About
The Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden in Theodore Wirth Park in Minneapolis features a pollinator meadow. Staff at Eloise Butler created the design and community volunteers, along with the Mississippi River Green Team and Conservation Corps of Minnesota and Iowa, planted the meadow. The matrix style of the meadow includes flowering plants mixed in with grasses and sedges. The grasses act as living mulch, blocking out weeds and shading the soil so it is cooler and more moist. To ensure success for this style of planting, plant densely — about 1 plant per 12 inches.
Flowers in the meadow bloom all season long: for example, you’ll find wild strawberry and prairie sage in the spring, blazing star in the summer and asters in the fall. For your own garden, you can keep it simple and choose a few plants to repeat amidst the grass or sedge suited to your site.