A new meadow—one year after planting
Waiting for a meadow to grow takes patience. Certain species, like lanceleaf coreopsis, flower early, adding a splash of color while we wait.
I’m walking through a yard that was recently carved out of the woods, exposing a bucolic view of fields and forests that extends all the way to the Berkshires. The vista is reminiscent of the iconic Thomas Cole painting, The Oxbow. Church steeples of New England towns stick up in the distance.
Despite the picturesque backdrop, I’m scouring the ground, looking for the first signs of the seeds we planted a little over a year ago. It’s early June and the weather is finally heating up in western Massachusetts. I’m hoping some of our seeds are part of the surge of green growth all around.
We planted this meadow with carefully selected native perennial seeds. The area is a wide-open expanse of about an acre and a half, including the house. At some point, low-quality, gravel-like soil was added in anticipation of putting down grass seed to create a lawn. But the homeowners wanted a meadow instead, and I was brought on to take over the transition.
Young plants bring vibrant greens to the meadow, now in its second year. Later this season, many of these plants will flower for the first time.
When I first investigated the site, the ground was so hard I couldn’t sink a shovel into it. It made a tinny sound like hitting asphalt when I tried. When soil is dense, it is difficult, if not impossible for new seeds to take root, since they are likely to wash away before they get the chance. For a meadow to take root, I needed to restore softness to the soil.
I hired a tractor with a powerful tiller to churn up a soft layer of soil about six to ten inches deep. On a cool and breezy day in May, shortly after tilling the soil, we planted about twenty-five species of meadow plants from seed.
I selected each species for its ability to thrive in low-quality soil and grow to about the same height—in this instance, two feet to three and a half feet. I also selected plants that bloom in a staggered sequence so that flowers would appear throughout the growing season. Forty percent of the mix was a blend of switchgrass and little bluestem to give the meadow the soft, flowing effect that only grasses can provide.
Growing perennial meadows from seed requires patience. Native perennial seeds can take three to five years to sprout and grow into plants, sometimes even longer. But last year we experienced a significant drought, which slowed progress even more; our planting yielded only a few lanceleaf coreopsis shoots along with a nurse crop of annual rye. (A nurse crop is a cover crop meant to stabilize soil, protect seeds and seedlings, and provide greenery during a meadow’s first season.)
Out of the tens of thousands of annual poppy seeds we put down to supplement the nurse crop and provide temporary color, not a single plant appeared. It was pretty disheartening.
One of the joys of planting meadows is watching them come to life over time. Soon, many more species will begin flowering, adding new life and color to the yard.
It is hard to tell clients who have invested so much in their landscape to wait longer, but it’s all I could do. So it is with enormous relief that I notice several seedlings poking up. This year, the lanceleaf coreopsis is everywhere, alongside echinacea, boneset, blue lobelia, Rudbeckia, bergamot, rose milkweed, perennial sunflower, and yarrow. Many of the tiny little plants showing up will be much larger later this summer. Some will even start flowering.
By next year, almost all of the seedlings I’m looking at now will be flowering. Butterflies and pollinators, attracted by the myriad blooms, will be a testament to the value of the meadow when they show up in droves. This meadow still has a way to go before it’s fully established, but I can rest easy knowing it’s on its way.
Owen Wormser is a regenerative landscape designer and the author of Lawns into Meadows.