Chesapeake Wildlife Heritage restores non-wooded areas to native wildflower/warm-season grass meadows for pollinators and other wildlife, such as turkeys, woodcocks, hawks, songbirds, rabbits, and reptiles.  Pollinator meadows make great habitat because their seeds serve as food sources, their flowers benefit pollinators, and diverse insect populations support food for young birds.

The deeply rooted warm-season grasses may intercept some surface and sub-surface water flow to prevent nutrients and lawn chemicals from reaching the Bay.

Our process involves first examining a property and its soil composition.  We normally prepare the site by killing the existing vegetation before planting.

Site preparation may take a full growing season to kill existing vegetation.  This can mean having an area of your property looking brown and patchy for the entire spring and summer. We don’t want to turn over the soil or disturb it once we start treatment, as this may cause unwanted seeds to germinate. Note that some native plants will take longer than traditional cool-season grasses to show upward growth in the first year.

We then plant the native warm-season grass/wildflower mix in the spring by a special no-till drill. Smaller sites may be established with a combination of broadcast seeding and plug planting.

Some of the Native Meadow Seed Mix (mostly perennials):

Black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia hirta)

Golden Coreopsis (Coreopsis tinctoria)

Lance-leaved Coreopsis (Coreopsis lanceolata)

Partridge Pea (Cassia fasciculata)

Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea)

Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca)

Some of the Native short warm-season grass mix:

Little Blue Stem (Schizachyrium scoparium) 

Splitbeard Bluestem (Andropogon ternarius)

Side Oats Grama (Bouteloua curtipendula)                                     

Native warm-season grasses (WSG) provide essential food and cover for countless birds and small mammals. WSG are clumpy (not solid mats like fescue fields), which allows plenty of room on the ground for wildlife to move freely between the clumps. It provides excellent cover during all months of the year and grows well during our hot, dry mid-shore summers. They are lovely to look at and provide a nice herbaceous buffer for wetlands and field edges. They are easy to maintain. WSG requires little fertility and only some managed mowing, spot spraying, or burning every 3-5 years.   

Maintenance 

When a meadow is surrounded by lawn or is unmanaged, the grass will always try to creep into the meadow. Maintenance is important to control invading grass and weeds.  Regular maintenance will include carefully timed spot spraying and mowing. We do not want to mow during the nesting/active box turtle season (April through Thanksgiving). Spot-spraying undesirable plants invading the meadow will also be needed on occasion.

For more articles about meadows, see our News & Resources section. If you’re interested in replacing lawn with a pollinator meadow on your property, let us know by completing this property evaluation form.