I often say that I garden on 4 acres, but I suppose that’s not exactly true. The house, barn, and sheds take up some room, after all. And then there are the alpaca pastures, which are the closest thing I have to lawn. Together, that’s about an acre. Then there’s “the shrubbery,” which fills about two-thirds of an acre, and the intensively planted “inside the fence” garden takes up the other third of that acre. So, what’s on the other 2 acres? My meadow.
One could argue that it’s not really a garden, because most of it was just there. You see, this piece of land has been in our family since the 1930s, and it’s been farmed for well over a century—probably even longer than that. I vaguely remember seeing corn growing here back in the early 1970s, but since then, it’s been a casually managed hayfield. In other words, whatever came up got cut and baled in late June, then it grew unmolested for another 12 months. The year my house was built, my parents kept the whole field mowed for one year; after that, I decided to leave the northeast and northwest sides uncut. So, except for the sand mound (for you city folks, that’s basically an above-ground drain field for the septic system), which is a seeded meadow—more on that another time—what’s growing in the meadow has mostly been growing here for ages.
So, maybe I didn’t actually plant it, and I sure don’t water it, or fertilize it, or mulch it. But I do have to weed it, and in my world, pretty much anything that needs to be weeded counts as garden. Now, I suspect my neighbors might argue that it’s *all* weeds, but it’s really not. I do hand-pull a few things, such as crown vetch, but mostly, my weeding involves heavy-duty tools for getting rid of nasties like multiflora rose, Russian olive, and brambles. There are also hundred of Eastern red cedar (Juniperus virginiana) seedlings coming up; I love them, but they can’t all stay. The same goes for many of the deciduous tree and shrub seedlings. So, I have to decide what to keep and what to cut—and isn’t that sort of editing the very essence of gardening?
Of course, it’s not just a matter of leaving or removing plants; I’ve added some, too. I’ve found the meadow is a perfect place to put excess divisions and self-sown seedlings of tough perennials and grasses from the garden—Joe-Pye weeds (Eupatorium), cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum), ironweeds (Vernonia), bee balm (Monarda), and the like. I do try to stick mostly with “natives,” although I can’t claim that they’re necessarily local ecotypes, or even native to southeastern Pennsylvania. And yes, some of them are even cultivars of native species (gasp). While I’m trying to remain sensitive to the overall natural-meadow look, I’m also hoping that repeating some plants in both the meadow and the “garden proper” will provide a visual link between the two areas. I think it’s helping, anyway.
Deciding which plants to add and where to put them is fun, but even more rewarding is finding the gems that I didn’t plant. One exciting find this week was this ragged fringed orchid (Platanthera lacera). Ok, it’s not exactly showy, and it’s not even all that rare around here. But still, the idea of any orchid just growing out there, without any fussing from anyone, is just thrilling to me. Maybe I just need to get out more….
Latest posts by Nancy J. Ondra (see all)
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