Meadows > Lawns

Lawns are bad. Bad for the environment, bad for local wildlife, they are useless, thirsty, and require a lot of maintenance just to keep them useless.

Oh, and also this:

With this out of the way, what are the alternatives? Well, one of the most compelling ones, at least for my taste, is turning a lawn into a meadow.

Meadows are awesome. They look beautiful and natural, they attract bees, humming birds, and all sorts of wildlife. When replacing a lawn, meadows reclaim and return bits of natural habitats to hundreds of local species. Meadows require basically no maintenance, no watering, no mowing, and if you ask me, meadows are infinitely more pleasing to the eye than any manicured lawn could possibly be.

The grand plan, February 2022

A couple of months ago, we demolished our backyard lawn and started preparations to turn it into a yard of wild flowers. Theoretically, this process should only take about 6 weeks, but due to unusually cold, wet, and long spring, I still don't have the kind of growth I was hoping for.

Day zero of the Meadow Project. April 2022.

Most of the yard is now covered with fresh foliage, and some plants are even identifiable, but it's nowhere near the kind of foliage I was expecting. The tallest plants are roughly 3-4 inches tall, whereas by now they should be closer to 2 ft tall. It makes the yard look sad, disheveled, and untidy. And while untidy is pretty much the look I'm going for, it's not that kind of untidy as of right now.

First signs of life. April 2022.

Basically, I'm just putting this on record here so that I not only remember this stage of my meadow but also so that I can follow up as it develops.

It's still very ugly, but we are getting there!

These are a few inches tall already!

Can't wait for it all to fall into place.

To learn more about meadows, check this out!