I once had this naive idea to stop mowing a portion of my backyard and let it become a “natural” lawn. Just a 5″ x 10″ small trial piece. Let nature take its course and sure, I thought, my little patch of grass would grow tall and flowery, a healthy new home for insects, pollinators, and birds. (Heck, there will probably be salmon and Sasquatch jumping out of the woods!)
My wife rolled her eyes and in a few weeks she did too, as the lumpy grass became thick and crystallized. It wasn’t pretty. There are no wildlife sightings. The sad little patch of my soul flew into the garden.
Fortunately, there is a correct way to grow “natural” – if not completely natural – groups of native herbs and wildflowers in your garden. An upcoming online video session called “Meadowscaping in the Home Garden” (hosted by WSU Clark County Extension, Clark Conservation District, and Clark County Green Neighbors) will explore beautiful possibilities and practical challenges.
Don’t take these challenges seriously, advises Beth Goodnight, a former graphic designer turned senior gardener at WSU and a professional landscape designer. All of this experience—her design and planning skills as well as her knowledge of horticulture—proven useful as Goodnight transitioned from standard landscaper to landscaper. (Goodnight moved to Idaho recently, but is still active with the local group of master gardeners.)
For starters, growing a healthy lawn isn’t just a matter of letting your lawn go, she tells me with a chuckle. (I defended ignorance. I’m from New Jersey.)
“The grass in your garden in Vancouver is not a native wild grass,” she said. “Probably Kentucky Blue Grass. Kentucky Bluegrass should not be in Vancouver. It does not grow well in the Pacific Northwest.”
This is because it requires a lot of water, especially in the summer. Sure we have plenty of water here, but summer isn’t when it goes down.
Therefore, we are watering. and fertilize. Use of herbicides and pesticides. All this to keep our lawns looking uniformly green and unnatural.
Goodnight said that fighting Mother Nature takes a lot of work. And why? If you want birds, she said, you need insects. If you want insects, you need tall herbs and flowers. If you want flowers, you need pollinators.
Goodnight said the main advantage of decorating lawns is to welcome Mother Nature. “Meadows are beneficial to the ecosystem in general,” she said. “It provides habitat, purifies water, and sequesters carbon.”
Other benefits, she said, are personal and aesthetic. “Once established, they require less maintenance. They become beautiful and comfortable in a way that people find surprising and different.”
messy kid
Getting to the nice, comfortable road requires a lot of work on the front end.
It takes time, Goodnight said. “Think of your meadow garden like one of your kids. Kids go through phases and are messy. Every parent knows that.”
She said it took three years of Goodnight for her grand Idaho landscape to “start looking like something.”
Parents also know that it is usually easier to raise children one by one. You may be eager to completely remodel your landscape, but consider taking small steps. Goodnight said: Start by replanting a small portion of your garden with native herbs and wildflowers. Starting from the kids, rather than the seeds, will save you some work.
“The people who advocate replacing your entire garden right now are too simplistic,” she said. “There is so much to learn and so much to learn. Growing from seed can be challenging.”
Unfortunately, she added, it can also be difficult to find specialized expertise and alternative or local plant suppliers. She said most greenhouses and nurseries in urban and suburban areas have neither the supplies, nor the knowledge.
“The industry doesn’t make it easy,” Goodnight said. “They follow the money, and the aborigines are not where the money is.”
Check out the accompanying list of Goodnight’s recommended resources, including the all-volunteer, nonprofit NatureScaping in Southwest Washington, which maintains a display garden that opens daily at the Brush Prairie.
If you want to be “amazingly inspired” by the designs of modern and sophisticated lawns, Goodnight recommends viewing New York City’s soaring High Line gardens and The new perennial, maintained by renowned landscape gardener Tony Spencer.
“It’s a feast for the eyes for all things lawn beautification,” she said.
sneaky beauty
A steep learning curve and a lot of work aren’t the only challenges you’ll face. Others may be your unusual neighbors and the symbols and norms of your community, whether written or unwritten.
“There are planned communities where you simply can’t have a meadow,” Goodnight said.
America’s favorite residential landscape theme is still the golf course – Kentucky Blue Grass carpet – and people in your group might even be surprised by the children’s mess.
Goodnight recommends enchanting them by starting with carefully designed, compact ornamental lawns.
She said that natives do not always pack a technicolor set for other plants, but the correct design will emphasize the beauty of the whole.
“The nursery industry has all these wonderful, captive, big, wonderful plants!” She said. “Aborigines are quieter. The aesthetic appeal is more generally.”
Cultivate your natives carefully, with an emphasis on fun design, she said, and you’ll begin to creep up on new ideas about a kind of wild beauty right under your neighbors’ noses.
“Doing so makes the neighbors get used to the idea that nature is beautiful,” she said.