The Grassy Knoll and a Pivot


New landscaping has triggered a pivot from garden to prairie here at Steepmeadow.

It is amazing what a few weeks will do. Three weeks ago, we had a pile of mud, clay, and rocks, and no steps down from our patio door to the yard, just a precipitous bone-breaking fall. The removal of the collapsing, not up to code deck and the carpentry to repair the damage to the house from the not-up-to-code attachment left us $6,000 poorer, and looking at an eyesore. Probably the most unsatisfying $6,000 we've ever spent.

Flash forward. Steps are built. 


We filled in the clay/mud/rock zone where the deck used to be with topsoil, and we got a mix of the poor man's bee lawn (Dutch white clover, red creeping fescue & sheep fescue) and quick grass to grow.

Aug. 9

Aug. 16

    Aug. 26

The ultimate plan for the space came with a realization and a pivot. 

While I do believe you could make yourself self-sufficient on 1/4 acre of land, the intensity of the cultivation is prohibitive. We have five mature trees on the property. All of them would have to come down. The front and back yards would need to be cultivated. Every inch of the yard would need to be covered in raised beds and intensively farmed, with careful attention to succession crops. It could be done, but it isn't practical.


We've had tremendous success of our pre-fab pollinator garden from Prairie Moon Nurseries. We have plants that we've never had any luck growing from seed: butterfly weed, wild blue indigo, spotted bee balm & more. And it works. In a small space between our two apple trees, we have bees all the time, and monarch butterflies and moths. It really works. We put a couple of different insect watering stations in as well because it has been so very dry this summer.

Given the near impossibility of self-sufficiency, we're now pivoting to prairie restoration. I have two seed mixes from Prairie Moon that we'll be putting out in early November: "Pollinator Palooza" & "Conquer the Clay." 

We're going to eliminate three 4x8 garden beds at the bottom of the hill. One is the strawberry bed next to the raspberry patch. 4x8 produces about a handful of berries in June, and then sits idle the rest of the season. Two of our beds are now shaded by a sucker tree that the neighbors let grow into the fence from something that could have been solved with a weed-whacker to a major shade tree that has cast darkness where once there was full sun. So both of those beds will be turned to prairie. The "Conquer the Clay" mix is destined for the grassy knoll where we set up the Steepmeadow sign and a bug hotel. (In this circular space, we planted an annual wheat grass that will go away next spring.) We want to turn our garden and yard into a sanctuary for birds and bees and butterflies and moths and whatever other creatures need a spot to be that isn't sterilized with poison to cultivate a monoculture. 

There's an entire street nearby that we call the sterilized street: Lydia. There, nothing grows but grass. Intensive watering is needed even in this draught. There isn't a "weed" to be seen, something that can only be achieved by soaking the ground with poisons that you can't let children or pets near. 

This has always puzzled me: Why have a lawn if you can't have children and pets on it? What's the point of creating some weird artificial, toxic space to look at.

So there's going to be a shift in priorities. Definitely quite a bit of garden. The tomatoes are coming steadily now, and they, to name just one of the crops, are delicious. But, about 1/4 of the space that used to be garden will go back to prairie over the next few years. Because it is a multi-year process. 







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