Turning My Backyard Into a Butterfly Haven
I haven’t spent so much per ounce for plant material since I was a miscreant teenager decades ago. These three bags of seeds from Prairie Nursery in Westfield, Wisconsin, however, promise a longer-lasting high – a Monarch butterfly-friendly meadow that will sweep halfway around my house, transforming my backyard from a shabby lawn to, I hope, a flower-filled habitat that should be gorgeous all seasons.
Even during its winter sleep, it should offer the forms and russets of warm-season grasses and wildflowers with a certain austere beauty. This project has brought its own unique concerns. One and three-quarters pounds of seed may be enough to plant my 5,500 square feet of newly vacated soil, but only if evenly distributed. However, uniformity of distribution will not only be crucial to success, it will also be challenging, given that I intend to sow the seed by hand.
Straight from their bags, I have maybe a dozen handfuls of seed. I won’t be able to stretch this to cover the entire designated space unless I bulk it up markedly. In fact, the seed supplier, Prairie Nursery, recommends mixing each quarter-pound of seed with two bushels of some such carrier. That means I need 14 bushels. I received a number of recommendations about what to mix with the seeds for added bulk.
Finding the Right Filler
Vermiculite was the suggestion of a local nursery woman whose opinion I respect and who has planted a number of meadows of her own. Prairie Nursery recommends either sawdust, sphagnum peat, or cracked corn. I don’t have a local source for cracked corn, and anyway, scattering bushels of that around the yard sounds likely to attract unwanted wildlife. Vermiculite and sphagnum peat both come at a hefty environmental cost, which I’m reluctant to pay.
That leaves sawdust, which I naively thought would be easily available and I assumed would be free. Finding a source of sawdust, however, proved not so easy. Apparently, it is no longer a waste product but rather a recycled resource. I called a local sawmill and was informed that it sold all the sawdust it produces to a farmer. A stop at a small roadside milling operation with a beautiful pile of sawdust brought the same answer.
Apparently, sawdust makes good bedding for chickens, horses, and cattle, and once mixed with their manures, is an excellent source of organic matter for crop soils. Indeed, the Forest Service publishes a handbook on uses for sawdust, which makes it clear that this stuff is a valuable as well as versatile commodity. Who knew?
A Fortuitous Finding
Fortunately, I have a friend, the highly skilled craftsman who built the timber frame for my house, who will let me have some of his sawdust. So, on Wednesday, I’ll be driving up to his workshop in northern Massachusetts, where he has promised to fill the back of my truck with his front-end loader. I feel rich already.
My father was a compulsive tree planter, but it was my mother who taught me the finer points of gardening. Her homeschooling was followed by two years in the New York Botanical Gardens School of Professional Horticulture and then ten years as a horticulturist at an Olmsted Brothers-designed estate on the Hudson River Palisades.
I’ve worked as a horticultural journalist for 35 years, contributing to publications ranging from Martha Stewart Living to the Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society and The New York Times. My most recent book is Nature Into Art: The Gardens of Wave Hill, which is a tour of the lessons to be learned from that great public garden.
A Butterfly-Friendly Meadow
I’m currently focusing on my new podcast at thomaschristophergarden.com, which features weekly interviews with leaders of environmentally-informed gardening. My special enthusiasms include sustainable gardening, especially sustainable lawns, heirloom chicken breeds, and recreating vintage New England hard ciders.
I hope you’ll follow up in a couple of years and let me know how my meadow project is going. In a similar would-be wild area I planted with a carefully chosen seed mix, I had great results the first couple of years, and indeed, some native grasses and fewer perennial wildflowers carry on very well. Definitely, there’s been a noticeable uptick in butterflies and other pollinators.
But the area is increasingly invaded by unwanted non-native species with spreading roots that make them virtually impossible to suppress. I might have had better luck had I started with a more depleted soil. Too late now. Thank you for pointing out the environmental cost of vermiculite and sphagnum peat. We gardeners need to be more conscious of the embedded environmental costs of the supplies we use.
Great article, and I hope you post updates on your meadow project. Having sown hundreds of meadows and consulted on thousands more, I’d also recommend builders’ sand or sandbox sand as a dispersing agent with wildflower mixtures when being broadcasted. I find that it mixes well with the density of the seed, and with the light color of the sand, you can visually see when your seed is being sown. It’s inexpensive and easy to find as well.
I avoided sand because it’s very heavy in bulk, especially when dampened, but my sources recommend that you dampen the carrier so that the seed attaches to its particles and remains mixed. I don’t know if you have a homebrew store nearby, but you can get rice hulls pretty cheap there. Often, you can get an even better price if you order a whole bag.
Sounds like a great tip! Thank you. I see that more and more people are creating butterfly and bee-friendly meadows, and I’m really happy about that because in my grandma’s city, there are markedly fewer insects than in previous years. What I decided to do in her small yard was to grow a mix of plants that will create a meadow. It can not only positively affect the environment but also attract butterflies. I ordered this pack of seeds with 40 different varieties of flowers, and when the flowers started to bloom, my grandma said that this idea was amazing.
I’m excited to transform my own backyard at A1 Landscape Construction in Temecula, California into a butterfly haven using a similar approach. With the right mix of native plants and a bit of creativity, I’m confident I can create a beautiful and thriving meadow that will attract a diverse array of butterflies and other pollinators. It’s going to be a labor of love, but the rewards of watching my backyard transform into a vibrant, living ecosystem will make it all worthwhile.
