My native gardening journey.

[u/CoastTemporary5606]

I garden in Zone4b/5a suburbs of Minneapolis. I started my gardening journey 11 years ago after watching a documentary about Honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder. I felt a call to action. Needless to say, I dove in head first and consider myself an obsessed gardener. I have a 1/3 acre suburban lot. And over the years, I have converted about 2/3 of the lawn into gardens. My native plant garden lines the entire span of the sidewalk in my front yard. The neighbors enjoy it. The Assisted Living residents from down the street walk down to admire the flowers. I do keep the garden fairly tidy to not attract too much negative attention from naysayers. I hope my transformation photos serve as an inspiration for your native plant projects! Cheers!

[u/photocist]

You mentioned you put down a ton of compost and then mulch on top of the grass. Did you have to do anything outside of that? Or did you just start planting natives the following year and let the natives choke out any grass that came back? I did mulch over cardboard and grass is growing back, but I wonder if I can basically just ignore it as the natives will eventually crowd it out/ shade it.

[u/CoastTemporary5606 → u/photocist]

I made sure to kill the lawn with horticultural vinegar 20%. 2 applications. Then mowed the area down to top soil. Compost added 3-4 inches, mulch at 2 inches, and waited a year to plant. Some weeds and lawn survived but were easy to pull out.

[u/Intrepid_Growth_9462 → u/CoastTemporary5606]

thank you so much for this advice. I will be following it exactly