I've never actually tried to manage a meadow, but I've known people who have, and have small pieces of my property that have been allowed to go wild. Some of this may not be appropriate for your climate, but I think most of it is.

The first thing to realize is that meadows are NOT a natural climax ecosystem in most of the eastern half of North America. It wants to look a lot more like this.

One of the points of regularly mowing a lawn is that it automatically kills off anything that can't handle being less than 4 inches tall. When you stop mowing, you give the serious weeds - brambles, sumacs, maples, hickories, etc. - a chance to get established. And annual mowing doesn't really cut it. You are dealing with either young plants that will bend down under the mower deck, or handle that level of regular pruning. Once the root mass gets established, a tree can grow enough in one season to be too large for a normal residential lawnmower to handle. This isn't an issue if you have a bush-hog, but can be a problem if you don't have that kind of heavy equipment and have to hire it out.

Basically, you have to have a plan for how you are going to handle the woody plants that are going to seed in.

While we have never had a meadow, I grew up with them (hayfields) when we lived at my maternal grandparents’ farm-going-back-to-bush (Grandpa was 80 when I was born…) While the pastures that had been grazed by his Jersey dairy herd were left to be overtaken by trees and shrubs, he let a local farmer have the hay in order to have the hayfields mowed and cleared each summer. They were usually mowed in mid-late July and that was sufficient to keep timothy grass as the primary plant. I remember wild strawberries growing well where the grass was thin, and there were Canterbury Bells growing in the grass. They must have been escapees from the garden that his mother had started :-) I remember being surprised to find they were biennials when I tried to grow them in my first garden! Nobody ever did anything to them in the hayfield - they just came back every year on their own! Grandpa’s property was in southern NB on the eastern end of Canada so I’m not sure how comparable the growing conditions would be relative to yours but I’d think it should be an easily managed situation for you.

I think I have the kind of meadow you're talking about. I mow around August and then maybe once again after the asters are finished to just clean it up for next year (before the snow mats it all down). I suspect mine is tiny compared to yours. I use a push mower and just plow through on a high setting without much trouble, but if it gets too thick I'll tilt the mower up on its back wheels to give it a pre-cut. Obviously you'd want to be careful trying this and with a riding mower probably don't even have to worry about having trouble getting through.

An August mowing is kind of early for rudbeckias so I mow around the thickest patches, and I also mow around a few butterfly weeds until the seed ripens (Asclepsias), but most everything else gets a chop.

I pull Queen Anne's lace in bloom so it doesn't take over, and spray weed b gone on mugwort and crownvetch which are probably my worst weeds. Every now and then I get a few clumps of Timothy grass which I also pull since my meadow is mostly smaller cool season grasses and the Timothy grass is more of a hayfield look. Just last week I scalped a big section to try and keep stilt grass from going to seed. Wish me luck on that one.

Right now it's mostly grasses of various sorts and "weeds" like chickory, feverfew, lots of stuff I haven't yet learned to identify. I haven't seen any woodies popping up yet -- will have to keep an eye on that. I planted culls from my perennial bed and a few things I picked up specifically to plant back there -- milkweed, ageratum (blue mist), rudbeckia, etc. But the grass has a really strong foothold -- it was a grazing pasture, after all.

So does DH need to mow it all down in the late fall, or should he just leave it to fall naturally? This isn't really a "wild" area -- we can see it directly out the back windows, and so can our neighbors.

ETA: It is satisfying to see insects I've never seen before take up residence now that I've planted a lot more natives and letting this area turn into a meadow. Saw this beauty yesterday: Bug Eric: Wasp Wednesday: Four-toothed Mason Wasp

I've been digging up pokeweed when I see it and whatever I think might be pokeweed. There's some other hip-height stuff I've got to dig out, too -- not sure what it is, though, but it looks really "weedy" and seems to want to take over. The soil is soft and super-easy to dig, probably from all those years (decades?) of being passively manured, so shouldn't be too much work; it's finding the time to do it that is the problem.

I had to laugh -- you know how we try so hard to grow beautiful annuals? Water, fertilize, and tend them? Way back on old manure pile amidst all sorts of assorted grasses and plants there is a clump of the most beautiful purple-magenta zinnia out there all by itself, no-one to care for it, no zinnia friends in sight, and it has been blooming it's fool head off all summer long. I WISH the zinnia up by the house looked that good LOL! Must have been a random bird drop.

I wouldn't worry too much about mowing, and lean towards over-mowing rather than letting it go too long. -and that's mostly to keep your neighbors and husband happy while you get a feel for how it grows. Just enjoy seeing all the new life move in, and know that anything you do is more diverse than just a cut yawn... I mean 'lawn'.

I can't back this up with any legit research, but personally I feel better mowing in parts and not doing the whole thing at once just because the cut areas always look so desolate and I want a few longer sections for things to escape to when the mower comes through.

Also I think you'll be surprised when you see how easily some perennials handle regular mowing. Sometimes for woody control (mostly sumacs, aspens, pears) I'll keep parts mowed as lawn from August to frost. Everything pops right back next summer and I think it might actually help some perennial seedlings get more light.

I do, but it is an ongoing, ever changing and frequently frustrating project. I started it 5 years ago and have finally achieved some sort of balance where I keep the grasses short over winter so that it is basically a spring alpine meadow with little wildflowers and bulbs. I wanted a much lusher, longer look but had to settle for what is basically more like a grassy mead.

I did not have DH mow in the spring -- oh dear... The "grass" or whatever it is, is about 5 foot tall and once it turned brown in early summer has remained that way -- which leads me to believe it's not grass but some sort of grain or hay. Can't see any wildflowers except a few really tall oddball ones. I have no clue whether what I lanted back there actually lived (milkweed, ageratum, cup plant, etc), I can't find any of it even when I tried walking through the sea of head-high dead...whatever. So now I have to figure out how to get all that dealt with, that is definitely not the look I wanted. I'll post a separate thread when I have pics.

I have a brush hog on a tractor and mow annually, though it hasn‘t gotten done this summer because I am packing up for a move. i do it in fall, though some folks prefer early spring. I find spring is too wet and the snow has often matted everything down. I also have a scythe for the areas too steep to feel comfortabel on the tractor.

As mad gallica said, the woody plants will move in if it isn’t cut down periodically, and we bought this property we had to remove poison ivy, sumac, and young early succession trees like white pines and black cherries.

I hired a local guy with a tractor to brush hog it, so problem solved but my wallet is now a few hundred lighter....lesson learned --> DH is going to have to mow once or twice in the late spring to take down whatever that crop is, then let it fill in a la meadow after cutting.

Um, meadows are pretty heterogenous...there are numerous variations of growing stuff in grass. I decided to have an early haymeadow, so I use a lot of spring bulbs and early summer perennials (such as ox-eye daisies, meadow-rue, anemones, cowslips and so on...and do a cut in July, keeping the space mowed until November, when the buklbs start to show again. I had wanted to have later summer bloomers such as scabious, sanguisorba, achilleas but by then, the grass was too long and lodged all over the place. Seems you can have one or the other (early or late) but not both.

Mine has been ongoing for a few years now. It is both a delight and source of frustration as I really don't know exactly what I am doing and still feeling my way. It may be a low-maintenance option in a few more years but since this is a totally artificial little space, I generally treat it like any other bed or border (continual weeding, editing and so on).

The oft-repeated advice (here in the UK)- to simply dispense with grass cutting is laughably vague and optimistic - fairly useless unless you are OK with a thistly weedy mess.

I think your space is probably a whole lot bigger than my small, 40m2 experiment, mxk3

mxk, this is from the NH Ag department about from their publication about establishing meadows, if it helps:

"Once the meadow is finished flowering and freezes kill the last of the asters to the ground, consider the beauty in the structure and golden colors of standing seed heads and grasses, which the birds will appreciate well into the winter. If you need to tidy up, mow the meadow down in November or leave it stand until early spring. Mow high (6-8” or higher) and wildlife will continue to nest and forage in the meadow through the winter and spring. Mowing every year is not required; its primary purpose is to discourage woody shrubs and trees from taking over. If you have a large meadow area, consider mowing only one-third or one-quarter of it each year, leaving the rest for winter habitat."

Mowing half in fall and half in spring sounds like a good compromise.

asked from Europe, is a meadow another type of prairie or rather a field to produce hay?

Just wondering.

I am amazed by the not-mowing advice, around here, any meadow turns into shrub land, blackberry thicket and woodland.

and prairies are adapted to regular burning, keeping it free from trees, arent they?

TBF, most of the 'put away your mower' advice relates to small suburban and urban gardens...not acreage. It does have some utility since even our common lawn weeds (achillea, daisies, plantain, shepher's purse, dandelions and such), has value for wildlife

I think the term 'meadow' has generic meanings which may be different from botanical (or agricultural) definitions of semi-natural grassland. Without intervention, areas will revert to scrub, then eventually woodland, so meadows do require some external effort (and. according to Christopher Lloyd 'constructive, hard thinking).

I stopped cutting large sections of my lawn about 5 years ago, and couldn't be more pleased with what nature has done. I pull almost all saplings, certain invasive weeds....particularly mugwort, and almost all shrubs.

Despite some invasives I have an abundance of golden rod, black eyed susans, queen anns lace, and many others.

There is also an abundance of wildlife. Saw a barred owl hunting in one section the other day. There's no end to the pleasures.

I live in CT.

DH stopped mowing back there June 15th. Last year he didn't mow at all and it was a tall crop of some sort (? oats or rye or something) -- what a mess that was; see posts up-thread. So this year we thought we'd mow long enough to keep whatever crop that was in check and see what happens. It's now July 3rd and not too much going on right now, but stuff is popping up here and there.

I am interested in planting a native meadow - i.e. plant native wildflowers and bunch grasses to replace my current lawn (30' x 30'). This is one of the options I'm considering to get rid of the lawn over my septic leech field, but I am concerned about increasing the number of mosquitoes, so I haven't decided yet.

I honestly cannot comment on the idea of a US native meadow but in the UK, soil fertility is one of the defining characteristics of wildflower meadows . Basically, the poorer the soil, the better...or else vigorous nitrogen loving grasses and weedy thugs will invariably out-compete the delicate wildflowers...so a leach field will come with quite a few caveats you may have to consider.

All-in-all, I have not found meadow creation to be anything like the easy-care, sustainable horticulture which garden writers and media are promoting. Maybe after 5 or 6 years of persistent effort...?

" Basically, the poorer the soil, the better...or else vigorous nitrogen loving grasses and weedy thugs will invariably out-compete "

Interesting - I hadn't considered that. I had checked that wildflowers are acceptable over the leach field, i.e. they won't damage it with their root systems, but I hadn't thought soil health. I might end up with just a native ground cover instead.

"Basically, the poorer the soil, the better...or else vigorous nitrogen loving grasses and weedy thugs will invariably out-compete the delicate wildflowers..."

I think there is something to this. I'm on old farmland that's been passively manured for probably over 100 years. Beautiful soil. Here it is nearing the middle of September, so about 3 months after the stoppage of mowing back in mid-June. I have mostly whatever grass or crop that grew last year along with assorted offspring of whatever seed blew in. Virtually nothing I planted myself returned -- the goldenrod, ruellia, cup plant, swamp milkweed are nowhere to be found. I did plant a couple clumps of perennial ageratum (Conoclinium coelestinum), and those did come back, getting ready to bloom any time now. I had some random ironweed crop up, that was a pretty site.

So, yea, basically it's a meadow of grass and weeds :0b. But at least that crop is only about knee high right now, so not such a mess as last year. It's no pretty-picture wildflower to look at, but it's all fine by me -- the pollinators are making use of the flowering weeds (chickory, Queen Anne's lace, dock, etc), and we're saving gas by not mowing.

Mowing or cutting everything in your meadow and then bagging it, and not letting it decompose on the site would lessen the nitrogen in the soil. Burning would add nitrogen. You could get Silphium to establish if the areas around them were free of taller competitors. You could experiment with herbiciding sections and then planting with forbs? It would be a good idea to identify all the grasses, to learn which ones are particularly overagressive.

^^ That's just too much work. This is not a small area I'm talking about. It was previously a pasture, countless years of horses cr*pping oat or whatever seeds is what got that crop established. It's green, it's fine with me at this point -- it can do what it wants, I'm not going to fiddle around too much with it. The birds, animals, and wind will deposit seeds, what can duke it out with the grasses will survive.

I really urge you to read Federal Twist about the making of a meadow by punching holes in the existing grass matrix and planting highly competive perennials. It seems to be working for me and let me avoid killing off what was there and wasting my time with seeds.

I have been surprised by the thickness of stems like joe oye weed’s. Cant imagine our driving mower cutting them down.

Re the septic field and fertility issue - Prairie Moon offers a preplanned meadow mix of seeds or plugs specifically for septic fields.

"I really urge you to read Federal Twist about the making of a meadow by punching holes in the existing grass matrix and planting highly competive perennials."

I'll have to check that out.

We have about 3/4 of an acre on our property that we are trying to convert to a meadow, but so much is just tall grasses and weeds. There’s some goldenrod and golden ragwort, some great blue lobelia and swamp milkweed in the floodplain areas, but it’s mostly just various grasses. Last year I cleared out several 18” diameter areas and planted butterfly weed and native monarda. They returned this year, but not very vigorously, even with all the rain. The butterfly weed does not appear to have seed pods this year, even though it did last year.

I wonder what ”highly competive perennials” will out-compete all the grasses?? Sometimes it seems like a losing battle!

Thank you, Jay, that is quite an extensive list and will be very helpful moving forward!! I have heavy deer pressure, along with rabbits and groundhogs, so deer resistant plants are an absolute must. I’d love for my meadow to look like your photos someday!

I don't have much of a deer problem, but because of the long drought we had this year, they were munching on my woodland sunflowers and tall bellflowers. The bellflowers still managed to bloom and my woodland sunflowers will probably respond by spreading further out. They were planted 2 years ago and they haven't spread much yet. I was hoping to see some blooms on them though. I have some sawtooth sunflowers, nearby that were nibbled on too. I see these sunflowers at the preserves and they look untouched, but as soon as I plant them in my yard they become irresistable to deer. My back yard is fenced in and protected. In my front yard I have my white Trillium gated for protection, because they do come out in the middle of the night to look for something to eat, and my yard is the only one on the block that has a nice selection of plants. They munch on the elderberries which is fine with me, because they grow out of control anyway. When I first noticed a deer on the sidewalk in front of my house, it was 3AM, and I was wondering which one of my neighbors had a large greyhound, and then it hit me Lol. I keep attempting to get some super agressive Rudbeckia lanciniata going, but they have eaten every small clump I've planted to the ground. If I can get them established, the deer will be able to eat to their heart's content and barely make a dent Lol. Maybe their population should be culled in your area? It's not healthy for the deer either, when their population becomes unsustainable. The photos are from a preserve that has been restored, and is still in the process of restoration, and those combinations are inspiring.

Jay that is some liist! Thank you. I would add a point that Federal Twist makes in getting perennials to stand up to grasses. Plant the largest plants possible. This method is not for seeds or plugs. Although Jay maybe you can point to some on your list that are exceptions?

Im not sure what you are asking me kitasei? Are there exceptions that will grow supernaturally large and quickly from seeds and plugs? I would say no. Even the large Silphium species start out small and take a couple years to reach a large enough size to be acceptable for the Federal Twist method. If it's too expensive to buy larger plants, you could plant smaller plants and clip short the surrounding grass, so the introductions get ample sunlight, or cut a hole in a large piece of cardboard so the plant gets enough sunlight. I don't think the Federal Twist method has to be carried out religiously, if doing so is too costly.

I have come to realise that meadows are very heterogenous, depending on soil type, depth, amount of sunlight, rain, surrounding vegetation, timing of cuts (this is more crucial than I realised) and so on...and when I concluded that I was free to experiment and no longer had to follow a 'regime', it got a whole lot more enjoyable. The calcareous wildflower mix I sowed 6/7 years ago has been changed out in favour of early flowering perennials and bulbs. I have had to sacrifice knapweeds, achilleas, scabious, sanguisorba (later bloomers) because by the time of flowering, the grasses had lodged everywhere, been squashed down by the sheepdog and was being shaded out by the surrounding fruit trees annual extension growth. Despite conscientious raking and grass removal, sowing with hemi-parasites such as yellow rattle and even scratching out bare spots for replanting, I am not winning the grass battle

Moreover, the soil does not have the depth or moisture for most prairie species and the scale was laughably wrong - this is not a large space - around 50m2 between the apple cordons and the start of the vegetable beds (now flowers), so a large silphium (or, in my case, vigorous knapweeds and scabious) looked decidedly silly.

My solution - cut the grass early - immediately after the cowslips and anemones go over and keep it short until late November, when the small bulbs start to appear. I have what would once have been called a 'grassy mead'. Short turf, dotted throughout with small narcissus, ipheons, chionodoxa, primula species, various anemones, daisies, dianthus, pasque flowers, armeria, campanulas., dianthus, centaury, linaria, salvia...a constantly evolving selection of resilient small forbs and, most essentially, geophytes. It is a learning curve and I am still near the beginning.

My plant list is for a prairie. Im all about prairies, and me and my prairie people friends don't usually mention the word 'meadow'. I think of meadows as scaled down versions of prairies with plants not exceding 3 ft in height. Meadows to me, are like the Swiss alpine meadows, or the mountain meadows that are in our western rocky mountains. They are quite beautiful, with an array of deep colors. I remember passing by a beautiful mountain meadow in Wyoming, and stopping to admire it, wondering if Julie Andrews would show up dancing with a group of children. If I lived on a plot with acreage I'd definiately do a meadow and a prairie. There was that Olaf guy who was designing European meadows that used a lot of American natives. I grow a number of natives that are shorter and they can't tolerate taller cometition, so at the north and south sides of my oval shaped beds, Im trying to leave them free for the shorter plants. I'm adding plants to one of those sections now. It already has Prairie Dropseed and Prairie Smoke,(Geum triflorum). Ive added our native yarrow, Achillea gracilis, which was incorrectly lumped with the Eurasian Achillea millefolium since Linaeus's time., Little Bluestem, Liatris pynostachya, Whorled Milkweed, Phlox pilosella. I'm impressed with your success at growing Pasqueflowers and hemiparasitics Rosa. I haven't had success with either. I've wanted to grow the Bastard Toadflax for years, even surgically inserting it's seeds into the rootmasses of native grasses, but nothing, I can see why it deserves it's common name. I need to give the Indian Paintbrushes another go. My Verbesina virginica is about 11+ ft. tall right now, but if grown in the UK, where the summers aren't tropically hot, it would probably top out at about head height. The Palafoxia callosa has just started blooming. Another hemiparastic that I've wanted to grow is the Purple False Foxglove, Agalinis. I've broadcasted hundreds of seeds for it, yet no germination whatsoever. Danny, that's great that the Cliff and Stiff Goldenrods like your wet soil. Drummondii is such an elegant goldenrod. I cut my plant back completely to the ground along with my showy goldenrod, because the long drought caused both of them to look very shabby. Im going to divide my gargantuan clump of prairie dropseed. I know youve said it cant be done, but I've heard different from others. I have some vollunteers,(just in case). You must have a very sensative nose, because I can barely detect any smell from it's flowers, yet they send you into convultions.😂 The Callirhoe Bushii is growing in a short plant section. I've been trying to beat it into submission, since it's attempt to murder my New Jersey Tea. I'm very interested in seeing how it behaves in East Anglia.

That is a really helpful list, Jay -- thanks for taking the time to list all that out. This is the time of year for deals, so if I see anything from the on clearance I may pick it up. Silphium is on your list, but it's nowhere to be found out there, and I know I did plant plant and do remember the general area, but I didn't stop to think the deer might have gotten to it. Couple weeks ago I stuck a clump of agastache I had back in the meadow, as of last check a couple days ago it was still there (read: not devoured yet) and seemed to be holding its own quite well.

If you're referring to the native Anise/Lavender Hyssup, Agastache foeniculum mxk3, I grew it years ago next to the wooden fence, on thewest side of the yard, so it got morning sun lasting until early afternoon. It did very well in that location, and had hundreds of seedlings coming up around it. I removed it for some reason, but I regretted it later, by which time I had already planted other precious things in that area. I missed it terribly, so I tried winter sowing seeds for it?(unsuccessfully), a couple years in a row, and then a year or 2 ago, I had finally raised one to flowering size. It grew fairly well last year , and I scattered several seeds around the mother plant. This spring, mother didn't return, and I thought I'd have to start all over from scratch, but about 5 vollunteers showed up in unusual spots, and they all bloomed the 1st year from seed. Im going to move 3 of then back over to the west side of the fence. I also grow the Giant Purple Yyssup. It's a much larger plant, and the flowers are pale, almost white. There's another large Agastache, A. nepetifolia and that has yellow flowers. The Lavender Hyssop would get that 'part sun' situation, if it's growing in the midst of taller grasses. The lavender hyssop leaves give spagetti sauce a nice kick. Now houzz won't let me post photos.

Horse pasture that is also wldflower habitat brings fond memories of my youth at my maternal grandparents farm-going-back-to-bush in NB (in eastern Canada). This article https://www.moon.com/travel/outdoors/atlantic-canadas-wildflowers-plants/#:~:text=Common%20wildflowers%20throughout%20New%20Brunswick,%2C%20pearly%20everlasting%2C%20and%20daisies. lists a lot of familiar plants! A lot of the grass was timothy as that is common as a hay crop for horses. My grandfather was 80 when I was born so by that time he sold the hay as a standing crop to a farmer who brought his own equipment to cut, bale, remove the hay for his dairy cattle. So that removed a lot of the material from the field. Back in the 1930s the field had been used to grow crops for sale to people in the nearest town. The strawberries had gone wild later so the best/largest wild strawberries grew in the area where the cultivated ones had originally grown.

What kind of things will grow well will likely depend on the kind of soil you have. The acidic, rocky soil of the place I grew up on is quite different to the more alkaline, heavier soil where I am now in Ontario. But some things will grow in both areas.

Wildflowers I remember in that pasture included daisies, lupins, goldenrod, yarrow, Queen Anne’s lace, columbine, Canterbury Bells (as an adult I was surprised to realize these are biennials - since no one planted seed in the pasture… they just reproduced on their own and were likely originally escapees from Grandpa’s mother’s garden…) There were other things too that are on the list in that link. Grandpa’s place was inspiration for a lot of the gardening here but site makes a difference in what will grow well. Have fun with it!

I had some Helianthus divisions I stuck out there back in October. No idea if they'll make it, but worth a shot, otherwise I would have just tossed them in the yard waste so no loss if they don't. The agastache hung in there until the end when DH mowed everything down a couple weeks ago in late October, so I hope he's established enough to make a comeback next year. I did enjoy the late blooms of the perennial ageratum, but they were so far back there that I couldn't see them unless I was pretty much right on top of them. That's okay -- the creatures that need to make use of the flowers did so, it's really more for them than me anyway.