Spotted Beebalm (Monarda puntuata)

Pocket meadows for insects and birds

Pocket meadows are multi-layered plant communities — a tapestry of native grasses, sedges and flowers adapted to specific site conditions.

Each plant in a pocket meadow fulfills an ecological niche: covering the ground, filling gaps, supporting specialist bees, providing nesting habitat or ensuring that pollen, nectar and seeds are available throughout the seasons.

aster and goldenrod

Pocket meadows transform high-maintenance lawns into a four season, climate resilient sanctuaries. They restore biodiversity, reconnect fragmented habitats, build climate resilience, restore damaged soil ecology and bringing magic to your neighbourhood.

bumble bee approching nodding beggarticks flower in a sea of switchgrass

Grasses and sedges, missing from most pollinator plantings, are essential in meadow plant communities. They're host plants for Skipper Butterflies and other Lepidoptera, insect habitat that for insect eating birds, nesting sites for ground nesting birds, winter shelter for native bees and a critical winter food source for birds.

pocket meadow in a ditch with Cardinal Flower, Joe Pye Weed, Rudbeckia and Sedges

We designed seven pocket meadow native plant communities for the Kingston area.

  • Sunny boulevard: Lower growing (under 1 metre) tough plants that can handle poor dry soil, snow, dogs, salt and compaction.
  • Keystone bird buffet: Taller Goldenrods, Asters and Coneflowers are keystone plants, supporting the most insects, bees, butterflies, moths and birds. Bluebirds and Tree Swallows love nesting in these insect-rich meadows. Birds rely on the Lepidoptera (caterpillars) they host to raise their young. In the fall and winter, many birds rely on grass and flower seeds to get them through winter.
  • Alvar grassland: Alvars, common west of Kingston, are drought dynamic native grasslands that thrive in poor, shallow, rocky soil.
  • Woodland edge: Woodland edge plants thrive in the partial shade of trees.
  • Ditches, depressions and wet spots: Wet spots are fabulous places for specialized plant communities.
  • Flowering lawn: Low growing, flowering tapestry that, unlike conventional turfgrass lawns, is teeming with life. Flowering lawns can handle some foot traffic.
  • Forest floor: Not a meadow, but even shady spots can support pollinators, specialist bees and birds by planting a community of shade loving Goldenrods, Asters, Violets and more. Sedges, some of which are evergreen, are important host plants for butterflies and moths and birds love the seeds. Carpenter Bees prefer to nest in dead wood in shady areas.

Niches in space

layers of a plant community: matrix or ground layer, seasonal theme or functional layer, and structural layer
Image: Tomas Rainer and Claudia West, Planting in a Post-Wild World

To increase biodiversity (and beauty) each pocket meadow includes canopy, seasonal theme and ground hugging layers.

pocket meadow plants and their diverse root systems
Image: The Meadoway

Underground, pocket meadows include plants with a diversity of root systems. Diverse root systems increase biodiversity and resilience due to resource partitioning (sharing of resources). Mat forming root systems protect the upper soil layer. Deep fibrous roots and tap roots share the space below.

Niches in time

cool season grasses and sedges grow during spring, then in summer warm season grasses come into their own
Image: Larry Weaner/NDAL

Some plants, such as warm season grasses, are most active in warm weather. Others, such as sedges and cool season grasses, are most active in the cool weather of spring and fall. Pocket meadows include both to help keep out weeds.

meadows succeed to thickets which succeed to forests
Image: Larry Weaner/NDAL

Pocket meadows include a mix of plants with different life strategies (pioneers, short lived and long lived). When you kill your lawn, you've started the process of succession. Pioneers and short lived perennials help establish the meadow during the first few years. They may also pop up again even once long lived plants have established themselves if there's a disturbance that opens a gap. And, because the Kingston area want to be a forest, if you don't 'weed' out shrub and tree seedlings, your meadow will eventually transition to a forest.

mother patches - seed pool model
Image: Landscape Laboratory

Once established, each pocket meadow becomes a mother patch — a species rich gene pool —  with the wind, ants, mammals (including humans!) and birds dispersing seeds.

Preparation

Smother the area for three months (or until existing vegetation dies) using cardboard, old leaf bags or ramboard, then top with arborist woodchips, straw, grass clippings, pine needles or leaves.

In 2025, we will work with five homeowners to help them convert a patch of turf grass into a pocket meadow. We'll be experimenting with winter sowing to grow plugs and with starting pocket meadows from seed. If you're interested, email acorn@littleforests.org

Together, let’s weave a web of reciprocity. Let’s plant pocket meadows as songs, poems, love letters to the land.

References