrate to the actual soil. If the top layer dries out and all the roots are in it, your seedlings dry out. You may largely overcome that problem by starting now; the newspaper begins to degrade pretty quickly. (In which case, the paper would form less of a barrier. May want to make your top layer a bit deeper. Most seeds won't germinate through more than a few inches of soil, though some can germinate through 6" or so.)

Enjoy your weed free bed while it lasts. Left alone, new weeds will migrate in.

I think I would use glyphosate to kill the weeds sprouting from existing plants to the root early in the spring, use a few layers of black and white newspaper to prevent germination of buried weed seeds, then cover the area with soil, compost, manure, humus or any other organics that will speed breaking down of the paper and plant your seeds.

My logic is: most weeds germinate very early around the time forsythias bloom. As long as the weeds miss this window and are blocked by the newspaper you should prevent most of your weed problems when coupled with a glyphosate treatment. The glyphosate would start to break down and would not get on the foliage or affect growth of the wildflowers as they germinated and grew.

The newspaper covered with organic matter would break down quickly and the wildflowers could continue growing.

Of course weed seed would blow onto the plot and weeding would need to be done eventually. As long as it is not too big an area it may be doable.

For what it's worth.

Jon

There is a much simpler solution, It is called roundup and preen.