A Pollinator’s Paradise

CULTIVATING A MEADOW YIELDS A MULTITUDE OF BENEFITS

By Kateri Kosek // Photos by Anastasia Stanmeyer and Kateri Kosek
From the pages of our August 23 Issue.

A wild meadow abuzz with birds and pollinators, set against a backdrop of hills and mountains, epitomizes the beauty of late summer in the Berkshires.

“We have more field and pollinator habitat than we’ve ever had,” says Rene Wendell, Land Steward at The Nature Conservancy (TNC). TNC and other organizations manage fields for grassland-nest- ing birds and pollinators. Bobolinks float over Field Farm and Bartholomew’s Cobble preserves with their bubbly songs. Even Herman Melville’s Arrowhead, once planted as a hayfield, has used a USDA grant to replant a three-acre parcel of their field as soon-to-be certified pollinator habitat—a five-year “labor of love,” according to Berkshire Historical Society Executive Director Lesley Herzberg.

Historically, fields had to be plowed by horse, which meant many would lay fallow for birds and pollinators, says Wendell. Because our fields, previously all woodland, take active management to keep them fields, TNC and others usually do a fall brushhog, or farmers cut them for hay, which can disrupt a lot of pollinator life.

Leaving all those seedheads and goldenrod galls that harbor larvae and grubs standing in the fall provides cover and food for birds over winter. TNC is experimenting with spring rather than fall mows, but by the time the ground firms up, you could be close to bobolink season, explains Wendell. Homeowners with meadow areas, however, should try leaving their fields up until spring.

Judy Kamenstein, who lives on Lake Garfield in Monterey, does just that. “The structure of the plants with snow or ice, or blowing in the wind, is beautiful,” Kamenstein says. In fact, she never mows the now-mature meadow she started in place of lawn 20 years ago.

If you don’t have a meadow area, consider cultivating one. Across the Berkshires, homeowners are combining passive and active approaches to reducing their lawns and creating actual habitat—wild, pollinator-friendly, messy, meadow-like patches. “No Mow May” is catching on, and more broadly, the concept of “unmowing.” Lawns, after all, can be so problematic. Beth Romaker, who manages Meadowscapes, a division of Matt’s Landscaping in Falls Village, Connecticut, cites a statistic that running a backpack blower with a small two-cycle engine for one hour, in terms of fuel emissions, is equivalent to driving a pickup truck 500 miles. Her company is converting to an all-electric fleet and installing solar panels on a trailer so they can charge equipment as they drive around.

A meadow installation by Sassafras Land Care is converting lawn in Tyringham into a thriving meadow ecosystem full of native plants. DEVAN ARNOLD

People are reaching out to Meadowscapes and other ecological landscapers, because bringing some meadow into your yard takes a bit of active cultivation, too. If you just let things go, some native species will crop up, says Romaker, but you need a certain ratio of forbes (flowers) to grasses for a self-sustaining meadow ecosystem that supports maximum biodiversity.

Bridghe McCracken of Helia Designs in Alford, who designed much of Kamestein’s meadow, comes regularly to do some trimming.

Expansive meadows like this one in Hop Brook Valley in Tyringham support grassland-nesting birds.

“Things are coming and going,” says Kamenstein. “It tells you what works and what doesn’t.” She never has to water it, and with a couple of paths, the dog doesn’t come in with ticks.

Simple observation is indeed part of the equation. Over the past few years, Kathleen Frome of Monterey has been photographing and identifying every new plant that pops up in her yard. “I’m shocked how many have found their way here from Asia and Europe and delighted when I find that a new wildflower is actually a native.” This year, she plans to “observe what nature wants to do along the forest edge by leaving a swatch of lawn unmowed,” where she imagines will become a miniature meadow, full of surprises.

In Southfield, Laura Stanley is “giving it a year to let the land tell us what it wants to do.” Eventually, she hopes for a beautiful meadow, also cutting paths so the dog won’t pick up ticks, and adding wildflowers. You have to watch before you start curating, she says. Next door is a wild meadow, so she thinks it will integrate well. Already, she notices a lot of flowers and more pollinators.

A book by Doug Tallamy, an entomologist turned crusader for native lawn ecosystems, influenced Tom Winner to painstakingly pull out Japanese barberry and pack his new Monterey property with native plants. A “No Mow May” revealed flowering native thyme buzzing with bumblebees. Black-eyed Susans popped up in what was a mowed lawn for years. Where the Tennessee gas pipeline crosses an edge of their property, butterflies swarm the goldenrod and Joe Pye weed—“essentially a forced meadow in the middle of a forest,” Winner says. “I’ve been trying to diversify it a little. This winter, I put in some milkweed, mountain mint, some other natives.” He notes that his Merlin app is recording all sorts of different birds by these cleared-out areas.

Slightly reducing the amount of lawn can have ecological and aesthetic benefits. That’s exactly what Peter Heller did on his property abutting a wetland of the Konkapot River. A landscape consultant gave him the idea of letting some meadow grow under his fruit trees, and he’s waiting to see how the few hundred plugs put in last year will do. He also removed, by himself, a ten-foot diameter of sod from around each of several birch trees, dug up ferns from the wet woods, and arranged them there with other natives. “I like having lawn, but I don’t need as much as I have,” says Heller, “and it’s much better for the tree to not be crowded in by lawn.”

Julie Kern, one of those spearheading the Monterey Native Plants Working Group, is always pondering which other areas of her property could convert to native plants, especially with the lawn looking so bad in the drought. Near the wetland, she already has wildflowers layered in different heights and a large area that they mow around planted in prairie nine bark, goldenrod, lupine, hawthorn, and oaks, the most beneficial species in this area.

Fellow Monterey resident Allan Telio has more monarchs on milkweed and “endless fireflies” since trying to get more diversity on the meadow covering half his property. “It’s like fireworks at our house,” he says. He’s getting goldenrod under control to allow other plants to come up and battling invasives, mostly bishop’s weed, with cardboard, mulch, and plastic.

“When you let something go, you never know what you’re going to get,” says Romaker of Meadowscapes. “I think it’s always worth doing that as a first step.” She reaches down and pulls out some bittersweet from a fern-filled meadow edging a woodland in Lakeville, Connecticut. Meadowscapes works in the Southern Berkshires and sometimes much farther south into Connecticut, where far fewer ecological landscapers operate.

Around the front of the house, a small tier of lawn over- looks a healthy meadow just planted in the spring of 2022. They broke up the sod with a Harley rake, then applied a series of vinegar treatments developed by landscape consultant Michael Nadeau, until nothing sprouted from the soil. Then Meadowscapes planted a large successional variety of forbes (flowers) and grasses, which move around and fill in between the forbes.

A year later, it is thick with hearty, early successional Rudbeckia (black-eyed Susan) and echinacea. “This was all lawn last year,” says Romaker. This tight, low-maintenance ground cover will be mowed only once a year in spring and won’t need the mowing, blowing, and weed-whacking that contributes to poor air quality and carbon emissions. And with their deep roots, prairie plants store a lot of carbon.

Down the road, at a meadow that was seeded about ten years ago, Romaker’s crew is at work expanding the meadow edge and replanting a few spots where a white pine fell. We walk a path through tall oxeye sunflowers. She points at some short-toothed mountain mint. “This is one of my favorites. When it flowers it has this double flower situation going on, and I have never seen more pollinators on anything else.”

Around the back of the house, edged with a meadow full of prolific, yellow Zizia, a traditional mowed lawn rolls down toward the lake. And there is still plenty of it.

What to Plant in a Berkshire Meadow?

FLOWERS

Amsonia
Asters (New England, New York)
Northern blazing star
Coreopsis
Yarrow
Rattlesnake master
Blue vervain
Lobelia
Rhudbeckia (black-eyed Susans)
Echinacea
Mountain mint
Zizia
Prairie nine bark
Goldenrod
Milkweed
Lupine

GRASSES

Panicum
Little bluestem
Indian grass
Purple lovegrass
Bottlebrush
Prairie drop seed

Resources

Matt’s Landscaping/Meadowscapes
mattslandscapingct.com/meadowscapes

Sassafras Land Care,
sassafraslandcare.com

Nature Works Organic Land Care,
natureworkslandcare.com

Helia Land Design (Bridghe McCracken)
helialanddesign.com; helianativenursery.com

Native Habitat Restoration,
nativehabitatrestoration.weebly.com/who-we-are.html

Michael Nadeau, Wholistic Land Care Consultant,
michaelnadeau.org

Jamie Purinton, landscape architect,
jamiepurinton.com

Reya de Castro, Spirit of Place ecological landscaping,
860-601-1751 (no website)

Ward’s Nursery,
wardsnursery.com

Doug Tallamy,
homegrownnationalpark.org (not local, but an excellent resource)