Vermont couple’s 5-acre lawn turns into tourist attraction after they grew wildflower meadow to avoid mowing

This Vermont couple wasn’t wild about mowing, but they were about flowers.

Jonathan Yacko, 36, and Natalie Gilliard, 34, of Chittenden, grew tired of taking all day to mow their 5.5-acre property, so they decided to transform the lawn into a wildflower meadow — to the delight of the locals who are blown away by the stunning landscape.

“It would take a solid day to mow and trim everything,” Yacko told the Washington Post. “We knew there had to be something better we could do than maintain a lawn.”

Before moving to New England, the Long Island natives didn’t have to do much landscaping, except for tending to some boxwood shrubs and a small patch of grass.

But after a conversation with their new neighbor, Hadley Mueller, who happens to work with American Meadows – a seed company based in Vermont – the couple took her advice and decided to grow a stunning wildflower meadow.

“I thought they had the perfect spot for a beautiful meadow,” Mueller told the Washington Post.

Gilliard agreed, telling WBUR: “To be honest, it was kind of depressing to look out on this sea of grass. I’ve always loved bees and we were like let’s do it; we’re on board.”

The couple, who moved to Vermont in 2019, started tearing up their lawn during the pandemic, picking out all the rocks and digging up the grass to plant all the seeds.

A seed of doubt did linger in the back of the couple’s mind, wondering if their array of wildflowers would ever pop out of the ground, but their excitement grew as the plants started to show.

“We’d look out the window and be like: ‘They’re coming! The flowers are coming!’” Gilliard told WBUR.

First the baby’s breath came in Spring 2021, flowering in beautiful white, then came the array of colors – red and yellow poppies, orange cosmos, and purple foxglove, among others.

This summer, the couple expanded their meadow and planted even more flowers, adding blue forget-me-nots and yellow coreopsis – totaling 27 varieties of flowers.

“And what’s so cool is every couple of weeks the meadows look totally different,” Yacho, an engineer, told WBUR. “You don’t know exactly what’s gonna come up or when it’s going to come up and that’s part of the magic.”

As their meadow magically bloomed, people started to stop by. They dropped off bouquets they made from the meadow, as well as baked goods, and left notes for them to read. People even stopped Gilliard in stores to say they loved driving past her meadow.

“The meadow became this wonderful way to develop new friendships and feel like we belonged to something and were part of a community,” Gilliard, a special education teacher, told the Washington Post.

“A lot of people drove by during the pandemic and told us the flowers made them happy and gave them a boost.”

They’ve even inspired others to ditch the mower and enjoy a field of beauty, including their neighbors.

“It definitely beats grass,” their neighbor said.