Dear Avant Gardener

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Seed a Meadow Now for Big Savings

Heather Evans

Sowing a prairie or meadow in winter is easy and cheap.

Paths and destinations at the Vitra company campus, designed by Piet Oudolf

Dear Avant Gardener (aka Mommy), I’m looking forward to starting your and Zoe’s course in February. Is there anything I should do in the meantime to speed the transformation of my yard? Having moved in October, I am wondering what I can get a head start on during the winter months. — Lila Joy, Hudson Valley, NY

Yes, hurry up and seed a meadow.

The seeds of many native wildflowers require a couple of months of stratification — cold, then moist. Some people stratify in the refrigerator, but the easiest way is outside over winter, as nature intended. In fact, you can even “snow seed” —broadcasting seeds directly onto snow while it’s light and fluffy.

Orders of magnitude cheaper

Growing meadow from seed is by far the least expensive way to convert a large area from turf to native plants. Native meadow (or “prairie”) seed mixes with a mix of native grasses and wildflowers run less than $750 per acre. In contrast, planting deep-rooted plugs costs many tens of thousands of dollars per acre, even at wholesale prices. The catch is time: Seeds take at least two years to develop deep roots to support full-sized plants.

I don’t want to jump the gun on your master plan — you’re going to spend the first six weeks of the course developing it — but your large, grassy, mostly sunny enclosed backyard is a natural place for a meadow. Although it’s currently unattractive and sterile, it’s probably not where you want to devote the bulk of your budget. You’ll want to invest where entrances and main views are — the front and western side yards.

Paths and destinations can come later.

Planting an inexpensive meadow in this large area will transform your boring backyard into a place where you’ll want to spend time — at a minimum, by making a circuit through it to observe the plants and the bees, birds, and butterflies they will attract.

To make such a circuit, you’ll need paths and preferably a few destinations — e.g., places to sun, sit, or play games. What I can’t tell you without you doing your homework (yes) is where and what to make those paths and destinations. However, it’s worth getting a headstart now: You won’t be able to seed again for another year and you’ll lose less than two cents per square foot if you subsequently mow or replant some seeded areas.

Seed mix selection

As a start, I recommend two to three pounds of Roundstone’s Northern Pollinator Conservation Mix or for medium to wet soil. It contains six native grass species and 16 native wildflower species, including butterfly milkweed, black-eyed Susan, Joe Pye weed, and New England aster.

See planting details in “How” below. Later, you can add seeds or plugs, either adding new species or doubling down on the ones that are thriving.

Happy sowing!

— The Avant Gardener (aka Mommy)

P.S. There's still time to join Lila, Zoe, and me for our 12-week course, Transform Your Yard, which starts in February 2024. Learn more and register at DearAvantGardener.com.

Why, How, Wow!

Why?

A recent meta-analysis proves the wisdom of the lost practice of strolling around in the garden. Such strolls were popular among the lucky few with leisure time in colonial America:

William Byrd II in his diary (1732) frequently mentioned his own perambulations in the garden, either alone or with gentlemen guests after he had entertained them with a meal. — History of Early American Landscape Design​

It turns out walking just two to five minutes after meals — the time it takes to make a circuit of a quarter acre yard – decreases blood glucose levels significantly. As lead researcher Aidan Buffey told CNN,

“Intermittent standing breaks throughout the day and after meals reduced glucose on average by 9.51% compared to prolonged sitting. However, intermittent light-intensity walking throughout the day saw a greater reduction of glucose by an average of 17.01% compared to prolonged sitting.”

Although lawns theoretically allow for infinite paths, they are seldom used for strolling. Paths re-emerge as the central organizing principle in ecological landscapes, which limit the amount of lawn. The function of well-designed paths is much the same as in colonial America:

While their form varied widely, walks served essentially the same functions: to provide passage and to direct movement through the garden; to focus a viewer’s gaze toward an object, building, or prospect; and to structure and divide the garden. — History of Early American Landscape Design​

Horticulturalist Kelly Norris strolls his prairie garden (photo: Carson Downing in Better Homes & Gardens)

How

When I saw a “meadow” of uncut lawn grass, I realized you really, really don’t have to kill grass to plant or seed into it. The kind of turf we grow in the Northeast (not Florida!) grows to about a foot and a half tall and looks just fine. In fact, the turf grass acts as a cover crop, protecting the soil and shading the tender young native perennials from intense sun as they develop their root systems over two or three years.

When selecting a meadow seed mix, make sure it contains only native plants and mostly perennials appropriate to your conditions, preferably sourced near your location. Many “wildflower” mixes include non-native seeds and a high proportion of annuals; these will look great in the first year, but require reseeding and don’t support native specialist insects (and hence birds) to the same extent. Here are some large, regional native seed mix suppliers:

Adapted from Prairie Moon, here are instructions for broadcasting the seeds in winter:

  1. Divide your yard into roughly 1,000 foot sections and divide the combined seed mix into the same number of parts.

  2. Mix about four gallons of slightly moist, clean sand (e.g., sandbox sand from the hardware store) with each 1,000 square feet of seed.

  3. Hand broadcast the seed mix for each section and leave it on the soil (or turf) or snow surface.

From spring through fall, mow the meadow to four to six inches every six weeks to stop turf grass and annual weeds from going to seed. The following year, mow in spring and then as necessary to prevent the turf and weeds from seeding.

Source: Prairie Moon

Wow!

Meadows are magnificent! Here are more images of Kelly Norris’s front yard — which he calls “Meadow Nord” — in summer (top) and fall. It encompasses 92 species planted 3,400 as plugs (not seeds) in fall, then overseeded with purple lovegrass.

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