Light Song Gardens - Urban Meadow Gardens in Helena, MT

Plants in Action Series

Elena Johnson has started the Helena Urban Meadows project in Helena, MT through her landscape design and consultation business, Light Song Gardens. 

Her pilot gardens were planted in 2025 using Great Bear Native Plants plugs, and her gardens throughout the city will expand in 2026 and beyond.

Elena aims to make lawn conversion more approachable and tangible for Helena residents. In her pilot gardens, she converted small sections of land - from front lawn strips to small backyard pockets - into meadow-style gardens. Her ongoing goal is to explore and understand success rates of meadow gardens specific to the Helena area.

This first season consisted of a range of project sizes with variable site conditions. She found that starting small (50 - 550 sq ft) is allowing her clients to visualize the results without the larger commitment of converting their entire yard. She has found it encouraging to herself and to her clients to begin smaller to get the hang of the process and understand their growing conditions before investing in a larger, more expensive project. 

The primary design aspect of the Helena Urban Meadow project is the use of an intertwined mix of graminoids (grasses, sedges, rushes) and site-specific wildflowers. While specific species mixes varied based on site conditions - water, sunlight, size of site - commonly used plants were Idaho Fescue (Festuca idahoensis) and Side-oats Grama (Bouteloua curtipendula) for sunny sites and Plains Oval Sedge (Carex brevior) in part-shade gardens. 

Smooth Blue Aster (Symphyotrichum laeve) has become Elena’s favorite wildflower to install. The variety of pollinators the tall, blue blooms attract in the sunny afternoons were a source of wonder and entertainment both for Elena and the property owners.

A particular selling point for Elena on the Smooth Blue Aster is its longevity throughout the season - it was serving as a host plant for pollinators long after the first frost knocked out most of the other flowering perennials in the meadow gardens.

Elena hopes that these gardens installed throughout the city of Helena can serve for long-term research and demonstration of gardening with native plants. She will be tracking and recording garden progress and changes, eventually developing a platform to share the information and resources with her community. 

Through her meadow garden installations, Elena has found that working with plugs is a great way to bring people into native plant gardening without the price tag of larger plant material. They are not only less expensive as a product, but they are less labor intensive to install, and deliver relatively fast results compared to starting a garden by seed.

If you find yourself in Helena, keep an eye out for urban meadow gardens - they are likely a Light Song Gardens installation!

Elena's top plant list:

• Idaho fescue, Festuca idahoensis

• Sideoats Grama, Bouteloua curtipendula

• Plains Oval Sedge, Carex brevior

  Smooth Blue Aster, Symphiotrichum laeve

• Blanketflower, Gaillardia aristata