As a landscape designer, an increasingly frequent request from clients is getting rid of their lawn and replacing with more natural alternatives, like a pollinator friendly meadow. Water hogging and pesticide laden lawns are being replaced nowadays with different varieties of grasses, flowering plants (weeds!), and other perennials.

Rewilding is a term that is being used more and more and it simply means to let nature take care of itself, enabling natural processes to restore degraded landscapes. You are repairing a damaged ecosystem by creating a more diverse habitat by starting a meadow.

Ubiquitous American Lawns 

Today lawns cover more than 63,000 square miles- almost the size of Texas! And Americans are still in love with their lawns, but this is gradually changing. Turfgrass is mostly made up of non-native grass species and requires a huge amount of water, pesticides, fertilizer, labor, and fuel. There are definitely areas where lawns are useful, like in playing fields, but lawns are over-planted excessively and our environment is suffering because of this. The bio-diversity of a lawn is extremely low compared to meadows and other garden plantings, and cost billions of dollars each year to maintain, as well as contribute to water pollution. More and more botanic gardens such as Longwood Gardens and the new Delaware Botanic Gardens are establishing flourishing beautiful expanses of meadow to showcase the beauty of natives in a natural setting.

The decline of our native pollinators has been traced to more lawn installation, roundup spraying, big agriculture, and less wild plantings with “weeds”.

Change in Attitudes

But more and more, I am seeing lawns disappear and being replaced with perennial grass alternatives like Carex or Sedges and even more radical, with meadow plants, like goldenrods and other native wildflowers or as I mentioned earlier – rewilding.

The UK is way ahead of us and establishes meadows everywhere they can – like waste areas and median strips – wherever they can fit them. I have seen graveyards in England being replaced with meadow grasses instead of the buzz cuts around gravestones that you would normally see.

But how to get rid of lawns? I suggest gradually turn your property into alternative plantings. Don’t expect it to be done overnight and be cognizant of your neighbors and Home Owners Associations (HOA). Get permission and if that is not forthcoming, then try to educate others about the alternatives. I am a beekeeper and wanted to make a meadow around my beehives to increase bee foraging opportunities, so I created a meadow around my beehives. With no HOA to prescribe my plantings, I was free to do what I wanted. But others might have difficulties and run into push back.

What is a Meadow?

What makes a meadow? An open habitat or field covered by vegetation, usually grasses and other non-woody plants providing areas for nesting, food gathering, pollinating insects, and shelter for small animals. Many people wish to replace their lawn with a meadow but think by sprinkling seeds out of a can they can get that look. Wrong! It takes some planning and ongoing maintenance work.

Meadow Steps

1. Prep

It is important to first remove the existing turf grass by tilling or killing it with black plastic, cardboard, or newspaper covered with mulch or soil. You can then plant with selected native and non-native plants that do well in your location to form a dense covering of perennials that will crowd out weeds.

If you use black plastic fasten it to the ground with soil staples to keep it firmly fixed and you will have to wait at least 2 months or longer for the underlying weeds to die – faster if it is warm outside. A good time to do this would be fall and leave it down until the following spring. In spring, you can remove the plastic and add some topsoil and you are ready to plant.

Another favorite method is to use layers of wet newspaper. But first, it is important to cut down with a mower as close to the ground as possible any existing turf or weeds. Then lay down the wet newspaper and covering it up immediately with some topsoil. A lot faster method, as you can plant right through the newspaper right away, many people prefer this route.

Another way is to till the ground up but this can be labor intensive, and you bring up dormant weed seeds that were below the surface up to the top where they could germinate and pose future problems.

Planting

You have two options for populating your meadow: using seeds or plants, or a combination of the two. There are different meadow mixes that you could use and I like to use American Meadows as my go-to for my meadow mix.  Their site has excellent videos and information on planting a meadow. They sell in bulk single types of seeds and mixes. I bought the Northeast meadow mix and added a few more things that I wanted to showcase, like cornflowers and lupines.

If you seed, it is a good idea to use at least 80-85% native plants in your mix. Mix the seed with some sand to facilitate spreading it evenly.  Spread the seeds by hand or in a simple hand spreader on top of the prepared ground and rake it in lightly with a steel-tined rake. Firm the soil with a tool or a roller to make sure you have good contact between the seeds and soil and sprinkle it with water to start the germination process. I also spread some sticky straw (fine straw that stays put and doesn’t blow around) on top to keep the moisture in and minimize birds feeding on them.

I completed this meadow in January and by mid to late March the seeds started to sprout. It was fun to watch each type of seed coming up!

Landscape plugs are even better for an instant meadow and are very cost effective, more so than buying individual plants in quarts or gallons at the nursery. I found White Flower Farm sells them mail order. Also, you can buy plugs at some local nurseries.

Maintenance

Maintenance is still required to weed out undesirables that pop up which will happen less frequently as the plants knit together to form a weed killing mat. And your meadow will need to be mown down in early spring or late winter. Leave the mowed stalks on the ground as mulch for the seeds that will pop up later in the spring.

I found in the second season after planting that white clover was taking over and crowding out more desirable flowers that I wanted to come up instead. White clover is a great little ground cover that bees adore, but I didn’t want an entire clover lawn!

To add to the diversity, I tilled some strips through the mat of clover, raked it out, and planted some wildflower seeds by scattering them in.

Any invasives were pulled, such as field pennycress (Thlaspi arvense), which is an aggressive weed in disturbed areas. I left dandelions as I don’t consider them aggressive. I am vigilant for any other invasives like thistle that might make their way in, usually by blowing seed or birds. Expect to spend time pulling these so they don’t take over. If you don’t pull out invasives, especially before your meadow takes off and fills in, you will be overwhelmed later.

Over time, your designed meadow will require effort to prevent invasive plants from out-competing natives, but the incredible value of a native meadow as a habitat for insects, birds, reptiles, and mammals makes your effort totally worthwhile. Each season there are surprises and most meadows are at their full beauty in late summer.

My next project is to create a small bulb meadow that will provide early bloomers for my honeybees so they have access to pollen and nectar early on, when not many flowers are blooming.

Here is a great list from Longwood Gardens of meadow wildflowers that they recommend.

For more information on lawn alternatives, The MD Extension Service has a great article on Ways to Reduce Your Lawn.