 And to end it off, we have a talk for the sophisticated gardeners. I feel prairie metal gardens and I know like personally I don't enjoy mowing my lawn or spending my weekend mowing the lawn. I'd always think it'd be a dream someday to just kind of maybe cut the lawn in half and scatter some seeds out there and just watch the ever-changing colors of wildflowers, just adding beauty, the butterflies fluttering. And I, you know, it can happen. I've seen our, you know, our next speaker is Barb Leskowitz. She is the research specialist at the NDSU Gardens and she has made this happen. She has established a beautiful prairie metal and tonight she's going to tell us how it's done and even tell us what it is. So Barb, welcome to the forums. Okay, well thank you very much Tom. Yep, tonight we're going to talk about what metal gardens are and how in theory they get established and then I'll show you specifically what we have at NDSU. So the thing is, what is a metal garden? And you can look at a lot of different sites and there's a lot of different definitions. Basically it's an open area with grasses and non woody plants that's not mowed or maintained like a lawn would be. Now specifically a prairie metal garden is going to focus on the grasses. This is my definition, you know, more than a lot of things. Focus on the grasses and then add plants, the native prairie plants as accents. You could also have other types of metal gardens if you're closer to a woodland or a wetland area but I'm going to focus tonight on the prairie areas because if you look at what the whole central part of the United States used to be before it was settled, it was the central grasslands of North America and it was basically split into three sections. We had the tall grass prairie which is the eastern kind of purplish grayish area. I'm not sure how it comes through on everybody's monitor. The middle area was mixed grass and then the short grass prairie was on the western edge and it was really divided by moisture more than anything where the tall grass prairie on the eastern edge had more moisture. Predominant grasses there were more of the big blue stems, the little blue stems, and in the short grass prairie that was the driest area and that was dominated by shorter grasses like buffalo grasses and some of the gramas. So you know as these areas got settled and they got farmed and ranched, we saw grazing and cultivation change the landscape. The fire that was so very prominent to clean the areas of debris that was suppressed and then with the new cropping systems and the new people coming in there was weedy alien plant species that came in. So this is all kind of changed the landscape to what we see today. Now for those of us that are lucky enough to be close to Minnesota, there is an area at the Buffalo River State Park and Clay County, Minnesota. They have the Blue Stem Prairie Preserve which they've had for gosh at least 30 years and that is a beautiful spot of native prairie. So it's a good example again of what was here before all the people came and colonized it. So why do we want to plant a meadow garden well? Like I just said we want to reintroduce that vegetation that used to be here that thrived here for many many years. By bringing back those native plants, in theory we'll have lower maintenance. They're plants that grow well in the clay soil. They don't need a lot of amendments. They grow well with ever kind of water if you pick the right plants. So you know less inputs as far as herbicides and pesticides, less mowing and that sort of thing. Although we will see in a minute that it's not no maintenance but it's less different maintenance than a lawn. And then just the attraction to the birds, the insects, other wildlife, you know the key gardening trend right now is pollinators, planting pollinator plants to feed the monarchs and bees and a meadow garden will definitely do that plus bring in a lot of other things some good some bad but it is fun to watch that. And not only is it fun to watch the wildlife but it's also fun to watch the bed change not only from spring to summer to winter but also each year you're going to see something different in that meadow garden and again we'll see that with some pictures I have of the bed we have at NDSU. So just quickly your site selection and this is the NDSU bed it's split into two sections but we want to try to mimic that natural prairie environment. So you want a site that has full sun at a minimum it needs to have six hours of sunlight and with minimal tree competition because the prairies did not have a lot of trees unless you were by the river or maybe in some more wet areas. So try to get an area away from the trees. Drainage, I didn't look at real closely here because you're going to have different drainage sites within your site and on the picture you see here on the right side that's a lower area and that when we have more rains that tends to stay wetter than the area on the left which also has some tree competitions. So I tried to adjust the plants accordingly. Now one thing to note is that this is not a garden for everybody and some people think that this is just weeds. So if you are in the city limits you might want to check with your local city or county ordinances as far as what the lawn maintenance and the weed or weed maintenance codes are because you don't want to have the city inspectors come and show up. So you need to make it very clear that this is what you want to do and it's not just a pile of weeds that you don't want to maintain. As far as site preparation now with these two and the two beds in the forefront here I had kept them free of weeds for a while with Roundup. So I didn't really have a lot to do to clean it up but if you are going to put it into an area with existing vegetation there's a few things you can do if it's a small area you can smother the vegetation with a dark tarp or some plastic or boards for a couple months and kill everything. You can turn and cultivate the soil every few weeks for a full growing season but when you do that you're gonna after you till it you're gonna get more weeds growing so that's why you really need to do it for a full season ahead of time and then before you plant I wouldn't till again because you don't want to bring up any more weed seeds. As far as plant selection and this is with any garden you want to match the plants to your site. Keep in mind if you're going to try to duplicate the prairie situation that the prairies were historically 60 to 80 percent grasses and 20 to 40 percent flowering plants so that was my goal with the garden at NDSU was to get more of the grass to be the focus with fewer of the flowers but the interesting thing is that there are greater numbers of species of flowers within the meadow just more grasses but fewer species. You want plants that are going to bloom spring summer and fall just like with your perennial borders and you want short medium and tall plants so plant selection might be fun or it might not be if you want to fill all those categories and then if you're doing seed starting you want some quick germinating annuals with slower establishing perennials because establishing beds from seed can be frustrating because a lot of the perennials need to go through you know cold wet periods so where do we get our plants how do we get them going as I mentioned earlier you can start it from seed which is less expensive might be more challenging because especially the perennial species don't always germinate right away and a seed started bed will be slower to establish you can order plants which will be more expensive but you'll establish your bed more quickly but you might not have the same variety of plants to choose from if you were to go with seed. Now three nurseries that I have personally worked with and I'm not endorsing any specific nursery I'm just my experience with these three has been great these are all Minnesota based nurseries it's prairie restorations prairie moon nursery and morning sky greenery and nice thing about at least I know prairie moon is that they have seed mixes already to go that go for a specific if you have a dry site or if you want to attract certain pollinators not only seeds but you can also get plants from them and then all three were very easy to work with and they had good quality plants and good information there are many many more resources out there these are just three that like I said I had personal experience with now another way to get seeds or plants is find friends or neighbors who maybe have some of these plants that will share with you and once your meadow is established that's a whole stock for you you can divide plants or you can collect your own seed and get more plants that way one thing I want to mention is never remove any plant material from a stator a federal park and if you're out driving the backcountry roads looking for flowers always get permission from the landowners before you take anything now establishing the garden you're gonna seed it you want to do it in the spring after the frosts but before the heat of the summer or really you know if you can really good time to do it is late in the fall early winter right before a heavy snowfall under open ground because that snow will help compact the soil in the seed into the soil and then provide moisture and then the seeds that need to go through the stratification and the scarification will do it naturally over the winter if you're putting plants in you want to do it as soon as you can in the spring but these plants will have a whole season to grow and thrive and even though they should be drought tolerance that first season you want to water them well because they need to be established before they become drought tolerant now maintenance first year after planting the biggest problem is probably going to be the weeds and like I said this is not a no maintenance garden and for me the weeds have been the biggest the biggest issue so one thing it's recommended to do as your plants grow is keep them mowed down so even the flowers don't really flower it'll help keep the tree seedlings down and also help keep the weeds from blooming and by mowing them you're encouraging your perennial plants to put down deeper roots so in the long run it's better for your plants if you're pulling weeds you can do that too but you have to be careful not to pull up your desirable plants and you also have to know the difference between the weeds and the plants that you planted that's very important you can use an herbicide and I do use Roundup but you have to be very careful because it's not if it hits other plants they're going to die too so that's something you have to be very careful with and I have a DR trimmer that you can see on the left there which works really well because you can kind of move it up and down if you want to go over some plants it's not like a mower that just takes everything down to one level and then a weed wacker too is a good thing to use like I said not everything is a weed I've had the heliapsis on the right show up in my garden and I didn't plant that and I like that but some certain plants are definitely weeds and you want to keep them out or get rid of them and of course dandelions thistles are one thing you want to keep on any tree seedlings goldenrod which sometimes goldenrod is in a seed mix for wildflowers and I just have learned the hard way that that will take your whole garden over so goldenrod is I think a very bad weed find weed not weed leafy spurge I didn't put up there and check your local county noxious weeds also but you want to make sure you keep all of those out of the garden and then mowing versus burning you know as I said earlier the fires used to take care of a lot of the problems and you know burning would be great but again you need to get permits you know if you're in the middle of the city you're not gonna be able to burn probably so mowing is gonna be your best bet and this is our garden in May on the left before mowing and on the right after mowing and you want to do it in the spring after the plants have dropped their seed and then probably clear up all the debris so that everything can start fresh again so let's just take a look specifically at the garden I have at NDSU and I started it because I went to a seminar by John Greenley he's out of California he's a grass ecologist and a meadow designer and I went to a seminar he gave in January of 2011 and it got me really excited and I had some empty spots in the gardens I had to fill so the book on the right the American Meadow Garden I got that it was a really good reference he also has the encyclopedia of an ornamental grasses which also is a good reference for the grasses so these are books you might want to check out and just see what he has to say and I you know that's why I decided to go ahead and do it so initially I did put mostly plants in that first year and I put mostly grasses in Buda Lua, Cordopendula, and Gracilis which a couple of the Grammas, Calerium, Macranta, Junegrass, Little Bluestem, Schizociram, Scoparium. I stayed away from Big Bluestem I didn't want to have really tall grasses in there I wanted them to stay somewhat manageable. Sporibolis heterolepsis which is peri drop seed, Stypa, Viridula, Green Needlegrass, and then the only grass I put in that was not native to the prairie was Helicotrachin which is a blue oak grass and now in you know last year 2016 that one has really declined and the others are more vigorous so I learned my lesson that maybe that's not a good thing. As a species specimen grass it's really pretty but it did not work well in the ecosystem with the other grasses. Now Echinacea angustifolia it says it was the only wildflower I put in but I also put in ZZ aurea that year which is golden Alexander which we'll see on this slide. So in 2012 I added most a good number of the blooming plants and again these are all native to the prairies some asters, purple prairie clover, couple Echinaceas, a blue flag iris which I put in that area that was a little more wet. Tall blazing star which is great for attracting the Marnot monarchs, Monarda fistulosa, and the couple verbinas, and then the ZZ aurea. And then in 2014 and 2015 I added a few more things. The allium stilatum in the center of your screen is prairie onion and I had a specimen plant in the bed so I just divided that. The aqua lesia, the prairie smoke, and the prairie spiderwort, excuse me I got in as plants so I didn't start those. And then the matricaria which is actually noxious weed in a few counties I put in in a dry spot but last year I didn't see it. So that was in 2015 I put it in in 2016 I didn't see it so it kind of disappeared which is maybe a good thing. And then volunteers that I'm saying this is for me this is really fun to see these flowers come up when I didn't plant them was the milkweed. Again that's considered kind of a weedy species but because of the monarchs and the pollinators I'm gonna keep it in and keep an eye on it. Some galardia or blackened flowers showed up some false sunflower and then a few rootbeckias so that that's really need to see those come in. Oops currently I have 19 different species of flowers and seven species of grasses. My goal was to have the grasses be more of the focus but as you can see from this photo this was taken in September of 2016 I had an explosion of smooth aster and it's a really beautiful sea of blue but it's not what I wanted so this coming year I'm gonna have to somehow manage that but a few years ago I had a similar situation with swamp verban and the next year I only had a few plants. You know what happens when you get these big populations of one species is that if there's one little bug or one little disease that shows up it takes out the whole grouping so with the verbena I think I had a little insect that really took it down and I'm hoping with the aster maybe something will take it down and it won't show up as much. I know the first year I planted it the rabbits were eating it so I was a little concerned and I was worried then I had all this so the rabbits maybe need to come back and eat some of my asters. So I have started some seed I harvested some seed from my other plants and I've got them going in the greenhouse I'm gonna put some more grasses out there probably go in with roundup if I see a lot of the aster come up but just see what happens I guess. So some final thoughts. I just this very important to remember this is not a no maintenance garden this is not something that you're gonna throw some seeds out in the next in a month to have a beautiful blooming prairie. It takes patience it takes time it takes definitely takes maintenance and you can see the garden at NDSU in 2011 which by the way is planted in August which is not recommended and it was a dry August so I had to do a lot of watering. Two years later in 2013 a little more full but again my mistake there was not making it more full because I have been fighting weeds constantly because of those open spaces and then 2016 last year again the aster is not blooming there but it's definitely the primary plant. If you're a gardener that likes everything in their place and organize this is not the garden for you this is more of a free-flowing kind of wild garden so again you know there are plants you could plant that would be a little more easier to maintain and that is what looking and that's also the fun thing about it you can really tailor it to your specific gardening style and just have fun watching it and don't expect it to stay the same from year to year it's and that's the fun thing about it is watching the changes so that is it and it's open enough for questions and we've got some already how about question for Mackintosh County without mowing can you start a metal garden on a drain field of a septic system I don't know why not sir for my septic system they recommended metal garden because you're limited what you can grow on the set in the drain field that's the issue how about during the first year are you mowing everything including the grasses yes that's a good question if you do more everything because again that that mowing action kind of helps the roots go down so that helps them establish more so you are mowing everything okay the question about what do you do about those when the grass comps enlarge so much or they seed in there's so close together that they don't allow space for the for the forms of the broad-leaf flowers I haven't had that problem yet and actually some of the flowers are coming up in the pumps so if that is a problem I would I would take the big pump of grass I would divide it and put it around some more but in the competition at least in the garden I've had a competition seems to prevent that at this point but I want more grasses so I'm kind of fun I don't want those flowers coming up all over you know that aster problem when you say when you're threatening it by going in with roundup to manage it do you mean you're gonna start the whole prairie garden over or just to select this phrase no what I will do I will selectively go out this spring and maybe do some spot spring or do the glove trick where you get you put a glove on latex glove and another cotton glove over it you get the rounded body you kind of touch it up on a plant so it's very specific where you go I'd be very careful with my sprayer I might later go around and dig out some of the aster that's by plants and open up the areas a little bit more so there's a couple different things I'll probably do okay here's a recommendation for this is from a golden rod lover stiff golden rod so doggo rigida there's one with it our IG ID 8 it's a clump forming golden rod that doesn't spread it has flat top flower clumps similar to yarrow right and there's some newer cultivars on the market also that are not as aggressive but some of this great straight species I'm still gonna fire beware yeah can you tell us what plants attract monarchs um the leotrists are good at attractors you know they a lot of them will it just depends if the monarchs are in the area at the time but I know for sure we have milk they gotta have milk that's all about but I had one leotrists one year that was just covered with monarchs just but then it didn't last very long I mean a couple years later it was dead so okay um well does here's a question does the leotrists work in the prairie garden yes absolutely that plant yeah there's and there's some different species of it too something better okay there's a couple problems with this person's wild prairie rose resistant black fungus on the stems suckers coming out of the flower bed and into the lawn mm okay so the first problem is the suckering of the wild prairie rose what do you want to do about that kill the prairie I know I thought you said you had some round up well I'm not putting any right here so there you go we can otherwise suppressing suckers just with good lobbying sheers yeah judicious it's not very it's an aggressive plant right it's not it's it's a wild prairie rose also what's the best way to enhance an existing area of native plants without killing the existing plants I would go in and maybe pull some crates and holes in there and pop in some different plants I guess I'm not sure exactly what the ball would be but yeah don't get out the rotor tiller and start going nuts just make a few holes and pop a few plants in and in your career in your garden how much of it was seeded versus plants I did not seed well that's not sure I've started most of it in the greenhouse or else I got plants in but I can't remember what year it was I had some leftover seed so I went out in November before we had a lot of snow and I just spread all my seed out that I had but I don't know what took and what didn't but what for I for what I actually put in it was all plants how about Todd what are the best prairie flowers for fall asters are great they don't overtake your bed there's a couple different species of asters what else have I had a lot of them are summer like Liatris and Monarda there's probably some I just can't think of because the asters are really that's the fall fall that's that's really special okay we've got it we've got so many others officiate gardeners here barb help us out swamp milkweed blooms in the fall and then that question another problem on that while prairie rose we identified the black fungus on the rose is a rust and there's not a lot of roses around they can prune out the infected plants and destroy them see any other questions out there also barb might talk about your garden itself you know it's available all the time 24-7 in the public and you have field days in the summer yeah I think July the end of July this year we have our field day it might be the 25th but we'll get information out on that any other gardens always open for people to walk through or they can contact me I can give them a tour you try to label everything so they can see what's out there and that's a great resource and you know if anybody's coming into the Fargo area they should stop by and see that beautiful metal garden and you know a world-class day lily collection right there yeah and that's a beautiful annuals including some variety that you've never seen before anything else you want to share okay no other questions so barb thank you very much it was really a nice way to end the night it's really really nice I really appreciate it I see you had a question here about Sunflower see some of these one of the agents let's know what to do with them well they're not they're not for the agent that's for sure yeah we're trying to pick all like freebies every night at the county offices and we were kind of thinking about what would be a good thing that would kind of halfway reflect the theme tonight I was thinking about giving up bags of soil for you know to emphasize Dave Franza's production but I don't think people wanted bags of soil or some grass seed for Allen or I don't think that would work out well and then we were talking about prairie metal gardens and my thought there was just I think either you're in with the prairie metal garden or you're not just having a little sample then do it like a two by two area you're just not going to get the feel for it so we're giving out a prairie plant the ornamental sunflowers and so all the counties they contacted us to let us know about how many people they estimated would come tonight and we gave about two packets per person and they're all kinds of beautiful ornamental sunflowers we have some dwarf ones and they come and we got some in different colors like lemon yellow or red or orange some very early they're all early maturing types so they'll bloom beautifully for you and even we have a if you want a traditional sunflower we have the auricara sunflower from the auricara Native American tribe and that's that's the type of sunflower you want if you're going to be harvesting for the seeds all the other sunflower seeds that were given out is for ornamental beauty and you can there's a description on all the packets so that's that's for all the gardeners who came to the county offices if anybody like there's a wide sample and if people are fighting over a particular cultivar please don't fight you can just talk to your agent I've got some extras and I can send you out some extras next week into this certain cultivar you need so I hope you all can enjoy that let's see if there's anything else just lots of thank yous the barb so that's it here we are we're done on time everybody have a good night and the roads are clear because spring is here and have a safe drive and thank you everybody we'll see you next week next week we're talking about trees and shrubs we're gonna talk about some of the finest flowering shrubs for us in North Dakota you don't want to miss that some special issues about birch trees what's the best birch cultivars and how to take care of them and also we're gonna learn about spruce disorders you know spruce is a very common tree in North Dakota we'll learn how to manage spruce disorders next week the special bonus will be seed-starting kits in the county offices so you don't want to miss that so we'll see you all next week thank you