Although many of us long to grow a show-stopping bee meadow, we often get stuck in the beginning. The first troublesome hang-up? The lawn.
Conventional wisdom tells us to start by killing the turf grass with glyphosate. Following the die-off, we are advised to till, seed, weed, fertilize, and water for the two or three years it takes to establish a meadow. This is grueling, time-consuming work that doesn’t always pay. Worse, it’s hard on the soil.
Soil structure is key
Soil with a healthy structure will grow the best plants. Soil structure describes the way soil particles clump together to form aggregates and hollow spots. The clumps result from organic matter — roots, stems, leaves, and microbes that create gooey, slimy stuff as they rot.
The goo glues soil particles together and provides nutrition for future plants. The spaces between the aggregates form channels that allow air and water to spread throughout the ground. These minute passages carry vital supplies to plants and soil-borne organisms.
Overworked soil loses both its organic matter and its structure, becoming compact and hard. Once pulverized, the soil can no longer transport air and water, and it lacks nutrients. With no biological glue, the particles become fine enough to blow away.
Farming is a catch-22
Generations of growers have faced this perplexing problem: Tilling and disking kill weeds while ruining the soil, but preserving the soil encourages the weeds. After plowing and harvesting, we can fertilize the soil to replace the nutrients, but the soil structure is sacrificed.
Decades ago agronomists introduced the concept of no-till farming. Most often, no-till farmers remove the weeds with herbicides before planting. Then they use a seed drill to plant. This causes less disturbance to the soil, although it still requires fertilization because every time you harvest a crop or kill weeds, you are removing organic matter.
But another option is “organic no-till” where we plant amongst the existing ground cover by cutting the existing plants low. leaving the cuttings in place, and drilling seed into the ground. It’s organic because growers use no herbicide and often no fertilizer. It can be tricky and expensive, but it has its place.
The path less traveled
LR Bombus, a beekeeper and landscape designer from Illinois, wanted to plant a meadow for her bees but didn’t care for herbicides. She wrote, “It occurred to me that the turf was a great weed-suppressing groundcover already, so why not plant perennials directly into the grass and let them battle it out?
“I came across an article about an estate gardener in the UK who had done that very thing, and it was a tremendous success. That was all I needed to hear.
“Bulbs went in during the fall, perennials the following spring. Some plants are natives, some not, some provide pollen, and others are there because they’re lovely and tough and carefree.
“No pesticides, no fertilizer, no irrigation, and the meadow is a delight from spring through fall. My experience has been that the turf can work as a planting medium as long as the plants are assertive and shoot up above the grass to establish a foothold…or roothold.”
Perennials and turf grass as a team
According to LR Bombus, “We leave the meadow up all winter as habitat, for overwintering insects and other critters, as a seed repository for birds, and because it catches snow which helps insulate the crowns of the perennials. Plus, it’s lovely in all its unkempt glory.
“We cut it once a year in early spring, right as the daffodils start to poke through. What I find fascinating is that the perennials and turf grass coexist. In spring, it actually looks like a nice lawn as you can see in the photo below with the daffodils and tulips growing through the turf. By mid-summer, you don’t notice the grass at all because the perennials have shot up.
The bee meadow’s 4th year
“This is the fourth year for the meadow, and it just keeps getting better. It’s a delight seeing the many pollinators on all the different plants.
“Are there some weeds we’ve had to manage? Yes, but nothing onerous. Canada thistle would love to take over, but we just whack them off at the base before they flower and leave the stalks on the ground to decompose. QueenAnne’s lace is too aggressive, so shares a similar fate. I planted a few Valerian officinalis for the lovely fragrance, but am keeping a wary eye on its enthusiastic spread.
“We had problems last year with (presumably my bees) visiting the neighbor’s pool. I had thought that Lake Michigan would provide adequate water, but maybe it was too clean and not fragrant. So we sourced a couple of large stones and carved out bee basins. The bees love them, and I smile whenever I see them lined up for a drink.”
A memory of crocuses
LR’s photos remind me of my mom’s lawn many years ago. She planted crocuses in the front yard by digging little holes through the grass. Each winter, the crocuses popped through the snow in late February.
By the time the grass was ready for early spring mowing, the crocus foliage had died back for the year. Hidden beneath the lawn the bulbs multiplied, assuring a bigger splash of color each year before disappearing under a normal lawn.
I hope some of you give this a try and let me know how it turns out. And don’t forget to send some pictures!
A special thanks to LR Bombus for sharing her story and compelling photos. I feel inspired to try this myself.
Rusty Burlew
Honey Bee Suite
I SO much want the results, but not the work. Can they come to Connecticut and get that started for me. Hah.
#alwayshappytosuggestchoresforpeopleNotme
Before embarking on this labor of love, I would highly suggest a couple of things. 1. Understand what the zoning ordinances say about this kind of landscape. They WILL come over and mow it down and level a fine against you if you are not in compliance with the landscape ordinance. 2. Be prepared for pushback by neighbors. The “Great American Lawn” which serves absolutely no environmental purpose is also a dearly held cultural norm. Breaking this norm might get you on “the list.” Just be ready. 3. Understand your road right of way. If you plant in the ROW, the county will mow your garden down, considering it weeds even when it’s in full bloom and clearly not weeds. 4. Understand all of the easements that are on your property (noted in your deed) and plan/plant accordingly. The establishment of this kind of garden is a long-term and expensive project. Watching your pretty little 4-inch high prairie violets chopped into bits because the road commission doesn’t recognize them as native plants will not only break your heart but your wallet as well. Just know the rules. The environmental impulse will not protect your garden from hostile ignorance.
My challenge has been deer. I tried planning crocus and the deer ate them, so I have to be careful with which plants go where. I have a back acre that we mow once per year now with this intent, maybe 4-5 years so far. There are trees and lots of weeds. Trying to establish some shrubs in sunnier areas, and so far yarrow and daffodils do well as the deer avoid. It doesn’t have to be a lot of work, if you can just let the grass grow and every year do a little more – you just need the space. I see it as a long-term project, every year I do a little bit and hopefully improve. We get black-eyed Susans and asters now, and this year we couldn’t get it mowed until early June so we had wild raspberries grow and flower. It’s not a very good meadow, but it’s ours.
Erik this is helpful to the types of flowers you’ve had success with. We have deer in the field every evening. Thanks for sharing.
Seed drills. I guess I’m out of touch as I wouldn’t have the first idea about where to find one nor do I know the costs. Burning as prep could work.
I have several fields that quickly need attention because of succession. Alders have their place, as do birch and spruce. I want to keep the field open. I don’t mind the fireweed, summer sweet, and field roses quite so much. My garden would appreciate it if you keep the quack grass.
A field and brush mower (walk behind) works ok on the alder and other trees.
What I’m doing now uses equipment I have now and techniques I’ve long learned. Till (32HP Tractor with 6′ tiller), a summer’s worth of buckwheat tilled in after flowering, (walk behind rotary drop seeder), fall planting of regional native pollinator mix (first year annuals, the 2nd year I start seeing perennials) So far so good but I appreciate learning and thinking about other techniques.
Andrew,
Sorry to disappoint you, but seed drills are old technology. Maybe you called them something else: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seed_drill
What makes the organic no-till meadow expensive if you’re not spraying and not tilling? Is it the equipment for drilling the seeds underground? Is it the types of plants? Actually, what are the plants s/he used that were hardy enough to fight the grass?
I loved this article. Been wanting to do the same thing.
Rob,
The thing that makes this expensive is that you need to transplant pre-established perennial plants into the freshly-mowed lawn. Seeds will not be able to establish fast enough to compete with the lawn, so you use previously potted or transplanted ones. Seeds will only work if you first use herbicides, which LR was trying to avoid.
Great information! I’ve been wanting to do this for a very long time, same as beekeeping. This year is finally the year we are starting beekeeping. I am in a beekeeping course, have our bee nuc ordered and I am trying to read, research, and watch as many videos as I can about beekeeping. I have bought thousands of flower seeds to start indoors, harden off, then transplant outside. We grow vegetables and fruit as well every year. We have 5 acres in Maple Ridge BC Canada. Our property has lots of natural forage plants, flowers, and trees for the bees. We have wild and planted berry bushes, hazelnut trees, and over 60 big-leaf maple trees that bees love. Our property backs onto a 400-hectare protected wild regional park with a very diverse mix of trees, plants, flowers, etc.
Of our 5 acres, we have a lawn area and home site/driveway of about 1.5 acres then the rest is forest with a few trails I made through it. There are wild berry bushes and other plants like ferns etc that border all of the lawn along with the forest edge. I notice every year through spring, summer, and fall that the lawn doesn’t grow as thick or tall close to the border edge of the berry bushes, ferns, and forest edge. I am wondering if that is because there is more shade near the edges. We also have a lot of natural moss covering and mixing in with our lawn and the lawns border edge where the other plants and forest start.
So with that said, I am wondering if you all think it may be better for me to try to plant all of the flowers I start along the lawns border edge close to where the other berry bushes and where the forest starts than to try to plant them in with the larger lawn area since the lawns border edge all around the property seems to be a lot less taken over by grass. I could post some pictures if I knew how to on this blog but I’m not sure how to and I don’t see any button that says to add a picture. If I did so that would be a lot of flowers for the pollinators and it would give a beautiful look to our property bordering the forest edge and lawn edge with flowers.
My other concern is about deer. We get a lot of deer on our property. We never used to because we had dogs and about 10 years ago I put an electric fence around our property to keep bear and cougars out of the property. But our dogs have passed, and over the years wind and snowstorms have knocked down so many trees that constantly destroy the barbed wired and electric fence line that I stopped repairing it, and over the years more and more deer into our yard and they love to eat the berry leaves and fruit tree leaves. So my other question is; if I am to do this planting of thousands of flowers around the lawn border or right into the lawn like a meadow, do you think I will have to re-hook up the electric fence around the whole property to keep the deer out? The last thing I want is to plant them all and have the deer eat them all before they get a chance to bloom.
Great website and blog and everybody’s comments are so helpful. By the way Rusty, it was the instructor at the bee course I was taking that suggested we check out your website and I’m glad I did 🙂
Paul,
Wow, that sounds like a big project. Your place sounds a lot like ours. We have land backing up to the Capitol State Forest in Washington, and your descriptions describe what we see here.
The land next to the forest never bears much grass. I think it’s a combination of too much shade and competition for water and nutrients. Plant roots can stretch a long way and those trees like the big-leaf maples will soak up everything for quite a distance. We plant rhododendrons as border plants between the forest and the lawn because they will thrive in that netherworld of low sun, low water, and low nutrients. Of course, rhododendrons are no good for honey bees, but they support other pollinators including hummingbirds, butterflies, Andrena bees, bumble bees, and others.
Unfortunately, the deer will eat just about everything. Since we took down our electric fence that kept our neighbor’s cows out of the front yard, the deer have taken over. Just this morning seven were grazing in the backyard. When I go out and try to shoo them away, they just look at me like I’m weird and keep chewing. I’ve had long discussions with them, but they are uninterested in my reasoning. Also, since the electric fence came down, bear and cougar are everywhere.
There are many flowers that are deer “resistant” but if they get hungry enough they will eat most. However, most deer don’t like mint family plants and honey bees love them, so that’s one place to start. I usually go by the notes on the package, which are a pretty good guide.
If you email a photo to me directly, I will post it here. I don’t have a public file uploader for web security reasons. My email: rusty[at]honeybeesuite[dot]com
By the way, thank you for the donation. Much appreciated!
Rusty thank you for the reply and information!
Ya, I think I’m taking a lot this year but I have to keep myself very busy or I go stir-crazy. lol. So I will do a bunch of fence mending and re-hook up the electric fence as well to hopefully deter the deer and bears. I will make a separate electric fence as well around the bee hives.
I will experiment this year with planting flowers in a different area and see how things go. Very excited for this new chapter in our lives.
Paul,
Keep us posted and send photos of your new pollinator garden.
Your lawn’s border edges are probably less taken over by grass because they are taken over by something else. My forest edges have the occasional black walnut, which is known to be anathema to many other plants. Rusty’s edges apparently have big-leaf maples, and most maples throw lots of roots near the surface, which makes the immediate area a bit of a desert. You describe your edges as containing many berry plants, so if you plant too close to them, you may starve one or the other.
As far as the deer, they will graze and browse anything available. Some vegetable gardening guides suggest a small planting of something the deer will find particularly tasty, as a distraction from the stuff you’d like to harvest. Don’t know how well that works. And they will, of course, walk out into your lawn regardless of where you put your flowers. Our deer (which I love) graze all the fields around our house.
Last year I tried to meadow-ize a small, semi-barren patch by raking in the garden debris from my cosmos and zinnias, sowing with crimson clover and a handful of buckwheat, and not mowing. One zinnia, no cosmos (both re-emerged successfully in their home garden sites). The clover came out early and kept a lot of bumbles/carpenters happy, but I don’t think it reseeded. The area was next to the previous years’ prolific asters that hummed with honey bees for a month, but last year the asters were no-shows. Go figure.
This year’s plan calls for more work, by trying to starve small patches of the grass and seeding or transplanting into those patches later.
gap in E TN: Thank you for your reply. Very interesting info. We have over 60 Big Leaf Maple trees on our property and they border our lawn the whole way around. We actually make maple syrup from the trees 🙂 So that may be the reason like you are saying for the grass not growing thick near the border edges.
Good to know about the berry bushes and that they may compete with flowers. I will do some experimenting and see how things go with that.
Thanks for sharing your experience with the flower meadow. I find it all very interesting and look forward to trying new things to see what works and won’t work on our property. Trying to keep all the plants, flowers, trees, and creatures in harmony will keep me busy I’m sure. Love learning new things and seeing what is possible and what isn’t.