Crabapples and Camas: Alley Cropping at Northwest Meadowscapes

Twenty years ago, Eric Lee-Mäder found a strange-looking bottle in a wine shop that would end up changing the course of his life. The French cider inside was unlike anything he’d ever tasted. 

“It was much more complex than sweet,” Eric said. “I got a sense of the whole orchard, from the bloom of the apple tree to the fungus growing in the understory.”

Eric was immersed in the world of fruit production in his graduate work at the University of Minnesota and, as his interest in French ciders grew, so did his desire to own an orchard where he could produce his own. 

After graduation, buying land simply wasn’t in his budget, so Eric ended up working in native grass and wildflower seed production and then for the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation where he later became co-director of the Pollinator Program.

But the dream of having his own orchard never went away.

Finding a Farm

After getting married and having a child, Eric and his wife, Mari, decided to begin looking for land on Whidbey Island. However, the only property they could afford was a traditionally farmed wetland. 

“Apples don’t like wet soil,” Eric explained. “They get all sorts of crown rot and root pathogens.”

And yet, every time he drove past the giant “for sale” sign, something about the land nagged at him. 

Eric and Mari decided to go for it, even though they weren’t sure how to make the property work. They would eventually figure it out by noticing two important clues—both native plants. 

Clue Number One

As Eric and his wife took inventory of the 13-acre property and began clearing out invasives, they began to discover a surprising number of native species. Among them, growing in a hedgerow, was Pacific Crabapple (Malus fusca) which thrives in wet soil and is highly disease resistant. 

They enjoyed eating apples from the hearty little trees and one day an idea came to Eric. 

“I thought maybe I could graft cider apple varieties onto the rootstock,” Eric said. “It turned out there was a small tradition of people who’d had good luck doing it.”

Eric was able to get a Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education grant to help with the cost of the project. 

“We planted them densely, basically as hedgerows, since that’s how they’d grown naturally. Then we grafted French and Spanish cider apple varieties onto the tops.” 

The project was a success and Eric is currently partnering with Snohomish Conservation District to plant additional apple trees in a harvestable riparian buffer as part of a WSDA Specialty Crop Block grant. His apple trees will essentially act as a second layer to a native forest riparian buffer that was planted along the portion of his property bordering Puget Sound.

Clue Number Two

It would take several years for the trees to produce enough apples for cider, but Eric had discovered another way to earn income on the farm.  

During the first winter, while walking around an old sheep pasture, he heard a rattle at his feet. Because of his experience with native wildflowers, Eric knew it was a Great Camas seedpod (Camassia leichtlinii) even before looking down.

“Camas is one of the most iconic indigenous food staples in the Pacific Northwest, along with salmon,” Eric explained. The taste of the bulb is often compared to a baked pear or Jerusalem artichoke.

“The vibrant blue of their flowers is astounding. When Lewis and Clark first saw mass meadows of Camas from a distance, they thought they were lakes.” 

More Plants Reveal Themselves

About a thousand Camas plants appeared in the same field the next summer, seemingly out of nowhere. 

“Then I found Fool's Onion, another edible bulb,” said Eric. “As we cleared out more invasives, especially the pasture grasses, the world of meadow plants just began to unfold.” 

Most of us don’t think of sunny fields of wildflowers when we picture our native landscape. But these native meadows once covered about a quarter of western Washington. 

“Native people maintained and expanded these areas through a combination of burning and digging. Like many bulbs, if you dig Camas, sections break off and grow into new plants. There’s a saying among indigenous elders, ‘the more you dig it, the better it does.’

“These were essentially agricultural systems,” said Eric. Sustainable systems that agroforestry, in many ways, seeks to replicate.

Income and Alleyways

As they restored their own land, Eric saw an opportunity.

“Coming out of the native seed production world, I recognized that we might be able to make some money by collecting and selling the seeds.” And so began Northwest Meadowscapes.

The decision to grow the native wildflowers in alleys between the apple trees–an agroforestry practice referred to as alley cropping–came naturally. 

“As I looked at our rows of trees with pasture grasses growing in between, I thought why just have these lanes that I have to mow? We’d started selling the Camas and other seeds from other sections of the property, so it made perfect sense to turn the alleys into another production area.”

Rising Up Again

Even after seven years on the farm, Eric still continues to discover new plants. 

“We recently found a Columbia Lily–a beautiful orange native tiger lily. Bulbs can go through prolonged dormancy, so it could be over 100 years old.”

They’re an apt symbol of the indigenous farming techniques that are reappearing in agroforestry.

“To know that someone probably got food from a parent bulb of this plant, maybe even 1,000 years ago…to still see it emerging from the invasive grasses that we’ve been trying to beat back. It gives me pause and a sense that maybe more of our landscapes could look like this.”