At Green-Wood Cemetery, Wildflower Meadows Replace Lawns

Where would you expect to find a meadow filled with native flowers and grasses, where once an expanse of lawn grew? In a suburban front yard, as the short-back-and-sides neighbors give the gardener’s tousled vision the stink eye? At the summer home of weekend warriors who have newfound respect for the perils of mugwort? Or in an urban cemetery that doubles as a laboratory for biodiversity? Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York, is home to an experimental wildflower meadow, seeded in October of 2022, and part of the cemetery’s Urban Grasslands initiative.

This summer, from June through July, I visited the meadow over the course of six weeks, watched its palette evolve, learned about the reasons for the transition from lawn to wildflowers, and some of the challenges unique to this unusual site.

Set on a ridge in South Brooklyn, with views of New York Harbor, Green-Wood is no ordinary cemetery. The green space is a haven not only for the dead but for the living: for birds and the birders who watch them, for a monk parakeet colony, for honey bees in hives, for native pollinators, for artists in residence, for researchers, and for the local community, who find respite from urban life among the towering trees of this nationally accredited arboretum and historic landmark.

Stippled with weathered marble and brownstone headstones, the 1.2-acre wildflower meadow is one of four re-wilded areas in close to 30 acres of public lots on the cemetery’s historic perimeters. “These lots were some of the first areas to be developed as an affordable internment option when Green-Wood was established in 1838,” said Sara Evans, the Director Of Living Collections and Curator at Green-Wood. In contrast to the large opulent family lots, she explained, “the public lots are dense with small graves characteristically marked with modest headstones primarily made of more delicate stone.”

Collectively, they are now the site of the ongoing project to transition from high-maintenance turf that requires noisy and carbon-unfriendly mowing (which also risks damaging these modest headstones), “to resilient native species more tolerant of drought, an increasing feature as the planet warms and the climate changes.”

Each of the six sections in the experimental meadow is seeded with a different combination of native grass and wildflower species “that also differ in species-richness (low-to-medium-to-high diversity),” said Sara. The goal is to “test and see what communities evolve, especially in terms of mowing stresses.” Paths are mown to allow access for visitors and researchers, and each wildflower block is given at least one annual mow with a weedwacker or hedge trimmer, “cut very high, at eight to ten inches, to leave material for nesting pollinator habitat and seed heads to establish a seedbank,” she said.

To prepare the site prior to sowing, the existing lawn grasses were treated with herbicide. Sara explained that such a large area, “with hundreds headstones,” cannot be solarized. (This technique involves placing expanses of plastic sheeting over unwanted vegetation to heat the soil underneath, spurring the germination of seeds, and their subsequent death. With established plants it can take a very long time.) Despite the treatment, some resilient invasive and naturalized plants persist: Mugwort, as well as bermuda, foxtail, sweet vernal, and brome grasses remain a perennial challenge.r