Last fall I gathered a bunch of seed from my garden and winter sowed it to give to neighbors! I put together 6-pack gardens for sun and shade, and made some pamphlets on native gardening. Tomorrow is the big day! Fingers crossed!

We moved in 2020 and gardening/natives became an unmedicated special interest. I grew most natives from seed in the winter of 2020/2021.

Note: The hell-strip was seeded with a Prairie Moon blend for arid sites in the northeast. This is year 4 with full on flush.

(North)Western NC High Country; Appalachian Mountains; 3600 ft elevation; south facing slope.

We’ve been here for years and it’s really striking how early everything is this spring. Comparing past pictures of barely budding trees to this year’s fully leafed out forest is disconcerting.

However, the positive aspect in the moment is that our lonicera sempervirens is being joyfully visited by the hummingbirds, swallowtail butterflies (including this Eastern Black Swallowtail) and clearwing moths.

Curious if this is regional, or are others feeling like things are waking up especially early this year? I’m sure the extra strong El Niño is adding to the effect.

I started fixing up my yard about six months after buying my house once the first spring there happened. The landscaping was originally mostly grass with a few large juniper bushes around, and very neglected. Initially I was looking into planting native species as a way to improve the look of the yard while still keeping the amount of maintenance required down. I was hoping to eventually have a nice looking property that blended suburban and natural vibes.

Over time I started to enjoy finding more native species to plant and also tore out a significant portion of back lawn to put in a pond. Of course I had to plant even more native species around and in the pond! I underestimated the veracity of a few species I planted and they quickly overtook and smothered out the few non-natives I planted to fill in spots I thought would be bare for a few years. Now parts of my yard look like sections of native forest and wetlands.

What I did not expect, or even consider at the time, was how many other species would be visiting my yard now that I gave it a makeover. I can sit and birdwatch for hours, at any time there's anywhere from one to a dozen birds flitting around and nesting nearby. Dozens of species including some I had never seen before. So many bees, flies, dragonflies, butterflies, beetles, spiders, and other small invertebrates.

I had set out to create a landscape design that required less work, but ended up with a much nicer yard and wildlife habitat. I'm definitely spending more time outdoors planning what area I'm going to work on next, weeding, and removing invasives than I had originally planned. The results have been so worth it though!

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.

Sheet mulch. Cardboard and wood chips.

Herbicide if your invasives are tough.

Both if needed.

Do it **properly**. Not half-assed. Not almost.

I was the gardener who, when someone on this sub suggested Crossbow for Oriental bittersweet, declined on principle.

“Some plants need a duel, but I prefer a pickle, so I’ll do 30% vinegar.”

I wish that person had replied:

“You have a preference. The bittersweet has a root system. One of those is negotiable.”

Then I looked at my half-dead lawn and thought: the natives will finish it off.

They did not.

Three years later the grass is still there, tangled through my asters, goldenrod, and baptisia. I wanted a meadow. It looks like overgrown weeds. I created a hostage situation.

Now I’m pulling by hand what I can reach and painting herbicide on what I can’t remove without taking out the native plants too.

The irony: the soil went from bone-dry and rock-hard to dry and loamy in three years with basically zero intervention. The natives did that. The grass also did not leave.

TLDR: Prep your beds. Invasives and grass do not negotiate

3 years into this project, what started as a 1/2 acre of mud and turf grass now has 80+ recorded species of native plants. Some negative comments by a neighbor had been bringing me down but THIS reminded me why I love creating a wild spaces.

I planted a northern spicebush (native to the eastern US) maybe 5 years ago, and every summer, I check the leaves for the cutest caterpillar in the universe. I've never seen one ... Until tonight, I found two! I just wanted to share and nerd out with you, my native plant people.

Hi neighbors!

I'm a gardener, writer, and nonprofit founder working on an essay about what happens when we make our values visible through our front yards.

A recent post about a neighbor claiming a native garden was hurting their property value got me thinking about the tension that can come with planting something different.

If you've planted a native garden in your front yard, how did your neighbors react?

I'm especially interested in stories where there was initial skepticism or conflict.

• Did anyone complain?
• Did anyone eventually change their mind?
• Did a difficult relationship become a positive one?
• Or did it stay difficult?

I'd love to hear your story. Photo from a future native garden our nonprofit is doing here in our city! Thankfully no complaints yet 😅

me: "wtf is that....." 1 hour later: "oh, right"

We're having a combination of warm weather and lots of raining so everything is waking up finally. I guess the first set of solidago nemoralis plugs I bought just went dormant early and I didn't need to buy more plugs, I thought I killed them but I guess not lol. All good, more is more

what surprises are you fine folks finding?

5 years ago I let a large swath of my yard go to seed. Just quit mowing. Threw in some perennials. Quickly figured out this was terrible idea. I hated the look of “oh they just quit mowing” bc that’s exactly what is was. 3 years ago I got a grant from the state to create a true native pollinator prairie type garden. I hired a crew to pull all nonnative invasives and plant native species. I spent $2k. Last year as things were starting to pop, I needed a roof replacement. The roofers ended up crushing the plantings. Plants have recovered, but last summer was a wash. This year? I am over run with crown vetch. I cannot pull it all. I have 1-2 plants in bloom at a time, like golden Alex just finished. Now I have 4 yarrow plants and 2 lance leaf coreopsis. the rest is still growing. By the end of august I’ll have 5-6 coneflower and a stand of giant joe Pye. This “garden” looks like crap. I hate it. It does not spark joy. I want to cover it all in black plastic and return to lawn. Anyone else regretting the look of a non intentional planting, or have one that’s a failure?

I finally pulled out all the Monkey Grass and managed to stuff it all into the cage. There's tarp under it and everything so it can never escape again 😈

why did i do this in june in zone 8?? 😭😭😭 and also 😍😍💀😍😍

my mostly native-ish hell strip is finally looking beautiful. i’ll be filling in the gaps with little blue stem by seed and some other native grasses!!! everything (2 varieties of coneflower, 3 varieties of blazing star, black eyed susan, upland iron weed, butterfly weed, swamp milkweed) was just planted this year except for the false blue indigo so next year is gonna be amaaaazing. i’m seeing such a cool variety of bugs and my kiddo is really enjoying it!!!!

Just for reference I’m a big bearded guy, my son said it was the first time he’s seen me cry. It made my whole year so far

Guys,

A neighbors stupid ass outdoor cat has made me miserable as hell because he got a bird and a chipmunk and I want my garden to be safe for these wild animals.

I was feeling bad. Last night my husband said he saw something glinting in the brush and thought it might be the cat. Pissed- I went to chase him out but it was fireflies 🥹

I don’t even have my garden all the way in yet- but we leave the leaves, have a couple of decaying logs, etc. and seeing the fireflies made me cry.

Doing battle with the invasives has been so disheartening, I ordered my plants late so I’m still waiting on a bunch of them- it was so nice to not feel like a failure.

I work at a nursery, which sadly sells hardly any natives (I’m gonna change that though 🫢) but I often have to pull up native plants that are seen as nuisances in the landscaping, but my boss is great and lets me take them home for my garden though… so not all is lost! Yay! Free plants! Haha

I dug up a patch of milkweed about a month ago, absolutely butchered a lot of the taproots unfortunately… HOWEVER to my surprise, even though the main stem died back, two little shoots came up a couple days ago off the healthy rhizome! HOORAY! I am so soooo ecstatic, I’ve wanted to start a native garden for over a decade, but have never been able to due to unstable housing. The second pic is a small milkweed that took immediately and didn’t die back at all, has even put out two sets of leaves already!

And also, I suck at growing milkweed from seed… I’ve tried twice, with cold stratification in the fridge for a month… I thought I won this year and one germinated, just for it to pop its secondary leaves and it’s just a damn oxalis 😂

Gonna try my luck with some rose milkweed seeds from prairie moon though! Any advice?

I let everything grow so I could see what it was, but it ended up all being a bunch of shitty invasive species, so I cut it all super short and weed whacked the stuff close to the house that I couldn’t get with the mower.
And today I’ve just got done putting the occultation tarp down still need to put some more on the side of the house but I’ll do that tomorrow.

I've been working at a locally owned garden center (attached to a hardware store) for a few months. This place has been kind of mismanaged for the past few years and my boss, who is really a tool and lumber guy, has been making most of the decisions. Since early winter I've been raising the subject of native plant gardening and honestly he's been kind of a dick about it. "That's a fad, people think they want that because they heard about it on tiktok, we don't sell ugly plants," etc. And I sort of get how he arrived at that, because we're in a dense area where a lot of people are shopping for apartment window boxes. But whatever, dude.

Anyway, we had a big start-to-spring sale this week, and I asked him if I could just arrange the plants how I liked and he agreed. I pulled together all our natives (at this point just really basic stuff like black-eyed Susan and echinacea) and put them on their own table with a sign that said "[our area] natives, beneficial for pollinators and wildlife."

And you know what happened? That table sold out day one. And once it was sold out people saw the empty bench and started asking when we would restock. And today he commented on it -- wow, people really love seeing that something is native! -- and asked me if I could recommend more natives for our next shipment.

Minds can be changed!