New Vermont residents plant a meadow and meet lots of neighbors

Natalie Gilliard and Jonathan Yacko check out the latest blooms in their lawn-turned-meadow in Vermont

Nina Keck/Vermont Public

Jonathan Yacko and his wife Natalie Gilliard grew up near New York City and moved to Chittenden, Vermont in 2019. They loved their big new yard, but hated all the mowing. So they planted wildflowers, more than an acre’s worth.

“So we started, really, during COVID,” says Yacko. “Nat was unemployed; she’d lost her job during that period, and my hours were cut in half. And so we had a lot more free time.”

“We picked out all the rocks, dug up all the grass, planted all the seeds,” adds Gilliard.

They weren’t sure it would work. But Gilliard says they finally started seeing little sprouts come up. “We’d look out the window and be like ‘they’re coming, the flowers are coming!”

Wildflowers put on an ever-changing show in Chittenden, Vermont

Nina Keck/Vermont Public

She says it started with an explosion of tiny white flowers. “Gypsophila elegans,” says Gilliard, double checking the name on her iPhone, “Yup, baby’s breath.”

Then came all the colors: red and yellow poppies, pink catchfly, bright orange cosmos, red columbine, and purple foxglove.

“So right over here, you can really kind of get into it without stepping on any of the flowers or worrying about disturbing any habitats,” says Gilliard, stepping carefully onto a patch of dirt between flowers.

“There’s just so many bright blue forget-me-nots,” she says, bending down to take a closer look….