Gardening Nature’s Way: A journey through meadows

Surely it cannot take three years to start a meadow, I thought, listening to the presentation on meadows. A vision of colorful wildflowers and golden grasses swaying in the breeze, enlivening my dry, rocky yard, had brought me to an online course with the Native Plant Trust.

Starting with the course, followed by my own research, I began to learn about what I considered a possible lawn alternative even as I set out to create one. Meadows are open to a variety of interpretations and definitions: In general, they may be defined as open spaces where grasses predominate and mix with other flowering nonwoody plants, either because of natural disturbance, unfavorable soil conditions, altitude, or human interference.

The traditional hay fields of Europe, which were often cut and grazed for many generations, provide a small-scale vision of a meadow (for example, in the painting “The Harvest” by van Gogh). Grasslands, such as the short- and tall-grass midwestern prairies, also inform our understanding of meadows on a larger scale. Ecosystems dominated by grasses cover about one-third of the Earth’s surface, according to a 2019 article in Biosphere magazine, but they are under threat everywhere, including the aforementioned hay meadows and midwestern prairie.

If I wanted to create a meadow garden, then I needed to get to know grasses. I had not paid much thought to grasses thus far—my imagined meadow was full of wildflowers. Grasses are, however, essential to human life: Grains, including rice, wheat, and teff, as well as sugarcane, are all grasses. According to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, about half of the calories consumed globally come from grains. The success of a very limited subset of agriculturally significant grasses, unfortunately, has come at the expense of other grasses. We need our biologically diverse grasslands—they help to cycle nutrients, prevent erosion, and clean the water. They provide food and shelter for wildlife and pollinators. (Please don’t cut your ornamental grasses until spring—insects overwinter in the hollow stems!) Most importantly, grasslands store carbon and help to sequester it in the soil, thus helping to fight climate change, according to the U.S. Forest Service.

With both environmental and aesthetic considerations in mind, I decided to get started on an approximately 800-square-foot patch of yard. Since I planned to do all the work myself, by hand, this was about as large a space as I could manage.

Getting rid of grasses and weeds

As we learned in class, the first and most important step is to get rid of the grasses and weeds growing in our chosen spot. This is the point at which many gardeners tell you the job is nearly impossible and you are unlikely to succeed. Simply digging up the dirt will just expose the massive seed bank lying dormant in the soil and waiting for the amateur gardener, ready to spring to life and take over everything in its path. Along with reports that invasive plants are becoming far more tenacious—and my own observations of invasives in my yard—I took this step very seriously.

After reading about all of the problems with various methods used to kill the existing undesirable vegetation, I decided to use solarization (placing clear plastic over the area to use heat to kill whatever is under the plastic). Plastic is a problem (although I will reuse it for many years); however, chemicals or heavy machinery weren’t an option for me. I have also experimented with cardboard. The longer you leave the cover on the ground, the better the effect. In the places where I left the plastic or cardboard over winter, I have very few weeds but, less favorably, I also have a lot of mole and vole tunnels.

Grasses, I learned, generally fall into cool season or warm season varieties, depending on when they grow the most and when they tend to go dormant. For example, an accent grass I chose, Koeleria macrantha, June grass, is a cool-season grass that will flower and seed by early summer, and then go dormant in hot weather.

Choosing grasses

The two foundation grasses I chose to fill the meadow with are warm-season grasses—Schizachyrium scoparium, little bluestem, and Sorghastrum nutans, Indian grass. They will bloom in late summer and produce lots of seeds going into fall, adding an attractive dimension to the winter garden. Other grasses I chose for accents include prairie dropseed, side oats grama, blue grama, purple love grass, and switchgrass.

Another important distinction is the form the grass takes—does it primarily form clumps, or does it spread rhizomatically? In the latter case, it could become overly aggressive in your garden or meadow. Of the grasses I chose, Sorghastrum nutans spreads by sending out rhizomes, so I will need to keep a careful eye on it. The other grasses tend to form clumps.

All of the grasses I chose are native to the Midwest. Natural meadows are less common in New England because of the forested terrain, as well as the actions of the early European settlers, who tended to cultivate, graze, and build on meadows, and brought Eurasian grasses with them for fodder.

Last September, I planted about 150 grass plugs, about two-thirds little bluestem and one third Sorghastrum nutans. These grasses, as well as the flowers I chose, do well in dry, sunny sites. When you buy plant plugs, you are essentially purchasing a well-developed root system. I chose to grow the other grasses by seed, either by starting seeds indoors in late winter or overwintering them in flats outdoors. I have planted native flowering plants from seed and plugs—these include wild senna, Rudbeckia triloba, narrowleaf mountain mint, New Jersey tea, butterfly weed, Baptisia alba, and eastern red columbine, among others.

A work in progress

For wet meadows, my neighbor reports that the following grow well in her low-lying field: joe-pye weed, white meadow sweet, blue-eyed grass, various types of native sedges, several types of Solidago, and shrubs such as blueberry, silky dogwood, and panicled dogwood.

In the fall, I will write a follow-up report on the meadow. It is a work in progress, and while I chose to ignore the three-year rule on establishing a meadow, I am now a believer. It is a slow process, but one that is endlessly captivating.

Catherine Warner is an enthusiastic amateur gardener who got started by following her dad around the garden and later worked on an organic farm while in college. After a detour as an academic historian, she now stays at home with her son and serves as a member of both the Garden Club of Harvard and the Community Resiliency Working Group.