Wildflower Wanderings: Planting and Enjoying Native Wildflower Meadows

Did you know you could get funding to convert your lawn to a native wildflower meadow? If you have a half-acre or more of mowed lawn, you might want to sign up for the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) Lawn Conversion program. According to DCNR's website, there are two million acres of lawn in Pennsylvania, and those lawns take a lot of time and energy to cut.

It's estimated that a riding lawn mower can mow an average of an acre per hour, while zero-turn mowers can mow about four acres an hour. Since many people mow their yard every week during spring, summer, and fall, that adds up to a lot of time and money, not to mention air pollution. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), one hour of operating a new gasoline lawn mower emits the same amount of volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxide as driving a new car 45 miles. The EPA further determined that gas-powered lawn mowers produce up to 5% of the air pollution in the US. That’s because there are over 40 million acres of lawn across the US.

Another disconcerting issue is the amount of water and fertilizer used to grow grass. Americans spend about $30 billion on lawn care every year. In fact, there is more acreage in lawns than there is in irrigated corn.

Have we convinced you yet to check out DCNR's Lawn Conversion program? If we have, just Google "DCNR Lawn Conversion program" and get started by sharing your contact information so the staff can contact you.

While we didn't exactly have turfgrass around our house, we did have a lot of mowed fields. There were three hay fields totaling about 8 acres on the property when Laura's parents gifted us the land in 1985. Over the ensuing years, the fields slowly converted to grassy meadows with a lot of native goldenrod and milkweed, as well as lots of non-native invasive plants like Queen Anne's lace, Japanese vine honeysuckle, autumn olive, and other nasties. Although Mike brush-hogged the fields once a year, the invasives were definitely winning, so we decided to outsmart them.

In 2007, we started experimenting by planting seed mixes of wildflowers. We were initially fooled by plant mixes labeled "beautiful wildflowers for birds and butterflies." We soon found out that these types of mixes had many non-native seeds that did produce beautiful flowers but didn't provide much food for many insects. We also found that many of the non-native plants died out after a year or so and were replaced by unwanted weeds. Fortunately, we learned about a company in Pennsylvania, Ernst Conservation Seeds, that sold native seed mixes specifically for pollinators. This company also sells seed mixes with non-native plants, so we are careful to buy only native seeds or native seed mixes.

We buy the seed mixes in late winter (when they have the best inventory) and store them in our downstairs garage so they can chill, but not freeze, over winter. We plant the seeds in the spring as soon as the frost-free date occurs (which is late May for us). And, we're pleased to report every sowing has been successful. We also asked the company to put in more milkweed seeds, but that was a costly mistake on our part since we observed that common milkweed and butterfly weed don't do well in mixes if other plants are taller. Most of the milkweed died out after two years.

Planning and site prep are very important and clearly explained in the Ernst catalog and online. Here's what we did:

1. We killed all vegetation from the planting area (we used glyphosate, but for small spaces you can kill the weeds with thick layers of cardboard). We sprayed once in the fall and then again in spring. To be successful, seeds must be in contact with bare ground.
2. We mixed the seed with seed oats since the oats act as a cover crop and help hold the soil in place until the wildflower and native grasses germinate.
3. We broadcast the seed by hand using a cyclone seeder, spreading half the seeds in one direction, then we seeded the other half perpendicular to the first pass.
4. We drove a lawn roller over the area, so the seeds had better contact with the bare soil.
5. We covered the seeded area very lightly with clean straw.
6. We prayed for rain! (It didn't rain for two weeks after we planted in 2020, but we still had excellent results.)

We have never tried planting in the fall, but some people prefer that time of year.

Our mountain fields have poor soil, but native plants do great in poor soil. Fertilizer is never recommended. Soil tests will help determine if any soil amendments need to be added before planting.

We planted two acres in late May 2020, renting a Great Plains no-till drill from the Bedford County Conservation District to plant the seeds since the area was so large. Another advantage of using a no-till drill: it eliminates the need for straw and seed compaction. We manually planted two small areas in the field below our house in 2015 and added another half-acre in 2020. We have never watered or fertilized the meadows.

Our oldest planting is now 10 years old, and it still has a wide diversity of blooms. Even during the quite dry summer of 2023 in Bedford County, we had a bumper crop of native wildflowers which attracted a lot of pollinators like bees and butterflies.

The seed mix we used was custom designed to contain native grasses and flowers. Grasses hold the soil in place and provide nesting sites for native bees. The various native wildflowers bloom in succession from spring to fall, so a variety of insect pollinators benefit. Many insects are short-lived as adults, with different species appearing as the seasons progress. Take honey bees as an example. Although a queen honey bee may live for one to two years, the busy worker honey bees only live about 15 to 38 days in the summer. New worker bees are produced throughout the summer to replace those that die, but most native bees are solitary and only have one brood a year.

Although we don't have any honey bee hives, we see thousands of honey bees from early spring until frost, busy pollinating and gathering nectar. We have found feral honey bee nests in tree cavities in our woods—one swarm even took over a wood duck box that was used as active nesting habitat by a pair of screech owls. The box is in the woods along our lane, so we watched the bees over several years, marveling that they were able to evict screech owls, but eventually the ever-so-cute screech owls reclaimed their home.

As the bee flies, the closest honey bee hives that we know of are about 2.5 miles from our property, certainly within the range of foraging honey bees, since beekeepers tell us that bees can fly up to 5 miles for nectar and pollen. We eat a lot of honey, but we’ve seen honey bees compete with native pollinators and we wonder if the abundant honey bee is one reason why native bees are in decline. We often see the larger honey bee displace a native bee feeding on a wildflower. Research verifies our observations: "over a period of three months, a [honey bee] hive collects as much pollen as could support the development of 100,000 native solitary bees."

According to the Xerces Society, honey bees are not endangered or close to extinction, but many of our native bees are in serious decline. Eight species of native bees are on the US Endangered Species list and others are under review. We hope that our meadows will help native bees find food, shelter, and protection.

Laura has spent a lot of time exploring our meadows. No matter the age of the meadow, all were full of blooms from spring to fall that attracted thousands of bees, beetles, flies, and butterflies.

One of the earliest flowers to bloom in our meadows is beardtongue penstemon (Penstemon digitalis). It’s called beardtongue because of the white hairs lining the lower petals that force bees deeper into the flower. The pink lines on the petals act like runway lights, enticing bees like bumble bees to wiggle back to the nectar source.

The beautiful flowers of blue false indigo (Baptisia australis) bloom in May and June—the only time we can find the bufflehead mason bee (shown above), but it also feeds on a variety of other tubular flowers. There are over 400 species of mason bees in the US, and some are important pollinators in our state’s fruit orchards.

Our meadows are bursting with blooms in mid-July through August, which also seems to be the peak time for insect diversity. Various species of mountain mint are perhaps the favorite plants for pollinators in mid-summer. Mountain mints are one of the premier pollinator plants because they are rich in nectar that’s easy to reach and they bloom for almost two months. Mountain mints are truly a biodiversity hot spot for pollinators. Laura likes to hover over our largest patch of mountain mint, watching in awe as thousands of insects feed and interact.

Our meadows are ablaze with swaths of purple, lavender, and red when different species of Monarda (commonly called bee balm) bloom in mid-summer. These showy flowers attract a lot of bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds, as well as the daytime flying moth called the hummingbird moth.

In August, the meadows glimmer with goldenrod. Early goldenrod (Solidago juncea) is first to bloom, but it’s followed by a succession of five other species, with the most spectacular blooming in mid to late September: showy goldenrod (Solidago speciosa).

What looks beautiful to us could be a deathtrap since there is a possibility of danger hidden in every flower. We’ve watched predators like assassin bugs lying in wait, ready to inject venom into insects. One time Laura photographed a flower fly just as a square-headed wasp swooped down, grabbed the fly, and carried it away.

As autumn settles in, pollinators are busier than ever in the meadows. Laura witnessed a honey bee trying to land on a New England aster (Aster novae-angliae) where a leaf-cutter bee was feeding (shown in the photo at right). While most bees would be scared away by the honey bee, the leaf-cutter bee raised its head, showed off its sharp mandibles, and scared off the honey bee.

Chalk one up for this male leafcutter bee since it stood its ground against the honey bee. The hairy "mustache" on males hides most of the sharp mandibles.

In late autumn, the humming and flutters of insects are replaced by birds busy feeding on all the grass and flower heads that have gone to seed. As the meadow continues to give food and shelter to wildlife throughout the winter, we are already dreaming of the warmer days and spring flowers to come!

Written by Laura and Mike Jackson, PA Forest Stewards, Class of 2000.