The AMERICAN MEADOW GARDEN The AMERICAN MEADOW GARDEN Creating a Natural Alternative to the Traditional Lawn JOHN GREENLEE Photography by SAXON HOLT Copyright © 2009 by John Greenlee. All rights reserved. Photographs copyright © 2009 by Saxon Holt. Published in 2009 by Timber Press, Inc. The Haseltine Building 2 The Quadrant 133 S.W. Second Avenue, Suite 450 135 Salusbury Road Portland, Oregon 97204-3527 London NW6 6RJ www.timberpress.com www.timberpress.co.uk Printed in China Second printing 2010 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Greenlee, John. The American meadow garden : creating a natural alternative to the traditional lawn / John Greenlee ; photography by Saxon Holt. — 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-88192-871-6 1. Meadow gardening—United States. 2. Grasses—United States. 3. Natural landscaping—United States. I. Holt, Saxon. II. Title. SB439.G737 2009 635.9'64—dc22 2009019438 A catalog record for this book is also available from the British Library. CONTENTS Preface Acknowledgments Chapter 1. The Lure of the Meadow Chapter 2. How and Where Grasses Grow Chapter 3. Meadows for a Purpose Chapter 4. Accent on Design Chapter 5. A Portfolio of Meadow Gardens Chapter 6. Grasses for Meadows Chapter 7. Making a Meadow Chapter 8. Establishing and Maintaining a Meadow Resources Meadows to Visit Bibliography Index This was my first meadow garden. it was an urban southern california oasis—you’d never know you were surrounded by concrete and three million people. PREFACE WHY CREATE MEADOWS? For me, the reasons are many. Meadows are far more satisfying than either a lawn or traditional border, combining the best attributes of both: like a lawn, a calming place for the eye to rest, yet with the richness and complexity of a border. Unlike lawns, meadows are better for the environment, a safe habitat for beneficial insects and pollinators, a place where native ecology can thrive. Meadows, by attracting a diversity of “life,” are animated, alive with rhythmic movement, catching both wind and light. No lawn can do that. And— properly designed—meadows require less maintenance and consume significantly less resources than lawn or border. I hope this book explains my passion for meadows and persuades readers to make meadow gardens of their own. I cannot tell you when, exactly, in my adult life I became aware of my love for meadows; I can tell you that my love for these special spaces continues as strong as ever. You see, I’ve been growing grasses as a nurseryman for more than two decades, yet it seems like only yesterday that my affair with them began. I say “affair” because a meadow is like a seductive mistress. Grasses are sensual. You can smell them, and hear them, and watch them move. Meadows are sexy, just like lovers—they never stop changing, never ceasing to surprise. My love affair with meadows has stop changing, never ceasing to surprise. My love affair with meadows has become my life’s work. Now I make meadow gardens for a living. Kurt Bluemel’s poolside garden. Kurt was a great inspiration to me—he really got the grass movement going in America. Looking at where I grew up—the most sterile, “natureless” surroundings you could imagine—you might wonder how I ever wound up being called the Grass Guru. Our house was a ’60s cookie-cutter tract home in Fullerton, California— Orange County before it was the O.C. In those days, developers were busy building Everyman’s vision of the American Dream. They couldn’t cut down orange groves fast enough. Each L-shaped house had its own patch of lawn and a lollipop tree newly planted in the front. This was before “planned communities,” with few parks and no real nature, at least from a kid’s standpoint, as far as the eye could see. No tree was taller than an 8-foot stake, and no leaf ever turned a fall color that matched our third-grade reader. Remember your winding childhood creek? Ours was turned into a straight concrete storm drain. Our natural streams were literally paved into gutters. But. On the edge of the development, on a phase not yet built, was what we called “The Field.” It was our favorite play spot: there the street ended, and the gutter just spilled water out, making what seemed like a natural stream cutting through a seasonal meadow of grass. The field was bordered by a row of big old eucalyptus trees, a classic California windbreak for the remaining citrus groves. They made that field seem a thousand miles away from the new houses they hid. Some scientists say that we humans all have “The Savannah Syndrome,” a DNA chip passed on by our African ancestors, who began on the savannahs, that chip passed on by our African ancestors, who began on the savannahs, that draws us to the grasslands. But I think our instinctive love of grass happens when, as a child, you’re just as tall as the grass. I’ll never forget being flat on my back in that field, almost hypnotised by the swaying back and forth of grasses and staring at the clouds moving overhead. The wind, noisy in the eucalyptus trees and whispering in the grasses, is a song that still plays in my head. Late afternoons, catching the light, the grasses just seemed to glow. In the rainy season, we could pull up clumps of grass with small chunks of moist earth and lob them at each other. My brothers and I would play hide and seek, make trails and forts, and just enjoy being in the tall grass. I also remember the meadowlarks, and that indescribable liquid trill they make. You only find meadowlarks where you find grass; they make their nests on the ground, in the grass. I stumbled upon their sky-blue speckled eggs and wondered, why were they there? In that field, I think, is where meadows got under my skin. The first “real” nature I encountered came through summers spent at our Boy Scout Camp in the nearby San Bernardino Mountains. My favorite hike ended at a meadow opening in a Jeffrey pine forest. Jeffrey pines smell like vanilla on a hot summer’s day, and I vividly recall sitting there, out of sight in an old tree stump, watching hummingbirds fight over the nectar of the native scarlet columbines and purple penstemons that were sprinkled throughout this golden, scented meadow. I’d watch their acrobatics until it was time to head back to camp. At summer’s end it was back down the mountain to the smoggy suburbs below. I cut lawns on Saturdays and after school, and pulled weeds in people’s yards for money. I hated lawn mowers—for some reason, I never learned to love machines. I’d rather have been in that mountain meadow than chopping nature into oblivion. Half the “weeds” I pulled looked prettier than the gardens around them. The first Earth Day ever was during my senior year of high school. The environmental movement was just beginning, and my ecological awareness was beginning to clash with my declared college major—ornamental horticulture, at Cal Poly, Pomona. Most of my friends were majoring in turf grass management, but turf grass and I just never hit it off. To me, turf management classes seemed to be about “controlling” nature, a better living through chemistry approach—as if horticulture spelled danger and always required protective gear. But from where I stood, horticulture opened me up to the amazing world of plants. A whimsical piece by the garden artist Simple. This gate leads to a sunken garden, surroundedby bamboo to cool and screen me from the surrounding concrete jungle. I think Simple wasmaking fun of my always being trapped on L.A.freeways. Remember, I grew up near Los Angeles—the Cuyahoga River may have caught fire but the Los Angeles River was paved! Today, most of Los Angeles bears little resemblance to the ecology it once was. Much of southern California was originally oak savannah—grassland dotted with oaks. They say ships at sea could find the port of Los Angeles from 50 miles away, by seeing the poppy fields of Altadena blazing 30 miles inland. Poppies grow in grass. Los Angeles used to be grass. As a horticulture student, for the first time I began to understand the eclectic urban ecology around me. I also began to understand the world of gardening. Sure, lawns look great, but at what cost to the environment? My better living through chemistry college degree didn’t jibe with my growing awareness of the natural world. As a student, I put lawns in for clients, but what I really wanted to do was to fill their gardens with plants. Why plant a boring lawn bordered by unimaginative shrubs when you could fill a garden with flowers and create garden spaces with birds and butterflies—just like nature? I began to learn about plants, of all types—bulbs and perennials and palms and succulents. I fancied myself quite the plantsman when I got out of school. I thought I knew my plants. As it turned out, I had a lot more to learn. My epiphany came in 1984 at Kurt Bluemel’s nursery near Baltimore, Maryland. There—for the first time in a nursery—were the plants I’d played in, in “The Field.” The grasses. How I remember feeling cheated by my college plant ID professors! Where were those grasses from? How could they have hidden from me for so long? There in front of me were hundreds of varieties, row after row of grasses, waving in the wind. I remember saying to myself, “This is it.” That day in Kurt’s nursery, my love affair with meadows was sealed. Since no one on the West Coast was then growing these plants, I decided to do so myself. I made my first grass garden with my business partner at the time, Mike Sullivan, in San Marino, California. Greenlee Nursery was founded time, Mike Sullivan, in San Marino, California. Greenlee Nursery was founded in 1987 and continues to this day, the oldest specialty grass nursery on the West Coast. I’ve continued to make meadow gardens ever since, and I suppose I will till my dying day. I’ve never lost my sense of wonder and affection for meadows. I’ve created them in Florida, St. Louis, British Columbia, and Hawaii. I’ve made them on dune sand in Malibu and in the desert at Death Valley. Wherever you travel, if you look hard enough, you’ll find meadow grasses growing. Wherever you garden, there will be grasses that thrive and bring you joy. I’ve spent a good deal of my life making meadows. Let me help you make one.