Claudia West - the new face of US planting design

Claudia West talks to us about her work with Phytostudio, from lockdown in her rural Pennsylvania home, about the potential of ecological planting, her being mentored by Wolfgang Oehme, and the intellectual roots of her (and Oehme's) planting style in Germany.

[@lindacochran6326]

While I generally thought this was a very interesting discussion, I was disappointed in your discussion of so called ‘North American Meadows’. Your points about these being later flowering and tall may apply to East Coast and some midwestern meadows, but it certainly does not apply to most western US meadows. For example, meadows in the Puget Sound basin and in the Willamette Valley are generally early flowering and not tall. To lump all North American landscapes into a similar basket is to ignore the vast differences in those landscapes depending on climates, which also differ greatly.

[@GardenMasterclass]

Hi Linda. Thanks for that. I have an issue about anything in North America being called a 'meadow' anyway. A meadow is a Eurasian anthropogenic plant community - formed by mid summer hay cutting. Prairie is more accurate for anything grass dominated east of the Rockies I would think. The cycles of growth are very different between a 'prairie' and a 'meadow'.
Re. western grassland formations, I am aware of practically extinct Palouse prairie but to be honest i can't think of any other natural grassland formations in the west on any scale. Surely the area you mention is naturally forest?
There are some spectacular early season grass dominated communties more inland, whch i suppose could be called meadows if they peak and dry out before late summer. But I think we really need some new words.

[@lindacochran6326]

I think the difference between meadow and prairie is a matter of semantics, but in any event, let’s just call these open grass and forb dominated landscapes. There are, in fact, prairies in the Puget Sound region, and in the Willamette Valley. They are probably the most endangered landscapes in those regions, but there are organizations working to preserve them. There are also prairie type environments in the more Easterly Columbia Gorge. It is theorized that most of the open prairies in the Puget Sound region and in the Willamette Valley were created by the indigenous people by means of periodic fires in order to enhance the harvest of plants like Camassia, which are native here and which were eaten by the indigenous populations. But I don’t see how this makes them any less a prairie or a meadow, just as I assume prairies or meadows in the UK are maintained by mowing, and were perhaps also man created, although I am not an expert in those types of landscapes. I have lots of images of these kinds of landscapes in the Pacific Northwest if you would like to see them. I believe, also that there are lots of meadow or prairie landscapes in California. None of which fit the east coast or Midwest model.

[@lindacochran6326]

I should also mention that there are many high altitude meadows in the Cascades and other mountain ranges in the region. and they are generally called meadows. These, while generally blooming later because of their altitude, are not tall. And I have found, experimenting in my own garden, that these can be a model for lower altitude gardens. My point in all this, of course, is that there are vast areas of North America, and it is not accurate to think all North American landscapes are similar.