Hartwood Acres wildflowers aren't just easy on the eyes; they're reducing maintenance costs, flooding - TribLIVE

A 5-acre patch of Hartwood Acres has been transformed into a meadow with a blazing sea of yellow black-eyed and brown-eyed Susans.

The wildflowers, known as Rudbeckia, weren’t planted at the park just for their visual appeal.

“The idea was to reduce the amount of grass in the parks,” said Caren Glotfelty, executive director of the Allegheny County Parks Foundation.

“Less mowing uses less fuel, and it is a way to diversify the landscape, provide food for pollinators and birds and reduce stormwater runoff,” Glotfelty said.

The large swatch of blooming wildflowers, near the park’s Middle Road parking lot in Hampton, has attracted numerous photographers and visitors. Park officials advise people who want to see them in all their splendor to visit within the next two weeks before the blooms fade.

The Western Pennsylvania Conservancy came up with the idea of planting meadows at county parks several years ago.

Meadows are typically grassy lowland areas near water. Many have been plowed over by housing and other developments, but they have become fashionable in recent years as a way of dressing up an otherwise drab, mowed grassy area and providing much-needed absorption of rainwater to help prevent flooding.

The Conservancy found there was a lot of mowed grass fields in the county parks that didn’t seem to be used for anything, Glotfelty said.

She said the Allegheny County Parks Foundation wanted to plant a demonstration meadow to show people what it could look like, but there was skepticism.

“The parks in the past got criticism when areas were not mowed and let go,” she said. The foundation wanted to do something that was thoughtfully designed and looked spectacular.”

The first meadow was planted on Indian Hill in Boyce Park in Plum. In 2018, for its first year of bloom, Indian Hill was transformed into a sea of yellow black-eyed Susans that wowed the public.

“It’s really caught on,” Glotfelty said.

Also catchy was the low cost to the county parks department. The foundation found donations to pay for the meadows.

The Hartwood Acres meadow, along with a buffer of trees and shrubs, cost about $25,000. Most of the money came from grants from the Charity Randall Foundation and Patagonia, the retailer of outdoor clothing and gear. Trees were donated by Tree Pittsburgh. Allegheny County Parks took on the work to design, plant and maintain the meadow.

The Parks Foundation and County Parks have or are in the process of installing a second meadow in Boyce Park and other meadows at South Park, North Park, White Oak and other locations.

“Hartwood is an eye-popper, and we’re happy about that,” said Joel Perkovich, landscape architect for Allegheny County Parks.

The meadows bloom differently from one another each year, he said.

One reason why Hartwood is so spectacular is that the wildflowers were planted in an area where grass has been mowed for about 60 years.

“It didn’t have the seed bank of weeds that other sites might have,” Perkovich said.

That’s what makes converting land into meadows a sometimes complicated task that requires maintenance for the first several years.

“Each site has a different history of land use, and if there are a lot of invasive species, the site won’t establish well in just one year,” Perkovich said.

The meadow plants grew from the “showy Northeast wildflower and grass mix” supplied by Ernst Conservation Seeds in Meadville, which harvests seeds from native species of wildflowers and grasses in Pennsylvania, New York and Ohio.

The popularity of the park meadows is a change from what people are used to seeing in public spaces.

“We’re so used to a manicured yard,” Glotfelty said.

“It’s not just important for food or beneficial insects and birds, but it reduces stormwater runoff, which is an issue with our history of flooding.”

A hydrologist from the Westmoreland County Conservation District calculated that the Boyce Park meadow cut storm water runoff into a nearby stream by half.

Mary Ann Thomas is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Mary at 724-226-4691, mthomas@triblive.com or via Twitter .

Categories: Editor's Picks | Local | Valley News Dispatch