Growing a Greener World Episode 1011: Creating a Meadow Garden, Anywhere Around Your Yard

growing a greener world is made possible in part by the 2019 Subaru Crosstrek built in a zero landfill planet so you can roam the earth with a lighter footprint Subaru proud sponsor of growing a greener world I'm Joel amble when I created growing a greener world I had one goal to tell stories of everyday people innovators entrepreneurs forward-thinking leaders who are all in ways both big and small dedicated to organic gardening and farming lightening our footprint conserving vital resources protecting natural habitats making a tangible difference for us all they're real they're passionate they're all around us they're the game changers who are literally growing a greener world and inspiring the rest of us to do the same [Music] growing a greener world it's more than a movement it's our mission you you hear that if you closed your eyes and just thought about nature allow yourself to be surrounded by nature you might imagine a place similar to this meadow a vast unmanned acure space full of tall grasses and all kinds of wildflower popping up with incredible color and a lush home to all kinds of wildlife when you think about it it's the ultimate low-maintenance earth friendly landscape and it's what Mother Nature creates when left to her own devices well for those of you looking to get back to nature and incorporate a little bit more of that into your own lives and Gardens a meadow might be the perfect solution for a number of reasons and you might be surprised just how easy it is to incorporate many of its benefits into any yard of any size American Meadows has been driving the wildflower train since before it was trendy or cool and way before environmentally friendly was a genuine selling point the company was born in Vermont in 1981 and quickly became the source for gardeners looking to grow wildflowers now over 15,000 gardeners visit their online store every single day with interest in creating meadow habitats booming at an all-time high my closet is the managing partner of the company an author of the book mini meadows and if you're around him for very long at all you'll find his love of wildflowers to be pretty contagious [Music] well Mike we are definitely in the middle of a meadow this is one of your clients right that is correct yeah well I love all the flowers which is perfect for them because they're a very busy couple one of the things that keeps them so busy is they have a roadside flower stand to cater to all the cars going by right here on the road that's correct so tell me about this property itself because when they first bought this they had a bit of an issue with the drainage and all the different things but the meadow has helped remediate a lot of those challenges that's exactly correct so when they moved in behind us here there's a mountain literally and this was a floodplain so one of the first years in here that spring the entire area flooded and they're like hey this is this is we're going to be very challenging and at the same time it was turf grass so we said we need to come up with some solutions so that's when the idea of creating meadows kind of came about so some of the first year color you're seeing here we've got the plains coreopsis which is the yellow red we've got some of the cosmos Pippin oddish which is the taller and you'll see some pinks and some dark reds and some whites we also have some of the bachelor button we've got some Clarkie a mixed in here along with some sin of gloss 'm so this again is first year annual color and you know what I also like about this it's a carpet of green in this case there's a lot of crabgrass down in here which in a lawn setting people look at that and go oh I don't want that in my fescue or my Bermuda but in a meadow setting it is totally fine and it's just part of the total biodiversity of what makes this work so well right and not only is it fine you don't have to deal with it it's kind of hidden below everything so you don't even notice it there's been kind of a resurgence of Meadows in the awareness and I do think it's it's been due to the environment and environmental impact people wanted to do more to benefit and enhance their property where I feel like you know a number of years ago we was all about you have your house and you've got your lawn and it's perfect and you're gonna fertilize and you're gonna mow it once a week and and that's what you're going to do and now with awareness of some of the drawbacks to that and crime trying to create a solution on hey what can I do on my property to improve the environment but also the benefits that come along with a meadow the beautification the benefits to pollinators that kind of stuff so I feel like there's been a positive resurgence I think people are more in tune to that than ever before and so we have seen resurgence of people asking calling what is it tell me about meadows tell me about meadow gardening and it's been great so I started in the seed industry when I was 13 years old at the time the founders of our company Raymond and Charlotte Allen they had a large seed shipment that was doing and they didn't have a loading dock at the facility so my friend had been working for them as well and called me up and said hey we need a we need not get your hand here unloading the truck a weekend job packing seeds turned you into a high school job in the retail store then managing the store as a college student and when the founders retired from the business in 2009 Mike and a business partner took over as owners we specialized now sell over 250 different individual species of flowers and then we sell over 50 different types of wildflower blends different regional blends different themes to Impala Nader's etc I could put a hundred varieties of seed on a table and I could identify every single variety but had no idea what it looked like in flower form so I kind of learned the reverse and so when my shift was over I'd go out to our trial gardens and I would just go around oh that's what a poppy looks like and oh that's where the Lupin looks like in bloom I knew what the seed looked like had no idea what the flower look like so almost the reverse of how people learn well they'll go out into a meadow and they'll have their ID book and they're looking at the different varieties I learned it from seed first and then the flower secondly so when someone thinks of a meadow I think their first reaction is I need a lot of land I big vast areas and the reality is how I would interpret a meadow is totally up to you it can be two acres it could be twenty square feet and I think that's the beauty we're sure you've got the Webster's definition of what I'm anyways but I kind of throw that out the book and the perception of a meadow and how you define it is totally up to the customer it could be seed it could be plants it could be plugs in my opinion I'm not biased of course I'm I am biased towards seed but no depending on the situation and in the circumstance hay you may introduce plugs or plants but again I think it's the beautification process hey taking an area that you may not otherwise have done anything or it's just grass or something boring and turning it into something that can be beneficial and impacts the environment in a positive way so I think it would be safe to assume the guy who wrote the book on installing a mini meadow in your yard would have a mini meadow in his yard and that's certainly the case with my closet this is his mini meadow garden and we're gonna learn more about that but while we're here we're also going to make this garden bigger because Mike wants to increase the size so I'm here to help every step of the way to make that happen okay so what Mike's gonna do right now is he's gonna draw out these bed lines he's using some contractor paint which is basically designed for landscapers to draw out that line on the bed but you have other options now this is readily available this paint but you could use a garden hose or you could use play sand and do the same thing all you're trying to do is get a rough idea of that line that you're trying to follow with the tiller and then you just make it happen but you don't need fancy paint for that so so what you're looking at is it's coming in here and it's going back out right yep so you're you're just following that line okay and it's coming out and now it's making the turn and you're going like this and what you're gonna do is you're gonna look to come back and meet up over here huh and you've got the kidney there you go while creating a meadow of your own isn't difficult it is more than just deciding to stop mowing your lawn and hoping that some wildflowers pop up but the good news is whatever part of your property you're thinking about for a meadow it will probably work as long as you meet some basic requirements number one sunlight you don't need 12 hours of Sun from 8 o'clock in the morning to 8 o'clock at night as long as you're getting about 4 or 5 hours of Sun and what's important is it can be morning sun or afternoon sun doesn't matter you're probably you have a good spot for meadow number 2 soil look around what's growing in the area if you've got your common grass and weeds grown there your soil conditions are probably perfectly fine for establishing wildflowers you don't need to go out and bring in the great topsoil or whatever if you've already got growth there now if you are seeing some bare spots there if you look around maybe you've tried to plant stuff in the past and haven't had good results yeah that might be where you may get a soil test which can be important because it'll tell you exactly number one what's wrong but also how to remedy it so that's important when it most cases if you've got existing growth there your soil is perfectly fine and then number three expect to do a little work here wildflower this isn't magic where you're just gonna throw seed out and boom you're gonna have this beautiful garden there is some work to do but again when you get into it and you're gonna find the work is not as hard as you think but there is some required so setting that expectation up front then hey I've got to do some work but ultimately the benefits you're going to reap both in the short term and in the long term are going to really be impactful once you start looking for them you'll probably find there are a lot more meadows all around you than you ever realized along the highway a patch of wildflowers in a park or maybe even in your own subdivision well Susan you live in a beautiful neighborhood but you're also dealing with that issue that a lot of people refer to is the health strip that space between the sidewalk and the street that nobody quite knows what to deal with but you've got a great solution for that and you've planted all these beautiful flowers and rumor on the street is this was your husband's idea it was he was volunteering to help mow this area along with the neighbors on each side and it just was a lot of work to mow in between the trees yep and you don't want a fertilize and everything out here it's just a you know a common area so right um we thought it would be best to try to plant some wildflowers so you got a parade of Collard through the area so we had color by the 4th of June this year when the daisies came up mm-hmm and then the the sweet Williams joined the daisies and the bird's foot trefoil and it was a totally different look exactly and then you have an area of just ahead of us here that looks like you've just seen today saz well so now are you expanding this strip to more the ending it because the lady who mows that lives right here was still mowing this one strip between the trees and she had to deal with the branches of the trees yeah and so she said sue can we just plant another strip and so but I did took out the sod and we put this in the week before last and it's already coming up and it's coming up so you can have more beautiful flowers along the way yes who knows where this will end when it's all said and done [Music] some of the challenges you may find when planting with an HOA association for instance may be getting the approval of the board to not only plant but then setting the expectation on what is the planting going to look like and getting approval and everybody on board setting that expectation upfront it's not the the formal structure that people may be familiar with where you know you're going to be planting this flower here in this law of the air it's because again that kind of creates work and we're not looking to create work where the the meadow the look is this mix and we're gonna formulate mixes based on heights and colors and flower types but it's it's it's more informal because again we're not looking to create that work we want a more simple solution to this where we want to beautify it but again not to that formal nth degree of the real structured plantings that you may see with the with the marigolds in the mums and that kind of stuff you know the meadow can still provide the beautification all the benefits but more of an informal look and that's you know usually the way we're going to you know pitch the concept back in Mike's yard we're cutting out the existing sod for a large meadow consider renting a sod cutter or a walk-behind tiller but for a manageable area hand tools and elbow grease work just fine we're 90% done here getting all the sod removed and that's the name of the game at this stage and so now it's just a matter of getting in there with your hands and your fingers and getting out the remaining clumps and there is nothing wrong with a little soil between those fingernails with the grass gone it's time to prep the bed for seed one of my favorite tools is the grading rate you've probably seen professional landscapers use it and for good reason the wide head levels dirt quickly and smoothly and the aluminum construction makes it lightweight to handle and to really define the bed edges I like a long-handled steel edger it slices down through the sod makes a clean cut and leaves your planting bed with a nice sharp outline now one more tool I have to tell you about before we finish this part of the grading job and it's this one now most of you have this it's called a bow rake and it is a great tool for getting out the roots and the rocks and the clumps of the grass that are still in this part of the bed and so I'm using it for that but when you do that look what happens you're bringing up this big mound of soil and now you've just kind of undone all the final grading right so the thing that most people don't know about this tool one of my favorite applications for it is when you flip it over and you use it as a grading tool also because you can just pull back with a light touch and you're just getting out the rough stuff and the rest is still there so it's really kind of a finishing tool to get that grade just like you like it plus it's small and it's easy to work with okay Mike you think we're there we are definitely there this is looking like a very well prepped bed ready to receive some seed okay so we're going to be sowing our northeast pollinator blanket which is a nice blend it's a blend of annuals and perennials so what that means Joe when we sow it within say 50 days or so we're going to start seeing that first color with those annuals in the first growing season and then you're gonna see the perennials in the second and successive growing seasons most of our mixes will have between 20 to 25 different flowers which is really important for a number of reasons number one so you have color all year long number two understanding the life cycles a good blend of annuals and perennials not only give you color in the first season but perennials for the second and successive seasons a lot of the stuff you see over-the-counter in those stores it's a lot of one shot real quick color maybe eight or nine different varieties so again quite a big difference between the two but for me it's all about educating the consumer on those differences and then ultimately you can decide where you want to go but there is quite a big difference between what we sell and where you might what you might find in some of those other retailers I needed to see for myself where all the meadow magic starts with a visit to American Meadows headquarters now this is a really cool space my kind of place will walk me around and show me what happens here my pleasure Joe so you are now surrounded by tons of different see literally exactly grass seed bulk wildflower seed we currently offer over 300 individual species along with over 50 different blends all proprietary formulated by myself and our team here that we ship all over the country tens of thousands of orders every year and in the springtime this place is hopping so you'll take these bulk orders of seeds and then put them down into individual packets our guest a lot of the times you're selling them by weight hat pound quarter pound that's exactly correct Jody and unique acts aspect of our business where everything we're selling here is offered in bulk from as little as a quarter pound upwards of five 10 25 50 plus bags of seed which is really unique and an order may have as simple as one or two items on it too we have orders with 20-plus different items you know when you offer over 300 individual species you got a lot to choose from and it's not unusual that Nick might might have an order of 20 different individual species someone might be creating their own custom blend or have a vast garden that they really want to put a lot of color into never a dull moment right keeping you on your toes Nick all right very cool we'll keep up the good work in this day and age of sophisticated technology in high speeds sometimes it's hard to improve on good old-fashioned design and that's certainly the case here at American Meadows where they used these machines established and developed in the late 1800s to early 1900s to fulfill up to 50 million seed packets per year and I'm so fascinated by how these works I just had to show you and once the seed packets are safely sealed lots of good season they are here it passes the shake test it goes onto the box onto the shelf out the door until that gardener puts them into the ground and now that's exactly what we're ready to do back at Mike's place so Mike this looks like a lot of seed varieties here about how many varieties are in a pack of seeds like this there's about 20 different varieties in that northeast pollinator mix right there and again it's a combination of annuals and perennials gotcha but now what do we do we had to sand in there that's exactly correct so we're gonna add some sand and this is going to help us get a nice even distribution so Joe another advantage of using the place end of the builder sands is you notice here it's kind of a light color so once you've mixed your seed and sand together when you begin broadcasting on to a dark soil here you can visually see exactly where that seed the sand is gulliver so again really helps you confirm that hey you've broadcasted this nice and evenly over the entire area very smart so Joe I've got Sadie here my expert seed slinger and what she's going to do is she's going to be broadcasting our seed for us and what you're gonna notice is Sadie's going to end up going in three different directions and that's important Joe because ideally again we want to get that nice even distribution well Sadie that was an excellent job you were clearly a pro at this seed distribution you are welcome so now that the seed is down the next step obviously is seed to soil contact yeah it's correct yo and you've got a few options I know that you could just walk on this you're not gonna hurt the seed right that's correct so in a really small application that's easy to do but if you want a little more efficiency then this sheet of cardboard is Sadie that what you're going to use put that down on the bed and that just provides you more coverage can you step on that exactly a little more surface area when you're doing it to speed up the process and that's it no raking it in like grass seed and no mulch on top either of those things will smother the seed and prevent germination so all that's left is a light hit of water so Joe we're fortunate in this situation where we have moisture nearby so we're using that to kind of get the seed water what a great tip I'll give people if you're dealing with an area where there isn't mooster available is planning your plant and around some moisture in the forecast so let's say I'm looking at the weekend forecast and there's some rain coming in on Saturday and Sunday well ideally I might plan my planting on that Friday afternoon and take advantage of that moisture coming in from Mother Nature yeah and another reason why that's important a lot of people that are installing Meadows are doing it in a place where they don't have access to that irrigation all the more reason that timing is critical then it's up to mother nature and once she does her thing with the seeds the results will be spectacular with a meadow full of color in life the only downside of a meadow for many who try it out not wanting to stop so we moved in about seven years ago and we have about eight acres of land and we put this in three years ago so yeah we put this in so we didn't have to mow as much what about the other benefits though besides the mowing certainly you have other things that you love about having these meadows here oh yeah I mean the pollinators that come in the butterflies the bees you know we even see some hummingbirds they're just all over the place as I'm looking out over this I see I don't know a million black-eyed Susan or something like that that's crazy and I love it in the middle of the summer but what does it look like before this all comes into bloom and then after this fades away what are we looking at here so this will last through fall so the black-eyed Susans bloom for a really really long time in the spring we had a field of purple perennial Lupin oh it was beautiful and as soon as the Lupin faded it turned into this this is just a sea of flowers right here and you've got bikers and people that come by all the time do people ever stop and like people have come into our driveway and they stop and they look at it and if we're outside they'll tell us how beautiful they are and they appreciate what we've done and they love just driving every day up and down our road to see the stuff now are you gonna continue to add more of this this is a lot already but are you gonna keep doing more of this I would love to whether you're attracted to the idea of a meadow garden because if it's let it be low-maintenance its unparalleled explosion of color or the world of good each one offers to a whole host of birds bees insects and other pollinators there's probably a way to bring at least a bit of meadow magic to a corner of your own garden again that's the beauty of it it doesn't matter if you have the half acre acre or the planter box the benefits are endless regardless of the size of the meadow when the concept of meadows comes up I think the first reaction from people is sprawling acreage and and that's okay but for me its Meadows can be defined any way you want to or any way the customer I'm just speaking to wants to whether it's 2/3 acre parcel or whether it's a rooftop garden to me the interpretation of meadows is anywhere that you could take a C or a seedling or a plan to put it in plant and create beauty and provide a habitat for pollinators something beneficial some beautification that is my interpretation of a meadow [Music] well I hope that today we inspired you to take a closer look at Meadows and stop and appreciate all they have to offer from their beauty to the important role they play in healthy ecosystems and perhaps you'll install a meadow in your own landscape or whatever property you have to work with and if you'd like to watch this show again or learn more about Meadows we have that information for you on our website under the show notes for this episode and the website address that's the same as our show name it's growing a greener world calm I'm Joel ampel thanks for watching us everybody and we'll see you back here next time for more growing a greener world [Music] [Music] now you can continue your garden learning online and courses for me Joel ample in my online gardening Academy classes are designed to teach gardeners of all levels from the fundamentals to master skills explore the courses available right now plus new topics covering everything you need to know to grow like a pro take each class on your own schedule from anywhere plus you'll have opportunities to ask me questions about your specific garden in real time go to Joe Gardner dot-com / learn for details today [Music]

Channel: Growing a Greener World

Views: 89,826

Rating: 4.9382153 out of 5

Keywords: meadow, meadows, meadow garden, wildflower, wildflowers, native plant, native plants, lawn, garden, gardening, gardens, flower garden, flower, flowers, bloom, blooming, bloomers, blooming plants, annual plants, perennial plants, annuals, perennials

Id: aZ7pKXxZeug

Length: 25min 36sec (1536 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 16 2019