Thought I'd show a few images of some projects that are in year one and year two. The first is a private residence. Several acres around the home have been seeded in a high-diverse prairie mix by Prairie Plains Resource Institute, which will provide wonderful wildlife habitat and, eventually, mitigate a lot of runoff issues. But for the very front of the house we went with a slightly more designed prairie look. Modest drifts and masses of various native flowers and grasses will mingle and ultimately fuse with a sedge area near the home's walls, and plants will self sow over time ensuring evocative stands of blooms from April through October.
This garden is about 3,000 square feet, and with the house, sits atop a hill that slopes down to a pond, so sight lines from within the home outward to the wonderful landscape are preserved with generally shorter plants that will melt into the seeded tallgrass going down the hill. Several of the flowering perennials were chosen for their high attractiveness to both diverse and charismatic insect species, this way the family could just step out the front door and be engulfed in nature taking flight all around them.
All of the planting areas will be sown with sideoats grama, a low bunch grass with ornamental orange blooms and solid seed head action in fall. This will create a calm, modern base layer which should take well to future flower self sowing. Clumps of sedge are also scattered in the beds -- in a pointillist fashion -- further out from the home to add early-season green, increase plant diversity, and help tie areas together.
Below is an update of the Cornhusker Council Boy Scout's of America headquarters east of Lincoln, planted last fall. It's about 2,000 square feet of developing sedge meadow in a challenging space where portions get a lot of shade half the day, then blistering afternoon sun. Weeds out in the country have been a problem, but they are primarily the annual variety, so the goal is simply to keep them from blooming and setting seed. What this means is cutting them down to the ground with minimal pulling, the latter which would disturb the soil, bring more seeds to the surface, and create open soil for new blown-in seeds to establish. The sedge, Carex brevior, is looking very strong as forbs and some sweeps of grasses slowly establish this first year.
All of the planting areas will be sown with sideoats grama, a low bunch grass with ornamental orange blooms and solid seed head action in fall. This will create a calm, modern base layer which should take well to future flower self sowing. Clumps of sedge are also scattered in the beds -- in a pointillist fashion -- further out from the home to add early-season green, increase plant diversity, and help tie areas together.
Below is an update of the Cornhusker Council Boy Scout's of America headquarters east of Lincoln, planted last fall. It's about 2,000 square feet of developing sedge meadow in a challenging space where portions get a lot of shade half the day, then blistering afternoon sun. Weeds out in the country have been a problem, but they are primarily the annual variety, so the goal is simply to keep them from blooming and setting seed. What this means is cutting them down to the ground with minimal pulling, the latter which would disturb the soil, bring more seeds to the surface, and create open soil for new blown-in seeds to establish. The sedge, Carex brevior, is looking very strong as forbs and some sweeps of grasses slowly establish this first year.
There are flower seedlings in there, they just need warm weather. These sedge came as lush, well-rooted plugs so of course they took off!
And just for kicks, another image of our front meadow beds at home base -- converted in fall 2014 from lawn that burned every summer. Last year I added a lot of sedge, and some flowers like nodding onion, to bulk up open areas. But the sideoats grama, prairie dropseed, and little bluestem are filling in the gaps fairly quickly. This spring I put in a few more rattlesnake master, some blue hyssop, and soon a drift of our native heuchera prairie alumroot (great foliage contrast and stellar spring flower stalks when massed).
Simple works: purple coneflower, black-eyed susan, little bluestem in morning light.
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