Traveling the various interstates and highways throughout North Carolina, we are fortunate to have an abundance of colorful annuals, perennials, blooming trees and native wildflowers. The N.C. Department of Transportation does a fine job of making sure travelers have a plethora of seasonal plantings to enjoy.
Throughout the year, fields of poppies, sunflowers, larkspur and cosmos begin to dot the medians and line the roads. Exit ramps and overlooks explode with yellow as mass plantings of Stella de Oro day lilies begin to bloom.
As a lifelong resident of North Carolina, I suppose I’ve always taken this roadside beauty for granted. But while traveling the roads in other states, it doesn’t take long to appreciate what we have here in North Carolina, especially in the Triad.
The N.C. DOT Wildflower Program started in 1985. According the agency’s publication “Wildflowers on North Carolina Roadsides,” “Dottie Martin, wife of former Governor Jim Martin, is credited with initiating the idea for the North Carolina program after reading an article in The Wall Street Journal about wildflower beds in Texas.”
During the first year, 12 acres were sown as part of the wildflower project. Today, wildflower beds are sown and maintained by each of the roadside environmental teams of the 14 highway divisions across the North Carolina.
While these teams are responsible for all of the flowers, shrubs and trees you see dotting the highways, the wildflower program is its own project, consisting of spring and fall plantings of annuals, perennials and North Carolina native wildflowers.
Forsyth County falls under the transportation department’s Division 9, which includes Stokes, Davidson, Davie and Rowan counties. Todd Hiatt, the roadside environmental engineer for Division 9, oversees the wildflower program in this area.
“There’s a central roadside environmental group in Raleigh and they help all the 14 divisions with the wildflower program,” Hiatt said. “They give us money two times a year to plant the wildflowers. The funds come from personalized license plates.”
In the past 30 years, this program has grown to become the largest planted wildflower program in the nation, encompassing about 1,500 acres. On average, North Carolina spends $1.5 million annually to plant and maintain the wildflower beds in the state.
“We have a fall planting,” Hiatt said. “We plant those in October and those bloom the next spring. And then we plant a summer program, usually mid-June to mid-July. We typically sow around 50 to 60 acres of wildflowers a year in this division, with half being planted in the fall and half in the summer.”
There are more than 130 varieties of wildflowers planted throughout North Carolina. And while you may not see all these varieties present along roads in the Triad, Hiatt and the Division 9 environmental team make sure that there is a good rotation of cultivars and color planted every year.
Each division gets to pick and choose what it wants to plant, based on what seeds are available.
“Raleigh will send us a seed list that has all the different types of seed we can choose from,” Hiatt said, “and then it’s up to us what we want to plant. In the summertime, we plant mostly cosmos, zinnias and sunflowers, which are the main three. And then there’s a lot of different varieties within each of those, a lot of different colors.
“In the fall, we plant a lot of poppies, rocket larkspur, a lot of different daisy varieties, catchfly and toadflax. It’s different year to year.”
The central team in Raleigh gets the seeds from 10 to 12 seed companies throughout the U.S. When designing wildflower beds and median areas, engineers have to take into consideration what will perform best in conjunction with their weed-maintenance protocols. These beautiful fields would be overtaken with grass and weeds if they weren’t treated with herbicides.
“Of course you have to choose what you plant based on the weed problems you have,” Hiatt said. “We control weeds with pre-emergents, so we have to look at what kinds of herbicides we have available and then what kinds of flowers we can apply to those herbicides on top of without killing them.”
Pre-emergent herbicides can be either granular or liquid, and they are applied to an area to prevent weed seeds from germinating. But they can also prevent the wildflower seeds from germinating. Depending on the product, certain wildflower seeds are not affected by the herbicides and will germinate through the barrier that the pre-emergent creates.
As for the seed-sowing process, it’s pretty simple.
The wildflower areas are cultivated, sown and treated with pre-emergents. A mulch cover of Bermuda hay is used to prevent erosion, hold moisture and aid in germination. Of course, the DOT uses tractors, hydroseeders and large equipment. But the same principles apply if you want to sow an area of wildflowers in your backyard.
The general philosophy behind the N.C. Wildflower Program is rooted in the tourism industry. Making the state more appealing to visitors is a driving force behind the program.
“I think the wildflower program is something that people like,” Hiatt said. “I get a lot of calls complimenting us on it, especially people from other states. In other states, you may not ride down the road and see wildflowers, so it is kind of a unique thing to North Carolina. Enhancing the roadsides is good for tourism. Tourism is an $18 billion industry in North Carolina, so what we do is a good thing.”
A great display of summer wildflower color can be found right now throughout the Interstate 85 corridor in Davidson County.
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