Natural Look?

[lsanderson]

The Natural Look, With Much Effort
By JANE GARMEY

REMEMBER those cans of wildflower seeds that were on gift suggestion lists in every lifestyle magazine in the 1990s? Just sprinkle the seeds on the ground and wait for summer! There was only one problem: they usually didn’t work. Eventually a few flowers would appear, but nothing resembling the glorious multicolor meadow shown on the label.

Most weekend gardeners have long since gone back to reliable borders and parterres. But with the growing interest in sustainable gardening and the widespread dissatisfaction with the time, expense and chemical fertilizers required for traditional lawn care, meadows are becoming increasingly popular.

A perennial meadow in bloom, its colors constantly changing with the play of light and shadow, may be nature at its most alluring. Yet, as random and natural as a meadow looks, there is nothing haphazard about creating one. Planting a meadow, it turns out, is as rule-bound and time-consuming as planting any perennial border, according to Larry Weaner, a Pennsylvania landscape designer and one of the pioneers of meadow design in the United States.

Mr. Weaner, 55, has created more than 100 perennial meadows around the country, including 24 along the New York State Thruway, a commission he received in 1999. When he began designing meadows in 1982, after attending a summer course at Harvard in landscape design, there was little interest in them, he said. More