On magnificent Boundary Bay,
north of Seattle
For several years, our seed has helped Terry Allen create a wild meadow at her beautiful home on Boundary Bay, a part of the Pacific that straddles the US-Canadian border in Washington state. Ms. Allen has been kind enough to send us some photos to share with our members, and just take a look. What a magnificent success!
The top photo is her planting in early summer 2006, with mostly red poppies, California poppies, some cornflowers and baby snapdragons in bloom.
The second photo is a reverse view--the same scene shown from the house down to Boundary Bay.
The third photo is from this summer (2007) showing another great bloom of poppies near the waterfront and magnificent Mt. Baker across the bay.
The fourth photo is another shot of the 2007 bloom, and the bottom picture is Tikko, the Allen's dog, who enjoys the wildflowers as much as all the visitors and friends.
Terry Allen writes in June, 2007, on how she maintains her wildflower meadow:
Dear AmericanMeadows.com:
This is the 5th year for the meadow. I have been planting low-grow annual mixes mostly, which have been reseeding, but this year I tried the Northwest Mix, which contains some perennials - don't know how they will do.
I use Round-up very early in the year to get rid of the noxious volunteers (dandelions, vetchlings, etc.) which tend to come up before the wildflowers. Each year I have seen fewer and fewer weeds using this routine and this year was the best yet. Most of the tall, 'invasive' grasses have now disappeared and been replaced with some lovely small delicate grasses that work very
well with the wildflowers.
I mow with a high setting on the mower in the fall after the wildflowers have gone to seed to help disperse the seed. I rake up most of the 'debris' in the spring (including a lot of windfall from the trees), which gives a lot of patches of bare ground for the new seed to take root when I sow it during the spring rains.
.......Terry Allen, WA
We can't thank Ms. Allen enough for sharing her photos and information about her wonderful meadow. It will be an inspiration for thousands of our members.
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