As a landscaper, an increasingly common request from clients is to get rid of their grass and replace it with more natural alternatives, such as a pollinator-friendly meadow. Lawns laden with water and pesticides are being replaced today by different varieties of grasses, flowering plants (weeds!) and other perennials.
Reconstruction is a term that is increasingly used and simply means letting nature take care of itself, allowing natural processes to restore degraded landscapes. You are repairing a damaged ecosystem by creating a more diverse habitat by starting a prairie.
Today, grass covers more than 63,000 square miles, almost the size of Texas! And Americans are still in love with their lawn, but this is gradually changing. Lawns are primarily made up of non-native grass species and require a large amount of water, pesticides, fertilizers, labor and fuel. There are definitely areas where grass is useful, such as on playing fields, but grass is over planted and our environment is affected by this. The biodiversity of a lawn is extremely low compared to grasslands and other garden plants, and it costs billions of dollars to maintain each year, as well as contributing to water pollution. More and more botanical gardens, such as Longwood Gardens and the new Delaware Botanic Gardens, are establishing beautiful, flourishing expanses of prairie to showcase the beauty of natives in a natural setting.
The decline of our native pollinators is due to increased sod installation, roundup spraying, large agriculture, and fewer wild “weed” plantings.
But more and more I see grasses disappearing and being replaced by perennial grass alternatives like Carex or Sedges and, even more radically, with meadow plants, like goldenrods and other native wildflowers or, as I mentioned above, rebuilding.
The UK is way ahead of us, establishing grasslands wherever they can (such as waste areas and boundary strips) wherever they fit. I have seen cemeteries in England replaced with pastures instead of the cuts around headstones you normally see.
But how to get rid of grass? I suggest gradually converting your property to alternative plantings. Don’t expect it to happen overnight and consider your neighbors and homeowners associations (HOAs). Get permission, and if you don’t get it, try to educate others about the alternatives. I am a beekeeper and I wanted to make a meadow around my hives to increase foraging opportunities for the bees, so I created a meadow around my hives. Without a homeowners association to prescribe my plantings, I was free to do whatever I wanted. But others could struggle and be forced to back away.
What constitutes a meadow? An open habitat or field covered with vegetation, usually grasses and other non-woody plants that provide areas for nesting, food gathering, pollinating insects, and shelter for small animals. Many people want to replace their lawn with a meadow, but believe that by sprinkling seeds from a can they can achieve that look. Mistaken! It takes some planning and ongoing maintenance work.
It is important to first remove existing 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 cover of perennials that will crowd out weeds.
If you use black plastic, secure it to the ground with staples to keep it firmly fixed and you will have to wait at least 2 months or more for the underlying weeds to die, faster if it is hot outside. A good time to do it would be autumn and leave it like that until the following spring. In spring, you can remove the plastic and add some topsoil and you’ll be ready to plant.
Another favorite method is to use layers of damp newspaper. But first, it’s important to mow any existing grass or weeds as close to the ground as possible. Then, lay down the wet newspaper and immediately cover it with some topsoil. It is a much quicker method as you can plant directly through the newspaper, many people prefer this route.
Another way is to till the soil, but this can be labor intensive and brings up dormant weed seeds that were below the surface to the top, where they could germinate and pose future problems.
You have two options to populate your meadow: use seeds or plants, or a combination of both. There are different meadow mixes that you can use and I like to use American meadows as my choice for my prairie mix. Their site has great videos and information on how to plant a meadow. They sell individual types of seeds and mixes in bulk. I bought the northeast meadow mix and added a few more things I wanted to display, like cornflowers and lupins.
If you plant, it is a good idea to use at least 80 to 85% native plants in your mix. Mix the seed with a little sand to facilitate its even distribution. Spread the seeds by hand or with a simple hand spreader over the prepared soil and rake lightly with a steel-tine rake. Firm the soil with a tool or roller to ensure good contact between the seeds and the soil, and mist the soil with water to start the germination process. I also spread some sticky straw (fine straw that stays in place and doesn’t move) on top to keep in moisture and minimize birds feeding on it.
I completed this meadow in January and in mid to late March the seeds began to sprout. It was fun to see each type of seed emerge!
Landscaping plugs are even better for an instant meadow and are very cost effective, more so than purchasing individual plants in quarts or gallons at the nursery. I found white flower farm He sells them by mail. Additionally, you can purchase plugs at some local nurseries.
Maintenance is still required to remove undesirables that appear, which will happen less frequently as the plants grow together to form a weed-killing mat. And the meadow will need to be mowed in early spring or late winter. Leave the cut stems in the soil as mulch for seeds that will sprout later in the spring.
In the second season after planting, I discovered that the white clover was taking over and crowding out the more desirable flowers I wanted to grow. White clover is a great ground cover that bees love, but I didn’t want an entire lawn of clover!
To increase diversity, I washed some strips through the clover clump, raked it in, and planted some wildflower seeds by scattering them.
All invasive plants were removed, such as pennycress (Thlaspi arvense), which is an aggressive weed in disturbed areas. I left out the dandelions because I don’t consider them aggressive. I keep an eye out for any other invaders like thistle that may come in, usually by blowing seeds or birds. Expect to spend time removing them so they don’t take over. If you don’t remove invasive species, especially before your meadow takes off and fills in, you will be overwhelmed later.
Over time, the engineered prairie will require effort to prevent invasive plants from outgrowing native ones, but the incredible value of a native prairie as habitat for insects, birds, reptiles, and mammals makes the effort worth it. Every season there are surprises and most meadows reach their maximum beauty in late summer.
My next project is to create a small bulb meadow that provides early flowering for my bees so they have access to pollen and nectar early on, when there aren’t many flowers in bloom.
Here is a great list of Longwood Gardens of prairie wildflowers they recommend.
For more information on grass alternatives, MD Extension Service has a great article on Ways to Reduce Your Lawn.
