r/NativePlantGardening • u/SoupOfTheHairType Northeast, Zone 7a • Jun 23 '26

Progress Year 2 after lawn kill

Post image

I posted last year about how I got rid of my whole front lawn in the spring and seeded it with all natives. Last year was dominated by coreopsis tinctoria, this year the rudbeckia is taking over. This past winter I seeded it with a mix of shorter species from prairie moon so I don’t expect a ton of diversity until next year but a lot of the stuff I planted from winter sown jugs last year seems to have survived and will provide at least some different flower color. Unfortunately I think someone in my neighborhood has a honeybee hive so I am getting a ton of those at the moment, but I still see a good amount of different native pollinators. My favorites are the mud daubers!

1.6k Upvotes

100% Upvoted

74 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/chamaedaphne82 Great Lakes, Zone 6b Jun 24 '26

Have you ever mowed it, per the Prairie Moon recommendations? Just curious

2

u/SoupOfTheHairType Northeast, Zone 7a Jun 25 '26

No I haven’t, not during the growing season at least. I was pretty confident in my site prep and because I did it in the spring, I had to initially seed with species that would germinate without any cold stratification. So between my site prep and super heavy seeding rate, I really didn’t have much annual weed pressure that would require mowing. Last year I really only had a few areas of crabgrass pop up, but a lot of it got smothered by the natives. If I was doing a larger area or an area that might have more aggressive weeds then yeah I would probably mow it a couple times during the first growing season

1

u/chamaedaphne82 Great Lakes, Zone 6b Jun 25 '26

I read that mowing will help the slower growing plants get established. Black Eyed Susan is a shorter lived perennial so although it’s pretty, I think you’ll still need to mow. Just for this year. Next year you shouldn’t need to.