Starting a Native Prairie Flower Garden

My Front lawn is south facing and sits on a gravel ridge. It gets brown every year – by July, and NO, I do not want to water my lawn. I live on an acreage and refuse to water that much lawn. So what to do? Drought tolerant plants, which quickly lead down the rabbit hole of native prairie flowers and grasses. Of course they would thrive – this is where they were meant to live!

I read a dozen books on native prairie flowers, native prairie grasses and landscaping, (must be a semester worth of reading! lol.) perused as many online native seed catalogues, and hit the order button.

My Native Prairie Flower Garden

I also collected seed from my local area, as close as my own pasture and adjacent drainage ditches. Good seed collecting practice says to collect no more than 5-10% of native seeds from an area in a year so that there is enough for plants to self seed, and perhaps feed local birds. These included joe pye weed/ purple boneset (Eupatorium maculatum), purple aster (Symphyotrichum), narrow leaf sunflower (Helianthus angustifolius), black eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta) and big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii). The trick is to collect seeds that are mature, but still can be found on the plant! Big bluestem must be collected just before the seeds blow off in October.

I also ordered a few seeds from a local native prairie seed grower and supplier, Prairie Originals. Local seed will be hardier than seed from another locale. These included June grass (Koeleria macrantha), blue grama grass (Bouteloua gracilis), wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa), blue vervain (Verbena hastata) and Culver’s root (Veronicastrum virginicum).

Many native prairie plants require stratification in order to germinate. This mimics cool, moist spring conditions. I folded seeds into damp paper towel, not wet enough to squeeze water out, and put them in a bag or container. Next year I might try coffee filters because the seeds stick to the paper towel. Then they go in the fridge for six weeks, opening and checking weekly to aerate. Some got moldy, so I just changed the paper towel and they were fine.

Many flowers need light to germinate. I set up some LED fixtures by Monios. Seedlings need more blue light than older plants, so make sure your LEDs have blue as well as red light. I also set up some old fluorescent  tube fixtures with one warm and one daylight bulb each. Lights should only be a few inches above the tops of plants. I also covered with plastic wrap for warmth and humidity. My June grass came up in three days! All my seeds from Prairie Originals had excellent germination rates.

The seeds I collected were variable in their germination. The big bluestem, Joe pye weed (not known for good germination), narrow leaf sunflower and giant hyssop came up well. The purple aster and black eyed Susans were only ok. Unfortunately, the drought tolerant seeds I collected didn’t germinate at all – Echinacea, heath/many flowered aster and harebell. One good thing though, I had flicked Echinacea seeds from my existing plants all over my flower bed and a thick carpet of them came up all on their own!

Yes, I went overboard and started too many seeds! I sat in on a webinar with a lady who plants boulevards with native plants in Toronto. She said when she doesn’t have enough grow lights to go around, she sometimes puts her plants on a twelve hour rotation, instead of the preferred fourteen hours. So that’s what I did!

Don’t forget to harden off plants that are started indoors (ask me how I know), beginning with one hour of sheltered shade outdoors, working their way up in time and sun over a period of a week or two.

I planted my seedlings outside in June, after risk of frost. It rained so much that year that I never watered all summer. Even the Joe pye and blue vervain did well on my front lawn. We’ll see how they do this year (I did plant some in low lying areas as well). In fact, they all exceeded my expectations. I couldn’t have asked for more from them. Big blue had seed heads (not always expected the first year), I had two Culver’s root blooms (not expected till year three), and I collected giant hyssop leaves to dry for tea. Did I mention the blue grama seed head eyebrows were so darn cute?

I look forward to seeing my native prairie flowers and grasses start to peak out of the ground soon. I have a few new seedlings to add to the garden this year, but you’ll have to stick around and see how that turns out!