Department: Herbaceous
This was designed by Professor James Hitchmough and started in 2008. My first experience of this area, the South African Meadow and the Glasshouse Landscapes was a lot of mass and selective weeding, some days we would weed everything, big endless areas at a time or we would go in there and weed out what was most pernicious of the moment and likely to seed, so it would be Cardamine hirsuta or creeping thistle - Cirsium arvense or dandelions Taraxacum officinale.
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| Photo 1: N. American prairie meadow end of April, with emerging foliage of perennials and Pulsatilla flowering - which was quite an impressive sight even after they had finished because of their long lasting fluffy seedheads, especially in certain heights. I had never seen Pulsatillas grown in this way before. |
The ideas for these areas were low maintenance - without fertilising, watering, staking and minimum weeding as a more sustainable way of gardening and to attract wildlife. But as I came to learn that these areas were not begun ideally or managed well, this task became a firefighting exercise. The area was not cleared in the beginning as best as it could be - possibly due to the rush of time, so in the S. African area for example there were a lot of Equisetum. It was rumoured that the contractors who came in to clear the area to create these landscapes took away the good soil and then replaced it with not so good stuff. The management of weeds throughout the years has not been kept on top of so well, so they had gotten out of hand and also not enough selective weeding of dominant plants, so things like asters dominated it too much and decreased the diversity.
Although it is intended to be low maintenance, one is still intended to go in there with a selective eye, ideally there is a consistency of the management, e.g. observations and notes taken of what was going on year to year with the planting. But maybe it is because there has been too many changes to the department, so notes, experience and knowledge has gotten lost. When I was on the department I was excited by the potential of what it would look like, as the Pulsatillas looked quite good, but I realised that might have been its' best point when in late summer the masses of green dominating leaves from the unflowered Aster azureus and Aster oblongifolius, became punctuated pitifully by the paddled leaves Rudbeckia maxima and Silphium lacinatum, which are great plants but they seem to stand awkwardly above the asters with their abrupt height and some flopped over. I thought it maybe it would improve when the Asters flowered, but the green just became a wishy wishy hue of light bluey purple. There were touches of colour configuration that seemed like they could work but they were not satisfying enough.
I only got a better sense of how it should work when going to see Oxford Botanics - where a similar designed work but merging the N. American and S. African palette together - that is better and more consistently managed had more colour, variation, undulation of different heights and contrast. I realised from speaking to James Hitchmough himself, that though this was only one continent and simpler palette, it should still have elements of being more varied in species, colour, form etc, be more selective aesthetically and have a bit more impact. It was like managing self-sowers at Great Dixter with the view to create a good looking tapestry of plants at the end of it.
The main annual tasks of the meadow is to cut down all the plants with a reciprocating mower in late winter, burn off the weeds to keep the paths clear. Then the idea is that there is annual weeding and then thinning of things like the asters every two years.
Here is the general schedule of setting the meadow up and maintenance afterwards:
Year 0
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1st Year
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2nd Year
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3rd Year
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(Start of flowering)
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(Full flowering)
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Jan
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Select site
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Seed sowing
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Cut down
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Cut down
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Rake & firm sand
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Feb
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Jute mat cover
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Remove perennial weeds
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Flash burn
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Remove perennial weeds
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Mar
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Perennial weed control
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Irrigation
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Plant
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Sow
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Weed
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Weed
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Apr
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May
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Thin
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Thin
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Jun
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Weed
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Weed
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Jul
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Aug
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Sep
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Oct
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Soil cultivation
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Check balance of taller plants
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Check balance
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Nov
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Firm soil
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Dec
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Sand layer
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Over the last couple of years as the meadows have matured it has also naturally lost species like Echinacea pallida and Asclepias tuberosa, so there has been replanting of these. There are 25 species planted, most of them are from N. America but there are some from Europe and Asia. The general succession is Pulsatilla vulgaris and Geum triflorum in spring, followed by Echinacea pallida and Asclepias tuberosa, and then the tall Silphiums and Oenotheras before the Asters emerge later in the season.
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| Photo 2: Asclepias tuberosa - which I didn't realise would be quite so bright. |
Plant List
Spring Flowering
Dodecatheon meadia ‘Goliath’ (Shooting Star)
Geum triflorum (Prairie Smoke)
Pulsatilla vulgaris (Pasque Flower)
Viola pedatifida (Larkspur Violet)
Summer Flowering
Agastache rupestris (Threadleaf Giant Hyssop)
Asclepias tuberosa (Butterfly milkweed)
Baptisia australis var. minor (Blue Wild Indigo)
Castillega integra (Wholeleaf Indian Paintbrush
Dianthus carthusianorum (Carthusianum Pink)
Dracocephalum rupestre (Dragon Head)
Echinacea pallida (Pale Purple Coneflower)
Echinacea paradoxa (Bush’s Purple Coneflower)
Eryngium yucciflorum (Rattlesnake Master)
Euphorbia corollata (Flowering Spurge)
Helichrysum aureum (Helichrysum)
Liatris aspera (Blazing Star)
Oenothera macrocarpa subsp. incana (Big Fruit Evening Primrose)
Oenothera fruticosa subsp. glauca (Narrow Leaf Evening Primrose)
Penstemon barbatus subsp. coccineus (Penstemon)
Penstemon cobaea var. purpureus (Cobaea Beard Tongue)
Penstemon strictus (Stiff Beardtongue)
Phlox pilosa (Downy Phlox)
Rudbeckia maxima (Coneflower)
Ruellia humilis (Fringeleaf Wild Petunia)
Scutellaria baicalensis (Skullcap)
Silphium lacinatum (Compass Plant)
Silphium terebinthinaceum (Prairie Dock)
Autumn Flowering
Aster azureus (Skyblue Aster)
Aster oblongifolius (Aromatic Aster)
When I was there James came to visit and these were some notes that he left:
Its obviously very moisture stressed at present in a state of incipient wilting, if you want the Liatris to survive that were planted earlier I would suggest some irrigation asap (it is meant to be generally no watering - but this was for helping these establish first).
It could do with a bit of weed roguing to tidy it up, there are now creeping thistle and nettles poking out of the top, even if you just pull them you inhibit spread in this year when they are surrounded by shade generating prairie plants. In the longer term they need to have their rosettes painted with glyphosate in spring. There are also big clumps of grasses such as Yorkshire fog in flower, pull them out asap before the seed is liberated. An annual spring application of graminicide (or some hand weeding if adverse to this) is well worth doing to hold back grass invasion. Quite a few of the paths through are edges with the occasional weed, again just a bit of roguing would do lots to make it look under control.