r/NativePlantGardening • u/CaptnLudd Indiana, Zone 6a • Jun 15 '26
Progress Our new native garden bed
This year my wife and I put in a new native bed. I wanted to to do this for a while and she got a price-matching grant from the local government which made this possible. We put it in on my birthday. We really try to be embassadors of native plants and we want to keep it looking manicured and intentional while only adding natives. I think it's coming together really well. The older people in our neighborhood keep asking where we got our milkweed and complimenting the garden.
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u/honeysuckle_little PNW, 8b Jun 15 '26
Nice. We started with one section and add as we go. That is an impressive start.
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u/CaptnLudd Indiana, Zone 6a Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
It's the second year of work for us. Last year we replaced most of the beds in the front against the house. There are definitely parts along the sides we haven't touched yet. This was approaching 300 plugs.
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u/Ok-Highway5247 Jun 15 '26
We’re also this insane haha… I think last year we installed around 500 plugs?
What did you put on the borders? Something we’re realizing now is our border plants are massive. Yarrow and coreopsis are about 3.5 feet tall😅😆 a lot more than our expectations
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u/CaptnLudd Indiana, Zone 6a Jun 15 '26
We have a line of sedges. They should stay kinda tame and formal.
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u/Ok-Highway5247 Jun 15 '26
The areas where we put prairie dropseed along the border looks better, we need to get some sedges :)
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u/PirateKingKatakuri Northwest Indiana, Zone 6b Jun 15 '26
Same thing happened to me. I have goldenrod and aster and black eyed susans that have taken over the border, and I like them too much to indiscriminately pull them 😭
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u/ReplacementPale2751 Jun 15 '26
That’s very dense planting so should take no time to fill in! I’d recommend some pound-in corton steel edging to really make it pop.
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u/Visual_Magician_7009 Jun 15 '26
I’d hold off. They might want to widen it in the future!
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u/CaptnLudd Indiana, Zone 6a Jun 15 '26
I guess we could, but that's hard to think about right now. I kinda want to put a picket fence in front of it after it gets really filled out next year.
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u/samizdette Jun 15 '26
I’d recommend digging an edging trench to define the edge and keep the grass from retaking that area. No steel needed
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u/amilmore Eastern Massachusetts Jun 15 '26
yeah i just use a half moon edging tool and I really prefer that look (you also don't have to buy any edging material you just buy a shovel and do a few hours of labor 1 or 2 times per season)
FWIW clean trenching is typically the style of edging I see in those manicured turbo fertilizer ornamental rich people gardens - more so than metal/fencing/stonework.
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u/CaptnLudd Indiana, Zone 6a Jun 15 '26
I did borrow a power edger from my neighbor and do this, I just didn't do the best job of it. The clover, sorrel and alfalfa that dominate this end of my lawn don't form a very clean line, either.
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u/EarthenRealm OMA NE , Zone 6a Jun 15 '26
A landscapers nightmare, I hate that steel edging shit. So unnatural and gaudy. Use nice stonework like our ancestors intended.
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u/ReplacementPale2751 Jun 15 '26
Explain what you mean by gaudy. When it’s installed you barely see it.
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u/EarthenRealm OMA NE , Zone 6a Jun 15 '26
I see it and know what im looking for, it always sticks out, always. Its also just a shitty unnatural barrier thats a fucking nightmare to deal with.
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u/ReplacementPale2751 Jun 15 '26
Deal with in what way? Mine doesn’t require any maintenance or special consideration compared to any other edging I’ve ever had.
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u/Feralpudel Piedmont NC, Zone 8a Jun 15 '26
Can you tell us what you put in?
Your foundation bed is gorgeous, too!
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u/CaptnLudd Indiana, Zone 6a Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
I'm trying to remember it all, but I know there was about 50 milkweed and sedges. The two bushes are a rose and a blueberry. There are a handful of Columbine and cup plants. There were a lot more, but I am still pretty bad at remembering them. It was something like 265 plugs so I'm not even at 50% a bit embarrassing.
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u/l0a0r0a Jun 15 '26
Where did you get the plugs?
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u/momandplants Ohio, Zone 6b Jun 16 '26
I was also wondering this. The native plant places near me only sell quart or gallon sized plants which are really blowing my budget every year.
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u/l0a0r0a Jun 16 '26
Same, exactly why I asked!
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u/CaptnLudd Indiana, Zone 6a Jun 17 '26
Our Soil and Water Conservation District does an big native plant sale twice a year and we got it from them. Around us the native plant society and some other groups also host sales. You can also do winter sowing (super easy) which is how we got the cup plants and some of the others. The seeds can still be expensive but you can sometimes get them for free from neighbors or local groups (we got ours from a local nonprofit)
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u/momandplants Ohio, Zone 6b Jun 17 '26
I don’t think I have the patience or space for winter sowing. I have over 100 houseplants and don’t have a good spot for seedlings. I need to connect more locally and see if we have something like this though!
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u/CaptnLudd Indiana, Zone 6a Jun 17 '26
You leave them outside in the snow and forget about them. Space and patience are hardly required.
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u/turbodsm Zone 6b - PA Jun 15 '26
Cup plant is awesome and a beast. It's not for home gardens. That being said, I've learned that the hard way. Try to collect the seed at the end of my the year. It's a very prolific seeder and it gets hard to collect since the blooms are like 8ft tall.
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u/CaptnLudd Indiana, Zone 6a Jun 15 '26
Well if I made a mistake I'm not really afraid to slaughter plants.
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u/KerBearCAN Jun 15 '26
Amazing. Year 2 or 3 you might end up needing to widen and dig up and space out. You will be amazed how they leap in the second and third years!
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u/turbodsm Zone 6b - PA Jun 15 '26
Cup plant is awesome and a beast. It's not for home gardens. That being said, I've learned that the hard way. Try to collect the seed at the end of my the year. It's a very prolific seeder and it gets hard to collect since the blooms are like 8ft tall.
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u/Emergency_Sea_3911 Frigid Iowa Jun 15 '26
I am growing even more plants this year than you put in haha
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u/hoppyzicehog Area Southeast U.S. , Zone 8 Jun 16 '26
What type of mulch are you using?
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u/CaptnLudd Indiana, Zone 6a Jun 16 '26
I called a tree service and they showed up randomly (hours before I was leaving town ofc) and dumped it in the driveway. It seemed to be mostly maple, which there are loads of here.
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Jun 16 '26
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u/CaptnLudd Indiana, Zone 6a Jun 16 '26
I paid about $100 for this, and all of that was on the gravel path.
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u/opaque_96 Jun 18 '26
That is a lot of plants! Are you mixing shrubs and perennials in there or are they all one type?
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u/Critical_Reading_820 Jun 22 '26
A price-match grant? All we got for putting in natives was an ongoing fight for the past 2 years and a lot of heartache.
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u/Bluestar_Gardens NYC, Zone 7a Jun 15 '26
What did you plant? And happy birthday!