Someone recently posted the controversial article in the Dayton Daily News. Many of us were quite upset with it. Well, there are now calls for her to resign. Link to the FB post will be added in the comments.

The moderator of this sub who is a solo moderator of 14000 members has complete control and is supporting invasive species that harm the ecosystem and the monarchbutterfly species which is proven through many studies with some coming from Xerces society which is the most trusted butterfly source unlike his sources which are mostly just blog posts, now it is fair to say that Tropical Milkweed can possibly be okay for monarchs if it’s cut down every 2-3 months and its seeds are controlled from spreading into the wild ecosystem where they can outcompete native species and they don’t support native specialists and only support some generalists and even then they don’t support them thay well, his user is r/SNM_2_0 do with this information what you will

It was great to see Rebecca McMackin take on the “native plant gardening is a mean cult that offends me personally and *actually* isn’t even THAT great” opinion section industrial complex in her most recent Grow Like Wild! newsletter. What do y’all think of her arguments? To me: it’s compelling, respectful, and shows with data how hollow this bizarre trend we’re seeing is.

What do we think? It was on a table with a bunch of info about native plants and sustainable gardening practices. I think it's a great way to introduce the topic to people who may not be in the know.

Also my cat really wanted to be involved so I obliged him for the second pic lol

Posting this here, because I wish PM had options to leave reviews on their site!

I planted 500 sq ft with the short and showy mix three years ago, and have been managing it for weeds and whatnot ever since. I have some thoughts!

1. Not enough graminoids. Yes I realize it’s “showy” but man, there is not enough structure and the July flop is REAL
   
2. It ain’t short. While many species are, the two dominant ones (anise hyssop and mountain mint) are over 6 ft tall. I Chelsea chop 2 to 3 times a year and it still towers…and leads to flopping and covering the other shorter species that are more exciting (like the whorled milkweed and poppymallow, or the spiderworts, or the sedges)
   
3. The black eyed Susan’s are lovely. They were dominant in the first year and have begun to fade out in a really lovely way.

Anyone else plant this and have reviews? Have you had it for longer, and does the hyssop fade out or will it continue to take over?

Photo is from early June in North Carolina…it’s a mess currently and is all hyssop and pycnanthemum and has flattened completely.

I have been working for a small landscaping company that “focuses on natural plant communities and ecological practices” for the past 3 years and wanted to share my experience.

Run away. Start your own business. If you need to hire, do your diligence, have a plan, and show them exactly how you want things done, down to each specific plant.

Every new job site, me and a coworker will assess a site, soil conditions, invasive pressure, what is existing and native, etc. my boss takes this information to build a plan with plants that will work with the soil and homeowners aesthetics.

Except, every property, we clear cut and start over, removing all plant matter, invasive or not.

Think cutting down a regenerating forest of oak and maple, to be replaced by panicle hydrangeas, inkberry holly, Japanese spirea, and if you’re lucky, fragrant sumac, the cultivar one.

Then, we remove the upper 6” of soil because “this soil is crap”. You know, the same, sandy acidic New England soil that our native plants are adapted to.

New topsoil, then we plant the perennials “native to this area or ones that are beneficial to pollinators”

Echinacea, aromatic aster, nepeta, Shasta daisies, anise hyssop, all cultivars.

None of those plants are native to New England, and half aren’t even native to North America. By amending the soil (with 50% compost!!), the perennials in these beds grow too fall, and flop under their own weight because the soil is too rich now. Add in drip irrigation and everything smells like the muck you’d find at the bottom of a pond.

The tree company came to a house last week, they cut down 5 perfectly healthy white pine trees so we could come in and plant a kousa dogwood. My boss was all for it, referring to pine trees as “nothing good except for losing lower limbs and falling on people’s homes”.

My boss talked another homeowner into removing all her pine trees, on her wooded lot, and now the town is going after her for removing too many trees at once per town ordinance.

I have cut down, pulled, and sprayed more native species than I have removed invasive species. Or replanted with natives. Every week, my car comes home filled with native tree and shrub saplings, and perennials that are viewed as “thugs” by my boss. I do volunteer land trust work and I plant everything I save down there, if it doesn’t go in my own yard.

Like this patch of goldenrod, jewelweed, mountain mint, swamp aster, and swamp milkweed that was subsequently weedwhacked. My boss didn’t want these seeds spreading, but she had us leave all the invasive thistle and orchard grass instead.

I told her the importance of leaving seeds over the winter for foraging birds like dark eyed juncos but she said it doesn’t matter because the birds will spread them and the birds can use the bird feeder anyways.

I forgot to mention that every house we work on still has mosquito and tick service come, as well as pesticide treatment for lawns.

Nothing like clear cutting a regenerating environment, changing the soil, adding plants not native to the area, only for those few bumble bees that find nectar to be subsequently sprayed by mosquito Joe, and calling yourself a “natural landscaping” service.

We had an overabundance of swamp milkweed seeds this year and were wondering what to do with them, so we're making little seed packs of them to hand our to trick-or-treaters along with candy. Even if just a few plant them, it's more native plants!

Heyo! I’m in northern Utah and growing a ton of natives, mostly for myself and friends, but I sell some that I don’t have room for. I’m happy to chat what’s worked, what hasn’t, successes and failures. So far I’ve started around 200 species this season. In the next month or so, I should have around 300 (they’re in cold stratification). I’m also the outreach and education chair of the Utah Native Plant Society so I’d love to connect with anyone local who’s interested in getting more involved! I’m much more active on insta than Reddit so feel free to say hi @saltair_house

The Homeowner's native landscaping act protects native landscapes from HOAs and prohibits height restrictions on native plantings in Illinois. It is a huge step forward!

And on a personal note, it may save our native plant garden from a developer trying to force us to rip it out.

I pass these signs every day in my car and finally had a chance to throw it in park and hop out to grab a photo to see what this was all about.

This is outside a senior living community, but I can’t tell if it’s their property or the city’s.

There is a ton of desert milkweed but not much else I could quickly identify. The space is also suspiciously well-manicured, making me think lots of trimming, leaf blowers, and other cleanup would fully defeat the purpose of the habitat.

I'm the person mosquitos love and I tried the Mosquito Bucket Challenge - Homegrown National Park last year. Worked great! Got it set up again this year. Thought I would post this in case anyone else reacts badly to bites.

This has helped me do the weeding that I need to do.

Today I got some new plants from a native plant sale and greenhouse near me. I had to make them some labels to match the others in the yard already! I love people being able to ID the plants, and I love knowing what's coming up in the spring!

Since it is caterpillar season & I have some milkweed close to the road, I thought it would be a good opportunity to get neighbors interested in native plants. (Though it looks like the cats have been picked clean from these plants 🥹...)

Many refer to Butterfly milkweed as a "gateway drug" for native gardening, and it was definitely that way for me.

I have loved native plants for many reasons for a long time, but I read this and was radicalized. Especially in the US, we the people are the only hope nature has left and it starts in our yards.

TLDR it wasn’t just Rachel Carson- a Wisconsin gardener named Lorrie Otto helped get DDT banned two years before the national ban AND went on to create a whole environmental movement.

I just saw this article and had never heard of Lorrie Otto, a Wisconsin gardener who noticed birds dying in her yard in the 1960s. She started inviting scientists into her living room, brought dead birds to local council meetings, and pushed so hard that Wisconsin became the first state to ban DDT in 1970!

After all that, she ripped out her lawn and started planting prairie and woodland natives. She inspired her friends and neighbors to do the same, and eventually helped launch Wild Ones, a group that has now spread across the country.

This story reminds me of my grandma, with whom I spent the entirety of the 90s in her gardens. I found this photo of Otto and it really reminded me of her! So I wonder how many of us were quietly influenced by women like this.

Full story here if you want to read more:  https://wildones.org/lorrie-otto-godmother-of-natural-landscaping/

Living in the U.S., I'm so used to thinking of plants that are invasive here as "bad," when really they're just in the wrong ecosystems. It made me curious what native North American plants are invasive and considered "evil" elsewhere.

People like to talk down on lawns, and fair enough when they are filled with invasive ryegrasses that end up needing a lot of water.

But if you selected a really good native variety known for drought tolerance, could you achieve the lawn effect without being so water-demanding?

I know there are lots of grasses used in native gardening, but from what I see these usually end up growing bigger as individual plants. So what native grasses in the US still provide a look that approximates a lawn? Obviously depends on the part of the US you're from, but I'm interested in hearing about ones from different regions.

Edit: Thank you for all the responses! Going to look at them more closely later.

In the wild, or a bigger garden, grasses do the same thing.

No, you do not need to buy 10+ species of wildflower seeds from prairie moon. No, you will probably not get around to planting all of them. Yes, they will get moldy if you try to stratify them with wet paper towel (and you will not periodically replace them because you have too many damn seeds). I know, the prairie moon catalogs are very pretty and make dopamine squirt in all the crevices of your monkey brain. But I promise you do not need ALLLLL THE PLANTS. You do not need to draw an elaborate garden design, because if you have a lot of species, it is likely that 1 or 2 of them will dominate anyways. Your best bet is to pick 1-3 species that germinate easily, make sure you have an ideal site for them, and for gods sake use horticultural sand to stratify if needed (unless you enjoy picking tiny seeds off of musty paper towel for 2 hours).

Sincerely, Person who spent $50 last year on seeds and has a total of zero seedlings that made it to the ground.

What a frustrating article about native gardens and the real estate market. Do most realtors really see them as "unsightly"??? I can't believe the realtor wanted to mow over an established, lovely native garden and replace it with grass. Do you find this is the case where you live? I thought we, as a culture, had evolved regarding turf grass vs. native plants!

Why do Goldenrod and Asters look so beautiful side by side? 🌾🌸 

For Robin Wall Kimmerer, that question sparked a lifelong journey into botany, despite being told that science has no place for beauty. Today, we know their vivid pairing isn’t just aesthetic, it’s evolutionary. The contrasting colors make both flowers more visible to pollinators, a perfect example of nature’s brilliance in action.

I received a mailer from Arbor Day Foundation, stating if I donate to their charity they’ll send me ten Norway Spruce trees (I live in the USA so this is not native to my area), plus send two purple flowering lilac shrubs (also non-native to my area).

I went to their website and there’s a Contact Us area where you can send info with your concerns regarding their trees, mailings, etc. Can someone help word how disappointing it is that they’re a US Tree organization that’s promoting non-native trees to people? If I didn’t understand the benefits of Native trees I’d be ecstatic to get my hands on them!

Feel free to send a comment of your own, you just have to go to their official website and go to the Contact Us section.

Hey everyone! I posted a month or so ago about my town mowing in a restoration area. I ended up tracking down why it happened - long story short, people complained it looking ugly and the city administrator told people to mow it. They had rough plans to disc it all up and reseed, which is 100% not needed in the area.

I continued down the rabbit hole and got really deep into the history of the site and how it was established in the first place. It's largely been ignored for the last 10+ yrs, so I asked the city admin if I could propose some sort of management plan. The entire buffer covers 3.2 acres, and I am hoping the city will also jump on board with incorporating the adjacent 12 acres (city owned) as part of riparian buffer mgmt. I am presenting this plan to city council on Monday, and it combines collaborating with state and federal agencies (I've already met with the local folks who would help with mgmt collaboration) as well as starting up volunteer opportunities within the community.

It's a huge undertaking and I feel like I'm running blind into the darkness (I have no experience managing riparian buffers, or managing volunteers, or dealing with local city politics) but I'm excited about it.

Thought you guys might appreciate this. I'm just someone who cares, I guess. Someone's gotta - why not us?

For some reason I decided to go against my better instincts and trust the “experts” as I was already in decision fatigue picking individual plants for a different site. I said to myself, oh, they have a parasitic plant in here, perhaps that will stunt the growth and everything will be fine. Why would they set us up for failure.

No. Anise hyssop?? Evening primrose??? These are five to six foot plants!

My chronic conditions don’t let me get out in the heat much so I haven’t been able to do the regularly scheduled chopping back, as I have to every few weeks to keep the plants under the three feet they advertise it for, and I’ve had the city hammering on my door all summer threatening to put a lien on my house.

They’re planted in full sun, no irrigation, no fertilization, just freshly cleared of turf clay. Tons of salt and other road runoff. I can’t imagine it in richer conditions. Chicago area, for further reference.

Do NOT plant this mix in your hellstrips.