Thursday, November 18, 2010

Volunteer Gardeners: Restoring a Native Prairie


Here's a delightful video from the Volunteer Gardener's, who I've subscribed to only just recently. I like how they took seeds from the natives that were already there and reestablished them after burning out the fescue grasses. Something they kind of skip over though is it normally takes 3 years of constant effort to establish a prairie. I don't know how old this one is in particular but it also seemed like they have a few to many grasses mixed in. Perhaps it's just the camera they're using. Grasses should make up at least 40% of the prairie if only to help hold up some of the taller flowering perennials. But here it seems like they make up 80% of the meadow. That's not a bad thing of course, grasses can be very colorful. I'm not a huge fan of them though because I see grass everywhere and most of them are wind pollinated. 

For a good read on establishing your own pocket prairie consider reading Urban and Suburban Meadows: Bringing Meadowscaping to Big and Small Spaces by Catherine Zimmerman.