Turn your lawn into a meadow by adding spring bulbs: Here’s how

Meadows are trendy alternatives to big lawns these days as much of the gardening public aims to aid pollinators and beef up their yards’ native-plant inventory.

For most, that means planting or seeding former lawn space with an array of annual and perennial flowers, a smattering of native ornamental grasses, and maybe a few native flowering shrubs.

But anyone who’s grown a meadow knows the style is notoriously slow to get started in spring. It takes weeks for the reseeded annuals to sprout, for the dormant perennials and grasses to come back to life, and for flowers to actually appear.

In a typical meadow, it’s June and later before the bulk of the plants hit their stride.

An under-used way to get the color going sooner is by adding clusters of spring-blooming bulbs to the bed.

Bulb