I'm also starting a meadow. I have a natural field with grass paths through it that I mow. There are already some wild flowers growing there, but I wanted to have more. My SIL wanted to plant a cover crop for deer so although I may have done things a little differently, this is what we (he LOL) did: Weed-whacked the grasses, etc. down to the ground Raked the entire area numerous times Roto-tilled it numerous times Scattered seed Let mother nature take her course I'll let you all know how it turns out. My SIL already has a meadow. I don't know how she prepped the site, but I know she added seeds to it every year until it was established. She does not weed it. She depends on the flowers blooming at different times to camouflage and compete with the weeds. Then I came across this method posted here. My area was much too large for this method, but I think it's about the easiest, fastest way I've heard of. INSTANT BEDS Posted by donn_ 7a, GSB, LI, NY (My Page) on Tue, Mar 28, 06 at 19:01 Need quick bedspace for your new babies? Here's a surefire way to build them quickly, using nothing but lawn and cardboard. Groundlevel beds: Cut the lawn/sod about 6-8" deep, in sections you can handle easily. In the space you dug the sod from, lay out sheets of cardboard. Soak the cardboard. Flip the sod chunks upside down, so the grass side is on the cardboard. You now have a new bed, which can be planted into immediately, with a little compost added to the back fill. Elevated beds: Find a part of the yard that could use a new woodchip path (alongside a bed is a good spot, because it doesn't have to be mowed or edged, because there won't be any grass to grow into your bed). Dig out the same sod chunks outlined above. Lay out the cardboard where you want the new bed, and soak it down. Flip the sod chunks same as above. It's ready to plant. Put down some landscape fabric where you dug out the sod, and cover it with 6-8" of woodchips. You now have a weedfree path that will make compost at it's bottom, which you can harvest every year. Just rake back the top, shovel the bottom into adjacent beds, rake the top back into the bottom, and put a new layer on top. The primary benefits of instant beds are that you don't need layers of greens and browns like with lasagna beds, and they don't shrink down like lasagna beds. Nancy in Wisconsin

You have to keep reminding yourself that this won't be a quick project. Since you're starting from scratch on a difficult area, I'd guess this will take several years of trial and error to get a look you're happy with. The stepping areas and feeders/birdbath are great ideas. There isn't much point in adding a lot of mulch to an area that you're not ready to plant yet - certainly add an inch or two, if you think it'll stay there. It will break down and the soil will be better when you get to planting the area, but until you get some rooted plants into that area the new soil and the mulch will erode a bit. I wouldn't pull up the weeds - their roots will help stabilize the area until you're ready to tackle it. You can dump some mulch on them and it'll help kill off the bits growing above ground without removing the roots. If you spray with Round Up (might not be allowed anymore in Halifax area?) that will kill off the weeds without removing the roots, but... Round Up takes a few days to a few weeks to break down, and you've got a slope where the rain will run down and wash that stuff onto your lawn or other plants. Might not be a wise idea :-) I would just dump mulch onto them a couple of times a year and gently pull out what is really loose. It takes longer, but you are solving the poor soil problem that way too. In general I am not a fan of herbicides and pesticides since almost all problems they are used for can be sloved with better cultural practices or gardening techniques. I don't know if this would work for you, but if you want to add a lot of mulch right now, and have it stay put, you could place chicken wire or hardware cloth over the mulch (pin the chicken wire to the ground with stakes). A heavy rain might erode some of it, especially in the steeper parts, but it would help a bit at least. About your seeds you plan to use next spring - a word of caution. Seeds are a great way to fill up the slope quickly and without breaking the bank, but stay away from the generic 'wildflower' mixes you can get in Canadian Tire and places like that. They contain a lot of weedy seeds and very few seeds of plants you actually want to have growing there. Buy a good quality wildflower mix - it won't be that much more expensive and it'll be a major improvement over the cheaper stuff. Seeds can wash away fairly easily, so you might want to consider laying down some thin jute or burlap to sow them in or under (that protective burlap you get to wrap shrubs in the winter would work). Sow then as soon as the snow melts. Or you could wintersow them (or some of them) in containers and plant the resulting seedlings in your nooks and crannies. The Japanese Maple being shallow rooted might be a problem if you were planting it directly on the slope. Shallow rooted plants will have a harder time staying put on a slope, but if you build it a nice sized terrace, then it might be perfect. Select one that is hardier than would normally be necessary for your area because of the cold flowing downhill problem. You have a swampy lawn huh? That's a drainage problem. You have neighbours higher up the hill than you do? That's almost certainly where your water is coming from. Peat moss might mop up a bit of water, but I doubt it'd solve your problem. A permanent fix would be to regrade your lawn, but that's not cheap (or have your neighbour regrade his, but that's a lot to ask from a neighbour). You could also install a French drain type of thing to drain the water to a lower lying area or drain - that's cheaper, and a do-it-yourself project if you want, but still a lot of work. You could decide to grow a bog garden in that spot - irises, cannas, lots of neat grasses... I think your slope provides you with some really neat garden terrain - my 'fantasy garden' always has a nice terraced slope full of plants, but it is going to be more challenging than building 'ye olde generic bed'. BP

Good point about seed timing, when I have planted prairie seeds in the spring I usually had them at least in the freezer first or tried to stratify them myself first. I have planted seeds both spring and fall at my former house and some 'empty' land I still own. Where I am now I have a few times smothered patches of dirt with plywood or cardboard and then sown it in the fall with seeds I have saved from other areas of my property, and 2 that I bought (blue flax and purple coneflower.) We do have a LOT of native prairie and woodland plants here, and I assure you they mostly brought themselves here. The land was owned by my family for almost 50 years. I have seen photos from long ago and it was clearly a big cultivated field before my family moved in. If you leave land alone long enough, the native species come out as well as weeds. A combination of seed bank, wind, birds, and animals. I keep finding trilliums popping up here and there, and we have a few nice patches of False Solomon's seal. Those aren't prairie plants, but they are definitely native plants that came to call. We have lovely wild violets everywhere we mow. Besides some lovely types of goldenrod and both white and purple asters, we also have purple prairie clover, violet monarda, cinquefoil, milkweed, yarrow, wild strawberries, coreopsis, white and purplish fleabane, and several things I can't think of the name of right off. Introduced by me were the black-eyed susans and purple coneflower (it's great to give your mother plants and then buy her house later and have them there) and a tenant introduced wild geraniums. We also have some interesting grasses which I cannot name for you, side-oats grama (?) and foxtail are 2 I actually know the name of. I assure you most of the wild plants put themselves here. My family was always into organic gardening, which helped. Wild trees even grow, like wild plum, painful but great smelling this time of year, and blackhaw, which I have found is very rare in WI and only found in 2 counties. We also have many red currant, gooseberry, and high bush cranberry bushes all over, mainly planted by birds. So humans interfered once in a while, my father planted fruit trees all over, and we plant vegies and flowers here and there. Some areas were mowed at some times, mostly just paths, so nature has had a lot of time to do her work. We would mow more now if our mower worked. :-) A non-native specie that I now consider a prairie plant is mullein, which I love, as birds perch on it and eat the seeds. Anyway, what my point was supposed to be is that if given enough time and some native species, you will attract wildlife, and get more native species via them. So it is a matter of gardening by subtraction with occasional strategic additions. Dug, if you like, I can send you some black-eyed susan seeds, these are the tall wild kind, smaller flowers than the modern varieties, but more flowers per plant. In the prairie they are about 2 to 3 feet tall, in a watered garden they get up to 5 feet. They are originally from North Dakota prairie via hubby's great-grandmother, and passed around the family since. They spread themselves very nicely. Marcia

I don't think spot treating is going to give one an attractive wildflower meadow. Its going to look clumpy - IMPO. And most bulbs are not native, not sure if that is important to your planting or not. Round up is not as safe as claimed above. IT can hurt animals, particularly fish and amphibians, when not used correctly. I do think roundup is safer than most other herbicide alternatives, but it needs to be used wisely and in accordance with directions. If you are starting with lawn, I would either smother it with newspapers and mulch and plant the area in plugs. Or I would kill the area with round up, wait a few weeks, mow the dead turf off and then overseed the area with a quality wildflower mixture, right into the dead turf. You can get quality seed mixtures from places like Prairie Nursery, Prairie Moon Nursery and Ion Exchange. Those are US sources, you may be able to find a Canadian equivalent. The Prairie Nursery website contains some good instructions on how to prepare a site. I would suggest you read that also.