The best time to trim back the grasses and the meadow is before everything bursts into growth. We like to think of it as simulated grazing, as though a herd of animals moved through. It’s much more romantic than saying it was done with a weed whip or a pair of pruning shears.
Cutting the grasses with pruning shears is probably like giving the plant a haircut. Gather the leaves with one hand, cut them off with the shears in the other hand. Repeat. Check that everything is even, move on to the next plant.
Using a weed whip is faster, but it’s a lot easier to unintentionally whack something to the ground. We use this technique in the meadow to cut everything down: asters, sedges, grasses, old stalks of milkweed. All these plants will go into growth mode as soon as the weather warms, but other things – notably the camassia bulbs – will start much sooner, so early trimming avoids cutting off the bulbs’ leaves or flower stalks.
The trimmings either are mulched in place or placed in the compost bin. Grass clippings decompose rapidly either way. Mulching in place builds up the soil but takes more time to clip long leaves into short sections. In the compost bin, the leaves don’t need to be trimmed quite as short.