The 21st Century Matriarch

I contacted a nearby nursery as I started to realize how big a task creating the new bed in my front yard was going to be. A landscape designer came out to look at my yard and then I went to the nursery to look at what they have…and get a better idea on their approach. I’ll get their estimate next week.

On the plus side –

The new landscaped bed will look good sooner than if I do it myself. It would have layers of topsoil/compost covered by finer oak mulch and it would have a flat rock edge that would make it easier to mow around. Part of it would be 18 inches above the rest.
The plants will be bigger than the native plant supplier would provide. They have some of the plants I want in stock: golden ragwort, wild indigo (gold and blue), American Beautyberry, and serviceberry.
They would handle all the labor and logistics for creating the new area.
They had rattlesnake master in stock and I remembered seeing in on my prairie walks…it would add some drama to the front yard planting.

The negatives could be -

Cost – although I don’t have the estimate yet…but it will obviously cost more that if I did it myself.
They don’t have spicebush and I really wanted that instead of serviceberry in the front yard.
Some of the plants might be varieties of natives rather than the native form of the plants.
They would use roundup as part of the initial bed creation.

I’ll wait to get the estimate before making a decision, but I would very much want the initial bed creation and some of the plantings to be done by professionals. I can fill in with more plants next spring if I want.

I’ve already ask my arborist for another load of wood chips…so, if I accept the proposal from the nursery, I’ll use the load of woodchips in other parts of the yard rather than in the front….and I might need to move some of the mulch I put in the front yard to other places before the new bed is created.

Previous posts about Big Landscaping Change

I visited my 4th prairie of the spring/early summer last week for a Missouri Prairie Foundation guided hike – Schuette Prairie. It was a late afternoon hike with occasional light rain and rainbows adding to the adventures. Some the of the prairie plants are beginning to look familiar to me! It’s good to see the progression of development over time and the differences in plant communities on each of the prairies.

Schuette’s Prairie has some woody plants that are kept at bay by periodic prescribed burns…but not actively eradicated. The woody plants we noticed were persimmon, winged sumac, button bush, and sassafras. The first two are pictured below. The button bush is an indicator that part of the prairie retains a lot of moisture.

There are also areas of the prairie that have very shallow soil over dolomite and there are stands of prairie dock that grow in those areas. The rest of the prairie has sandstone under the soil (and the soil layer is thicker).

Lead plant was a plant I remembered from precious prairie hikes. This time it was blooming and the contrasting colors popped in the late afternoon light.

I saw more bugs that I was able to photograph. While it was raining, they were not as noticeable, but we had enough times when it was not raining to see them more active.

The compass plants are not blooming yet but their sandpaper leaves are very recognizable. They are a reason to come back again later in the season.

There were two types of coneflowers in bloom: Pale Purple Coneflower and Yellow Coneflower.

Goat Rue was a new-to-me plant. Maybe I had seen it elsewhere, but this was the first time I had seen them in bloom.

My favorite plant of the hike was the bunchflower. The flowers are showy and are above most of the other vegetation.

There were two kinds of milkweed. Neither one had any holes in their leaves….yet.

The orchids were blooming…small and down in the vegetation…worth noticing.

Quite a few of the prairie blazing star plants had galls in the very tip of the stalk…so they are not going to bloom normally…but the gall looked interesting at this stage.