This project was an endeavor in selecting the right variety and proportion of species for 14,125 total plants, all plug size (see Maine Prairie project). Collaborating with the Wild Seed Project, a non-profit organization that collects and sells seeds of wild and uncultivated forms of native plants to promote native plant populations and restore biodiversity in Maine.
Maine’s landscape, made of rocks and soil stretching from mountains to sea, with forests, meadows, wetlands, and human settlements, is biologically dynamic and important to many creatures. But it is the plants that are the foundation of the terrestrial food chain upon which all land-based creatures, including ourselves, ultimately depend.
Over the winter, this struggling turf lawn had been decimated by gophers. A win for Maine ecology, because these gophers picked the lawn of a passionate supporter of native plants and biodiversity. She called me, we put together a design of meadowed islands to essentially cover the most disrupted patches of lawn. The islands ended up guiding the organization of the space, one tiny island, a few medium sized, and one extra large. Once the plants mature they will offer a nice waist high buffer to the road, while never growing so tall they eclipse the view to the water.
14,126 plugs (2.5”)
6” on center to cover the ground sufficiently and reduce the need to weed
first, a cover crop of buckwheat and lacy phacelia which sprouted one week post sowing
