2025 Winter Lecture Series: Creating and Maintaining Meadow Plant Communities for Maximum Ecological and Economic Benefit with Sam Quinn (February 23, 2025)

Learn more about Winter Lecture Series here.

The concept of converting lawns to meadows has existed for decades yet has enjoyed a recent surge of interest in the US. Meadow plant communities support far more biodiversity and ecosystem services than lawns while also serving as beautiful landscape features that can reduce property management costs.  Unfortunately, there exists a great deal of well-meaning but often misleading information regarding meadow establishment.  Too often discussions of lawn to meadow boil down to just planting native plants associated with meadows rather than information on how to create self-sustaining, functional ecosystems that provide orders of magnitude more environmental benefits.  To that end, we will discuss the steps of creating and maintaining meadow plant communities in ways that achieve the most ecological and economic benefits for a given space.

Sam Quinn, of SUNY Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) department of biology, oversees the Conservation on Private Lands Initiative within the Restoration Science Center at SUNY ESF.  He has been involved in meadow restoration since 2010, typically working in mixed use landscapes such as farms and residential areas.  In his role at ESF, Quinn conducts research and teaches classes on habitat management to enhance biodiversity, ecosystem services and sustainable enterprises.

Program Fee: $15

Winter Lecture Series is brought to you, in part, thanks to the generous support of the Bucks County Foundation and BLBB Charitable.