Eight years in and the meadow is settling into itself with a variety of textures, colors and forms that change with the season and the light. Many creatures have made it their home including: Deer, at least one Heron, Bluebirds, Swallows, Carolina Wrens, Cardinals, Robins, Groundhogs, Field Rats, Voles, Mice, Snakes, Rabbits, a passing Coyote, Foxes, Red Tailed Hawks, Yellow Finches, Owls, and many, many butterflies, caterpillars, beetles, bees, and other creatures. These creatures make the meadow a more active place by adding sights and sounds and make it a healthier place by redistributing plants through seed dispersal, pollination, and, in the case of the deer, crashing about aerating the soil with their hooves, dispersing seed, and breaking up the winter dried grasses into mulch.
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The dead of winter is usually a great time to sit in the library and plan for spring planting. This year though, the seeds were planned, ordered and distributed in the meadow back in September so that they would be able to get
themselves settled before winter. We have experimented in the meadow with many different native seeds – some require fall planting to get started and some wait, requiring a period of cold (stratification) to get their start in life. I have found that fall is the best time to achieve a high success rate because of reliable rainfall, warm and resilient soil, and mature surrounding plants to dampen the effect of drying winds. The lower meadow is well stocked now with established grasses and flowers but the mid and upper-slope areas remain sparse. This we attribute mostly to the drying west winds. To counter this, we have been slowly extending the hedgerow from the forest edge across the north edge of the meadow – even in winter, this is helping to divert the onslaught of the wind. As you can see in the picture on the right, a hedgerow has a number of other benefits for the land and creatures beyond just diverting wind.
The meadow’s hedgerow is a mix of naturally occurring cherry that we are coppicing to encourage lateral
branching and wild blackberry that we are training onto the cherry branches. It has also been planted in layers with Hawthorn, Serviceberry, and Staghorn Sumac to provide a wind break, deer barrier, food source for birds and other creatures (including foraging humans), and nesting areas/habitat for birds and other creatures. Both roses and blackberries are members of the Rosaceae family and we are using a rose training trick that we learned from a British gardener on Instagram that seems to increase blackberry yield and encourage denser growth (in roses it increases flowering and hip formation). Cherry, Hawthorn and Serviceberry are also members of the Rosaceae family but they seem to prefer their natural branching pattern to being trained like a vine. This fall we plan to add 15 more feet to the hedge.
The fall overseeding added 6 pounds of Ernst Conservation Seeds’ Showy Northeast Native Wildflower Mix to the upper meadow. For best results, Ernst recommends that this mix be seeded at a rate of 6-10 pounds per acre with a cover crop. The overseeding this year was limited to about 2 acres of the 5 and it was seeded into existing grasses so we fudged a little on the total amount to save money. We mixed the seed with untreated cat litter and hand placed it across the sparse areas. The cold came very early this year with snow and very low temperatures in early November. This was followed by a relatively balmy December, a cold January and a not too wintry February and March. Although this made for great weather to be outside, the lack of snow and rain resulted in dry soils and what proved to slow growing and blooming in the beginning of the growing season
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What I find interesting in winter is the details that come into sharper focus when there is not much else to look at. Noticing…
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how the sun warms the snow on the south side of the path leaving the crunchy north side to show the footprints of
the various animals who have visited in the night – fox, deer, vole, mouse, possibly coyote and during the day – groundhog, heron, sparrow, and bluebird.
– how the Milkweed seeds cling to their protective husk and disperse when the stronger winds arrive. Common Milkweed has amazing survival strategies that al
low it to develop new shoots while flowering and dispersing mature seeds throughout the growing season – many seeds persist through the winter and into early spring.
-how on early misty mornings, water droplets cling to seedheads and grasses catching sunlight and making everything sparkle.
-how deer be
ds steam in the cold air letting you count the number of families who had been sleeping in the shelter of the grasses. So far 10 is the most I have found on a single morning.
Winter is a time to let the meadow garden rest and prepare for spring but even as it sleeps it can be a pretty magical place.
