Aquatic vegetation provides ecosystem services of great value. Its protection and restoration has become a major focus in coastal management. We seek to better understand the role of vegetation in protecting shorelines from wave energy. The motion of flexible vegetation blades can significantly reduce the drag force, which will in turn affect the wave decay. The wave decay can be characterized using an effective blade length, 𝑙𝑒, which represents the length of a rigid blade that generates the same wave damping as a flexible blade with length 𝑙. Previous studies suggest that the effective blade length ratio 𝑙𝑒/𝑙~(𝐶𝑎𝑤𝐿)^−1/4, in which Cauchy number 𝐶𝑎𝑤 defines the ratio of hydrodynamic drag to blade stiffness and the normalized blade length L is the ratio of blade length to wave orbital excursion. This laboratory research extends the existing studies and the aim of finding the link between drag force on an individual blade and wave dissipation over a meadow. Flume experiments were conducted to measure the wave decay over an artificial meadow constructed from plastic blades and wooden dowels. Another set of experiments were conducted to measure the drag force on the individual blades. It’s observed that the scaling law (force on individual blade) is able to predict the wave decay over the meadow. A correction factor was needed to account for the fact that the individual blades within the meadow shelter one another. As the stem density increases, the sheltering becomes more significant, resulting in a reduced rate of wave energy dissipation.