The meadow project at Burbank Heights
Turning lawns to meadows to create a pollinator-friendly wildlife corridor
Two weeks ago, I noticed a little tidbit in the Burbank Heights Community Newsletter about a mini-meadow project. Angela Ford and Leta Laborde, the co-chairs of the landscape committee at Burbank Heights, invited me up to see the mini-meadow, which at this point is just a small, 8x10’ patch of seeded earth next to the community building.
But they say it’s a symbol of bigger changes in the landscaping philosophy on the property—away from manicured lawns and toward pollinator-friendly meadows. They walked me down to a big meadow next to the facility’s community gardens to tell me about it.
“We started five years ago,” Ford said. “People were really fretting about climate change and wondering, ‘What can we do?’ And we thought ‘Start local.’” she said. “Let's bring regenerative ag and permaculture principles here, and then create a native, pollinator friendly, drought-resistant landscape. Because, right now, we’ve got 12 acres here of land, and for the most part it's just your standard mow-and-blow green grass with some bushes and trees and that's it. So our vision is to create an abundant, flourishing and healthy landscape.”
They started by seeding the big empty field next to the community garden with wildflower seeds.
“We just started calling it the meadow,” she said, “even though it really wasn't, except for some scrappy poppy and weeds, whatever. Anyway, we started seeding it with wildflower mixes, and slowly but surely it's starting to come back. So it’s officially the Meadow now. It's just become part of the lexicon of the property.”
Right now the meadow is dotted with yellow oxalis—a pollinator friendly weed—but Laborde and Ford said that later in spring it’s a riot of color and full of butterflies.
They said they’ve also planted milkweed around the property to support the Monarch Butterfly population.
They created the mini-meadow up by the community house for people who weren’t mobile enought to get down to the big meadow.
“We have a lot of folks that just don't do a whole lot of moving around,” Laborde said. “They usually get to the post box or maybe to gather some food giveaway, and we just wanted a place where people could sit and just be in awe of the butterflies and the bees and the birds.”
“Just look up ‘seniors and gardening,” Laborde said. “It's all about mental health, emotional health, spiritual health, physical health. We've got people here that have said to me, ‘You know if it wasn't for my garden spot, I probably wouldn't have gotten out of bed today.’”
Laborde and Ford hope to expand native pollinator-friendly gardens throughout the property and are hoping to work with April Owens of the Habitat Corridor Project, who they say has submitted a landscaping proposal to the management of Burbank Heights.
“So we feel like we’re on the precipice of all this really cool stuff going on,” Laborde said.
What a lovely story. Thank you.
I love this, and it's good timing since the gigantic meadow/weedy/grassy/wildflowery field on the other side of Bodega just disappeared under a swath of new construction. Sigh....