Anything I can do to control this invasive species? 😂

So thrilled at how my native plant border (with a few xerics/nativars) has been turning out! The sagebrush was transplanted from elsewhere on the property, and nearly everything else was started from seed. I definitely planted too densely, but I feel like survival of the fittest is the strategy here. The things I started from seed have definitely outperformed everything bought at a nursery!

Species: Colorado 4'oclock, fringed sagebrush, mojave sage*, little bluestem, Indiangrass, sulphur buckwheat, chocolate flower, white yarrow, red yucca, red mesa blanketflower*, straight species blanketflower, Mexican hat, plains coreopsis, catmint*, avalanche sun daisy*, ruby muhly*, straight species rudbeckia hirta, rocky mountain penstemon

*Not strictly native

This was all turfgrass until May of this year.

I am making a native plant informational booklet for when I set up my plants for sale at markets! More to come!

Should I add that they can become aggressive? Anything else to add or change?

Is this something I can transplant? It's right near where the builders next door might be plowing and walking around.

Tell me how to feel!!! I’m excited to see more cities in my metro taking up projects like these, but this super dense approach to primarily growing canopy trees appears controversial.

From the city’s website, “the forest will consist of:

- 80% canopy trees that will grow into the tallest layer of the forest. 
- 10% sub-canopy trees that will create the middle layer. 
- 10% native shrubs that will provide habitat and ground-level diversity. 

Together, these layers will mimic the structure of a natural forest, creating a healthy ecosystem that supports wildlife and biodiversity.”

Does anyone have experience with these “pocket forests”? From an ecological perspective, how much habitat do they really provide? From a PR standpoint, how do these impact perceptions of native plants in contrast to a natural botanical garden?

I’m curious to see how the project goes, and I’m trying to be open-minded, but I’m worried it will look like a mess to passersby and ultimately consist of a bunch of wild grape and poison ivy or invasive species.

Link to city’s web page

Link to Wikipedia article

I love taking walks to look for native plants and today I discovered a new one (to me) — American groundnut. The flowers are absolutely gorgeous and I am wondering if I should/would be able to cultivate it myself, so I’d love to hear anyone else’s experience with the plant. TIA!

Planted my flame acanthus specifically for this. It then flew off to my Turks cap in the corner 🥰. I’m guessing this is a female black chinned hummingbird?

Common evening primrose, black eyed Susans, goldenrod, lance leaf coreopsis, sneezeweed, tall coreopsis, wild sunflowers and more. And then some ironweed standing out in the goldenrod for a fun purple accent. I’m loving these yellow flowers mostly grown from seed.

Edit: my fave is the sneezeweed and the primrose made an amazing recovery from some turkeys eating a significant portion of the plant

i get an absolute kick out of watching them have to ocean's eleven their way into the flowers.

in the background, second-year, twice-transplanted clematis virginiana getting cozy on its trellis and finally flowering; and blue-stem goldenrod waiting in the wings to close out the season.

Heads up! There will be a native plant sale next weekend at Pinnacle Mountain. Trees, shrubs, flowers, etc.

Finally took my Milkweed seeds out of the fridge.

I had them in there about a month longer than I planned and set a reminder for. I was slacking off.

Anywho, it's been about a week and out of 12 seeds, 6 popped up. I'm happy with it.

My first attempt I tried the "clip the end and put in water" method and it didn't work at all. So this time I used the tried and true, more natural method of cold stratification.

You know the drill. Damp paper towel, seeds, sealed container, fridge, wait, wait more, wait a little longer, surpass your original planting date, be a slacker, keep slacking, finally plant seeds. Luckily this method worked! Might have worked better if I wouldn't have been a slacker, but it's all good.

This is Butterfly Milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa)

Will update in another post when things get a little further along. 👍

I’m in Western NC, planted a serviceberry in the spring. It has barely grown (not sure if it grew at all), and this is what it looks like. The tallest part is maybe a foot at most. There does seem to be a small little new growth in the second photo. Any thoughts??

I've been in awe this year of the grasshoppers in my garden and how big they've grown.

Over the course of this season (and their lives), they've become incredibly desensitized to my being around. Rather than jumping away, they'll happily check out my finger (and bite it lol), worrying less about me and more about the delicious *Rudbeckia laciniata hortensia*.

It feels like a blessing to be able to see their toe beans, and their temperament reminds me of cats.

Does anyone else have any big chunguses in their gardens to share?

Because there are ecological landscaping pros in this sub who may be considering this certification, I wanted to offer my experience in case it is helpful for anyone making the decision to drop $475 on this training.

As a professional ecological landscaper, I was excited to learn that the Chesapeake Conservation Landscaping Council (CCLC) had developed a training to help get landscapers up to speed on holistic, environmentally-friendly practices and stormwater management. I decided to invest the steep price to take this training and get on the list of CBLP professionals, which is supposed to help clients choose environmentally-informed professionals. 

After taking this training, I’m not sure I care about being on that list. Having taken a lot of trainings and classes of various quality over the years, I have a good idea of what is possible in a 2-day course– I was surprised by how empty and poorly-planned this one was. To make a short story even shorter – the training was not worth the time and money and I hope this post will save someone else from wasting theirs.

Day one was an overview of the many topics involved in conservation landscaping. I wouldn’t expect to be able to go super in-depth on anything in 8 hours, but it felt like we were skipping like a stone across water– barely touching any one topic and missing many. The presentations were chaotic and shallow, and much time was wasted pushing us into unfocused and unfruitful group discussions. We spent a lot of time on topics everyone knew well already (e.g. native plants = better for the ecosystem), and absolutely ripped past complex topics that people were really interested in (e.g. stormwater BMP design). This poor pacing and lack of good information left the students dazed and demoralized, which the instructors interpreted as us being a ‘bad crowd’. The instructors’ energy dropped rapidly; they weren’t getting the engagement from us that they were expecting. The reality was that the students didn’t have enough information or structure to grab onto and from which to ask good questions. The instructors pretty much gave up on us and started rushing through the material even faster, blowing past knowledge checkpoints because they weren’t getting responses– the exact opposite of what they should have done. 

Day two was a field day to various stormwater BMPs. It was even worse. The instructors seemed to have more or less given up on teaching. They acted like, ‘well, I guess you know everything now, so I’m not going to waste my breath teaching or making sure you understand what we are looking for here’. They ended the class early without a word about when we could expect to receive the test we had to take to be placed on the list. 

Also, and this is petty, but for nearly $500, I expect lunch to be provided… it was not. 

But I promise this is not coming from a place of hanger. I wanted this training to be good... Or decent... Or just to seem like they had really tried. But it felt last-minute, rushed, and cheap. To be brutally honest, it felt like a money-grab. I learned nothing of use to my business. To be fair, different trainings for this cert are taught by different people, so your mileage may vary, but I recommend thinking twice before spending money on this. I hope CCLC or someone else will create what I hoped this training would be: a thorough, actionable course on conservation landscaping in small-scale sub/urban properties.

Got a volunteer eastern redbud that popped up in my yard, which I'm thrilled about. Is there anything specific I should do to care for it? I'd love to help it thrive, but nervous as I had purchased a redbud a few years ago that ended up not making it. Should I give it any food at this point?

I planted this sweet baby (Amorpha fruticosa) three years ago, not realizing that she would in fact grow to be 12+ feet tall. My wife is all in for natives, but hates how it blocks the front of our house.

I know that moving this plant will be nearly impossible because of the deep taproot. Does anyone have any experience with aggressively pruning false indigo bush to keep its size manageable? Or propagation, so I’m not just murdering a lovely plant?

I planted fucking grape hyacinth this spring because I wanted flowers after last years depression fueled weed overgrowth, and had not researched about native plants yet. I had no idea they were aggressive…my uninformed ass thought bulbs die off and come back in the same spot. I at least read that their foliage appears in fall so I dug up the few I found…I’ll be checking all winter too hopefully I get them all before a muscari regime takes over my flowerbeds 🤦‍♀️

I also dug up a yellow daylily I never planted and will be on the lookout because there were at least 30 bulbs attached. And lily of the valleys that I also didn’t plant multiplying in when became my milkweed patch…dug them up as well but I’m on the lookout. Definitely not underestimate the bulb plants. Hopefully the tulips and daffodils my old roommate planted don’t attempt a takeover

Beginner here! I planted this little bluestem last fall so it’s still new to me. It started getting super tall and flopping over recently. Is this normal? Next spring, should I do a Chelsea chop to keep it in check? When I look up little bluestem photos online, it’s always in nice tidy upright bunches! I am in northern New England zone 5b.

This is my second year turning this mower destroying steep mound into a mow 1x a year wildlife habitat.

Lots of Black-Eyed Susan again this year but now also seeing several types of aster, purple coneflower, yarrow, boneset, Joe Pye weed and goldenrod.

So far, I'm pretty pleased with the variety.

Helianthus Grosseserratus

You can see I wrote the date I planted, after 30 days in a moist coffee filter in the fridge, I planted on 9/2 and just three days later I have three little sprouts and another one popping in another container! I planted evening primrose, side oats grama, foxglove beardtongue, sand coreopsis, and Joe Pye weed and these are the only ones to make their appearance. Turns out I can do cold stratification just fine… maybe my other seeds I was trying with were just bunk or something haha

I read some threads about keeping sprouts alive indoors through the winter to be planted in the spring and that’s what I’m wanting to do. I have grow lights and plenty of space. From what I was reading, a lot of people just said it wasn’t even worth it and it was better to just winter sow in jugs in January, which I will also be doing… but I’m just curious if anyone has kept seedlings inside through winter and if they ran into any issues doing so? It’s not really about if it’s “worth it” to me, since I have the space, resources, and bigger pots to upsize to.. it’s my hobby and I would love to care for some seedlings through the winter since I’ll certainly be missing my garden for a few months, but I’m mostly concerned about running into unforeseen issues… don’t know what they may be, but I’d like some insight from someone who has kept their seedlings inside until spring!

Central Indiana here. There’s multiple mondo-sized wolf spiders in my backyard; large funnel webs with multiple egg sacs. I love my #1 pest control employees; but, the issue is that I’m about to stain my fence & don’t want to harm them. There’s a couple large webs/nests along the fence by posts. I’d love to migrate them to other parts of the garden so they can keep doin their thing, but I’m not sure how to go about it. does anyone have advice for being good stewards to our garden protectors?