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  • From: "Yvonne Cunnington" <ycunnington@sympatico.ca>
  • To: "gardenwriters-on-gardening" <gwl-g@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [gwl-g] experience with a wildflower meadow
  • Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2004 13:00:18 -0400

I wanted to add a note to the recent discussion of priarie wildflowers and meadows.
 
We have a 10-acre property in southern Ontario, and in 2000, we worked with a company www.wildflowerfarm.com to plant a 4-acre prairie from seed. From our experience, meadow establishement and management at this scale is not for the faint of heart, the impatient, or the impecunious. However, we have had a great success with it so far. The meadow has looked awesome in the past couple of years. It took three years before it looked like anything.
 
(If anyone is interested to see pictures of it, there are a couple on my web site. See http://www.flower-gardening-made-easy.com/our-garden.html and http://www.flower-gardening-made-easy.com/prairie-style-gardens.html.) If you wish to see more pictures, contact me off-list at ycunnington@sympatico.ca and I can send you some recent monitor-sized jpegs, which I took this morning.
 
Prior to being planted as a meadow, the area was a hayfield for a number of years and then cropped with soybeans for one season only. The meadow seed mix was planted in the spring of 2000 using a tractor and seader. Annual rye grass was used as a nurse crop and the area was covered with straw as a mulch.
 
The species used include:
 

Latin Name                            Common Name

Forbs

Agastache foeniculum          Lavender Hyssop

Amorpha canescens             Leadplant

Asclepias tuberosa               Butterftyweed

Aster azureus                         Sky Blue Aster

Aster ptarmicoides                White Aster

Coreopsis lanceolata            Lanceleaf Coreopsis

Echinacea pallida Pale         Purple Coneflower

Echinacea purpurea              Purple Coneftower

Eryngium yuccifolium             Rattlesnake Master

Helianthus occidentalis          Western Sunflower

Liatris ligulistylus                     Meadow Blazingstar

Liatris pycnostachya              Prairie Blazingstar

Monarda fistulosa                   Bergamot

Parthenium integrifolium         Wild Quinine

Penstemon digitalis                 Smooth Penstemon

Petalostemum purpureum       Purple Prairie Clover

Ratibida pinnata                       Yellow Coneflower

Rudbeckia hirta                         Black Eyed Susan

Rudbeckia subtomentosa        Sweet Black Eyed Susan

Solidago rigida                         Stiff Goldenrod

Tradescantia ohiensis              Spiderwort

Verbena stricta                         Hoary Vervain

Zizia aurea                                Golden Alexanders

 

Grasses

Bouteloua curtipendula             Sideoats Grama

Schizachyrium scoparium          Little Bluestem

Sporobolus heterolepis             Prairie Dropseed

 

Wildflower Farm mixes a higher percentage of wildflowers to grasses because that is the look most people are after. This make-up will likely change through the years as grasses become more predominent. True prairies have a higher percentage of grasses.

 
Our main problem (only problem) so far has been Canada thistle. Last year, we actually went thought the area and cut and gathered up the thistles while they were in full bloom before they could go to seed. We got 18 buckets worth (front-end loader buckets on our tractor!). This was not fun and took several afternoons over a week, but has worked as a kind of thistle birth control. There is little evidence of seeding of a lot of new thistles this year. This spring we went through the field three times in subsequent weeks with tubular applicators with sponges on the bottom to spot-treat the thistles with herbicide just as they emerged.
 
These two measures have given us very good control this season. There are very few thistles now. I believe the spot herbicide treatment is one that will have to be repeated each spring. This takes my husband and me the better part of three mornings over a three-week period around the time that dandelions are in full bloom.
 
We have burned the priairie once -- last spring in its third season. Because we are not far from town, we could not do this ourselves (the pyro in me was sorely tempted). To stay on the right side of fire and civic authorities, so we worked with an experienced company that does prescribed burns. The insurance cost alone was $700. The meadow's growth response to the burn was phenomenal, and we will try to burn again next spring and then every 5 years or so, as recommended by the folks who conducted the burn. When we don't burn, we cut the meadow down in spring with our neighbor's flail mower behind our tractor.
 
How our little prairie will fare out in the years to come, I don't know, but it is breath-taking in mid-summer. Everyone who sees it is bowled over -- it's definitely a traffic stopper and bird and butterfly magnet. Dispite the expense and the hard work of thistle control, we are happy we did it.
 
Yvonne Cunnington, Ancaster, Ont.
www.flower-gardening-made-easy.com
 



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