Meadows in winter

How do you design a meadow with native grasses and perennial wildflowers and establish it successfully? Wont it look tall or wild? How often will I have to reseed it? If I just stop mowing the lawn, wont it turn into a beautiful meadow? Can I just sprinkle some seeds over my existing lawn?

There are a lot of questions when it comes to meadows.

Transitioning a portion of your property into a meadow takes understanding, planning and management. Understanding your site now and as it was used in the past will give you a foundation for the conditions that exist like sun and shade, moisture, and weed pressure. Planning your landscape with species that match the different conditions sets up a meadow that will successfully establish and thrive in your unique space. Installing and managing the meadow over the first few seasons enables you to control problems as the arise and before they grow larger.

At a site visit in Glen Mills PA yesterday, I was consulting the homeowner on the state of his existing meadow installed by a contractor several seasons ago. We discussed the challenges that were present with weed pressure, and the difference between what he expected and how the meadow actually looked after several seasons.

There was a good covering of Little Bluestem, which is an excellent warm-season, native grass that comes back each year. It grows 2-3 feet tall and looks awesome during the growing season and after it has dried out and stays standing in winter. Little Bluestem provide stems for insects to place eggs, seeds for birds to eat, and cover for smaller animals to inhabit.

One of the disappointments for the homeowner was the lack of flowering perennials. When the meadow was seeded several years ago in summer it was followed by several weeks of drought conditions. Adding sprinkler and timed irrigation had enabled many of the seeded species to germinate on the bare soil, but also did the same for the weed species. During the following seasons, weeds were managed by hand removal and areas that had become badly disturbed were reseeded. The homeowner mentioned that he had seen a handful of flowering perennials over the course of 3 years, but it was not what he envisioned. he anticipated the meadow being filled with bright flowers throughout much of the year, matching the picture from the seed mix.

Several weeks ago, the meadow was cut, aerated and seeded again.

The disturbance of weeding and exposing soil created a cycle of bringing buried seeds up to the surface, both desirable native species and undesirable weed species, exposing both to sunlight and encouraging germination. We discussed needing to change the cycle to allow the seeded meadow plants to establish, while controlling the weeds without creating more disruption. Unlike a vegetable garden with soil that is tilled and annual plants that are grown and then cleared every year, a meadow needs to establish over seasons, promoting the beneficial native plants, while being managed to control and outcompete the undesirable weed species.

We developed a plan for several site visits this spring and summer to implement targeted weed control and monitoring to encourage the native meadow species. As we examined the meadow up close, we noticed some tiny Black eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta), Lanceleaf Coreopsis (Coreopsis lanceolata) and Eastern Beardtongue (Penstemon digitalis) seedlings scattered throughout. They looked like they had been waiting for their turn to emerge with the rest of the meadow, establish flowers, and set seed.

The plan for this season is to manage and encourage this designed meadow to work beautifully as it springs into new growth, blooms in summer and fall, and maintains its aesthetic as an attractive designed meadow in winter.