How to Grow a Meadow

Are you dreaming of a wildflower meadow? Do you want a non-stop display of flowers blooming from spring through fall? Would you like to attract butterflies, pollinators and songbirds to your property?
 


If you are a homeowner, landscape architect, or someone simply interested in landscaping in an ecological, cost effective and aesthetically pleasing manner, incorporating native wildflowers into your outdoor designs will bring you many benefits.

Natural landscaping with wildflowers and native grasses improves the environment and increases our connection to nature by attracting diverse varieties of songbirds, pollinators and butterflies to our properties. 


And the best part?

Growing a wildflower meadow is simple!


While creating a long-living, sustainable wildflower meadow does require time and patience, it's not really that hard to do. But, like anything in life, there is a right way and wrong way to do things. In our 30 plus years of experience "in the field" of creating wildflower meadows, we have learned that the best way to be successful is to observe and replicate nature's methods as we cannot "force" plants to grow where nature has not intended them to grow.


Your future meadow could be a small, open, sunny patch in a corner of your yard, or it could be several acres. In either situation,  
creating a wildflower meadow requires good planning, proper site preparation, the right seeds for the type of soil that the plants will be growing in, and some periodic, well-timed  maintenance. As your meadow becomes established, it will begin to mature and bloom in the second and third years of growth, and you will have created a natural ecosystem right on your property that is sustainable, requiring no watering or fertilizers and only minimal maintenance.



Not only is this good for the environment, it saves you time and money!



No matter what size you want your meadow to be, an understanding of how to grow wildflowers and native grasses is essential for success.
In the following links, we have posted the knowledge we have accumulated, based on our actual experience to provide you with a "step by step" process that is easy to follow.


We encourage you to read through this carefully as you plan for your own wildflower meadow.


Here is a video made by Brett Blaauw, PhD who is a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at Rutgers University.
This video briefly shows the steps to create a wildflower meadow.