Flock Finger Lakes Native Meadow
Flock Finger Lakes is a creative community and living laboratory in New York’s southern Finger Lakes, where ecological restoration, experimentation, and education are central to the landscape. Since 2021, the Flock team has been transforming a former plant nursery through a series of gardens and landscape projects designed to support wildlife, restore ecosystem function, and reconnect the property.
Across the property, Flock has used the landscape as a testing ground for different approaches to planting and land stewardship. Meadow establishment has been part of that work, with the team experimenting with seed, plugs, and other methods to understand how each performs under the site’s varied conditions.
Within this larger restoration effort, a smaller sloping area presented a different challenge. Reed canary grass had dominated the site, and the grade made conventional equipment access difficult. Flock used black tarps to suppress the existing vegetation, then turned the area into an experiment in meadow establishment. In the first year, one section was planted using plugs and seed, while an adjacent section was prepared for Meadow Lab Wildflower Sod®. The arrangement created an opportunity to observe different establishment methods under similar site conditions.
The Wildflower Sod® installation covered approximately 1,120 square feet, divided between two roughly 14-by-40-foot areas. The site had been prepared through an extended period of solarization to reduce pressure from reed canary grass without relying on herbicide.
In September 2025, Meadow Lab supplied 1,120 square feet of native Wildflower Sod® along with Wildflower Soil™ Finisher to complete the installation. The pre-grown meadow vegetation provided an established root system and immediate plant cover on a site that had previously required significant intervention simply to control existing vegetation.
The project was also designed as an ongoing comparison rather than a one-time transformation. Flock regularly uses its property to test different landscape approaches and documents many of those experiments through its YouTube channel. By locating Wildflower Sod® alongside an area established with plugs and seed, the team created a useful demonstration of how different meadow establishment methods develop over time.
The Flock project makes the differences between meadow establishment methods especially visible. Wildflower Sod® provides an immediate advantage in establishment: a dense, pre-grown plant community can be installed in a single day, creating more consistent coverage from the start and reducing the amount of exposed soil available for weeds to colonize.
Plugs offer a different kind of control. Because individual plants are typically older and more developed at installation, slower-establishing species can have an earlier presence in the planting. Designers can also determine the exact location and spacing of each species, allowing for a more deliberately composed planting. That precision comes with more installation labor and open ground between plants while the community fills in.
At Flock Finger Lakes, these approaches can be observed within the same landscape. The comparison illustrates where Wildflower Sod® is particularly valuable: projects where rapid establishment, consistent initial coverage, and the immediate creation of a functioning meadow community are priorities. As the adjoining areas continue to mature, the project will also show how each establishment method evolves over time within the same larger ecological system.
Flock Finger Lakes is a creative community located on approximately 90 acres in New York’s Finger Lakes region. Founded by friends Summer Rayne Oakes, Sander van Dijk, and Joey L., Flock brings together horticulture, ecology, design, media, and community. The team documents its work through videos and stories covering gardening, agroforestry, permaculture, farming, homesteading, construction, and other aspects of land stewardship.
