In Defense of meadows: DYNAMIC SEASONAL GARDENS IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST
“A plant is only worth growing if it looks good when it’s dead.”
We evolved in the landscapes of meadows and savannahs, we are innately connected to wide open sunny spaces, areas that are hopeful and inspiring in their vastness and in their opportunity for tending and cultivating. We are moved by their seasonal changes, from the fresh brightness of new growth in spring to the dry (dead) skeletons of seed heads covered in frost in the winter.
a lookout wildflower meadow after one year
Meadows provide an incredible amount of food and shelter to birds and pollination insects, especially through the winter months when there is less to eat and cover is less easy to find in developed residential neighborhoods. You’ll find birds hopping all over seed pods on frosty winter mornings if you resist the urge to cut back all of the spent summer plants. Insects will find places to lay eggs in the thatch of winter grasses. Meadows are complex water filtration systems with an underground root system that pulls toxins out of the shallow moving water that runs through them in the rainy months.
Meadows make us more patient, more in tune with the seasons, more understanding of natural cycles of growth of native flowering plants. They encourage a bit of wiley-ness and letting go as they are not landscapes that can - or should - be fully controlled. And they can be just so breathtakingly beautiful all year long.
A study of seasonal change for one of our constructed meadows
As a designed feature, a meadow looks quite different from most of the urban landscapes we’re used to seeing and, even in small patches, can add an incredible jolt of seasonal color and texture. The wildness can be contained a bit with a border of more ordered evergreen shrubs or modernized with a naturally patinated metal edging or gravel pathway. A clean edge can be mowed to define its edge more clearly. It can be a focal point of a residential landscape that will set your property apart and inspire local land stewardship within the city.
They’re messy and wild. They’ll need a thorough chop and clean out in late winter and some weeding each season. If you plant one it will take a few years for it to really get going and your neighbors will most likely ask lots of questions. A meadow is a project, a commitment to the land, an invitation to teach and share ideas with those around you, a labor of love and a fun, relatively inexpensive experiment in tending your land as you never have before. So what are you waiting for?
RESOURCES
There are lots of resources for general information on meadows and great local businesses that have designed meadow mixes for when you’re ready to get planting!
We love Protime Lawn Seed located right here in Southeast Portland. Some of our favorite meadow mixes they have are a beautiful Native Pacific Northwest Wildflower Mix, this easy to grow Flowering Meadow Mix and the Native Urban Meadow Mix which will require a little more care to get established. You can mix these flower-heavy mixes with a No Mow Grass Seed Mix to incorporate more low growing fescue varieties.
Northwest Meadowscapes is also a fabulous resource for more seed mixes and many native grasses plus great instructions for beginning your meadow journey.
And if you’d just like to know more about native meadow lands and meadow species found in the Pacific Northwest, we’ve got you covered. Southern Oregon Land Conservancy, Coalition of Oregon Land Trusts, and Vesper Meadow are doing incredible conservation work. The Understory Initiative and National Resource Conservation Service and Sparrowhawk Native Plants offer some great native meadow plant resources.
