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We replaced about 60-70% of our backyard with native plants, trees, and shrubs. It was a shit ton of work but I saw a hummingbird for the first time in my life! And moths mimicking hummingbirds. And friendly bees. And weird beetles. And other birds galore. I rarely have to water.
Now our preschooler has room to roam and so so much to explore (and weird bugs to chase mom around with).
Such a heartwarming story. Thank you. Reminds me of my grandfather and his garden when he was alive.
What all did you do to replace it? I’m starting to reclaim my yards in my new place (finally getting dandelions!!) and my initial attempt at clover didn’t take as much as I wanted it to. Really want to get my yard to as close as native and wildlife friendly as my city will allow.
Depending on where you live the common dandelion may not be a native plant. They were introduced to North America from Europe.
For better or worse, my local/state government doesn’t consider them noxious weeds because they’re so firmly established that we can never get rid of them.
That and you can eat both the greens and roots which is great.
The bunnies in my neighborhood appreciate this very much.
More not worth the cost to fight, so embrace it. Our city stoped spraying for broadleaf maybe 5 years back.
Not op but I grow pollinator gardens in my community garden which typically attracts bees, hummingbirds etc.; check with your local nursery because there should be a native plant seed mix you can buy.
You may be a little late in the season (assuming northern hemisphere) for most seed mixes because I’ve mostly seen suggested sowing in fall or late spring
For what it’s worth, it’s perfect planting time where I am, still another week of potential frost in southern Alberta, Canada.
(finally getting dandelions!!)
My friend they grow in the film of construction dust that has built up in the gutter of my shed
We’re only getting them in the edge of the yard, and it took a bit over a year to get that. Given how quickly the crab grass returned, I’m guessing the previous owners used A LOT of chemicals to keep their yard pristine.
I just love seeing people walking around with their disposable sprayer of round up to kill every single dandelion they see. Who’s the weed?
Aesthetically pleasing my ass.
I don’t want to…
I might have anger issues because any time someone tells me to touch grass I want to just violently make them eat the said touching grass.
…touch grass, you internet tough guy
My husband and I tried so hard to just let our lawn be what it wanted to be. All the clover, dandelions, wild strawberry, wild onion and ginger absolutely took over. In the back, it’s completely fine. We get a lot of brown spots and mud during winter when it dies back, but come spring it’s back to thriving. In our front yard though, enough of it died back that a heavy rain washed a lot of our yard into our driveway. We tried to manage it for a year before giving in.
So now, our front yard is an ugly but pristine monoculture grass hellscape. The back though is much larger, and still full of the awesome native plant goodness. I know nature is thriving back there because I pretty much cannot use my yard during summer due to the insane amount of bugs. There is a thriving ecosystem with all sorts of wildlife, from bunnies, squirrels and chipmunks to cardinals, robins and owls. Occasionally even a stray fox or mallard can be seen around the creek. And I live in the suburbs of a major metro area, and can hear I-35 from my house. It really is quite remarkable how natural ecosystems can thrive with just a tiny bit of encouragement.
There’s a guy on youtube that talks about bringing back native plants to an area and all the benefits that come with it.
He usually just does a controlled burn and comes back a while later and it’s back to native plants. Dude has a lot of cool knowledge but it’s funny to me the format is basically explain-burn-check back later.
Don’t know the channel, but wouldn’t that result in a bunch of invasive species creeping in, too?
One of the things with natural lawns is you can’t just let your yard do its thing. Lots of the plants you’ll get with that are invasive. You do have to do some kind of planning and maintenance.
He’s almost certainly in America, where a lot of the ecological systems are supposed to burn every once in a while. It’s also common that the invasive species can’t handle it. We’ve messed up a lot of our ecosystems by suppressing wildfires, and it’s causing multiple kinds of problems.
Fun fact, naturally growing grass in Midwest is generally of the phalaris species, you can extract a very powerful hallucinogenic drug called DMT from it in three very simple steps. All you need is a lawnmower with a mulch bag and some pool cleaning supplies.
I did some cursory research, and it looks like the leaves also contain toxic compounds, such as gramine, that can cause organ damage, including brain damage.
how
Cut it into really small pieces, soak it something that extracts the fat cells from the grass (BBQ lighter fluid works for this), then use and acid and a base to neutralize your bucket of shit and all the DMT sinks to the bottom in solid form so just separate it from the liquid.
All the brown shit at the bottom of your concoction is pure DMT.
Oh fuck that’s honestly really cool
Do I drink it right out of the bucket?
You’re supposed to smoke it, but you better get buckled up before you do because it’s fucking crazy.
Unpopular opinion: I like my pure grass lawn and work hard to keep it nice with clean edges, no weeds, and comfortable barefoot walking. My flower garden I also work to keep nice in between plants. The vegetable garden is the same deal. The back of the property can grow whatever it wants. I have less than 1/4 acre and if I can have it all so can you.
You will never convince me that a lot with a house that is overgrown to shit looks nice. We can have both.
You can maintain a natural yard without letting it get overgrown.
I passed through a natural lawn sub Lemmy the other day and it didn’t look like that was the norm. The normal seemed to be just don’t mow, which really brings a “this is an abandoned property” vibe for me.
Lemmy isn’t representative of the general population.
euclidean micro-zoning sounds like a terrible idea
Jokes on you, my back yard is a non euclidean space.
It’s not even aesthetically pleasing.
Down with monoculture! Down with monoculture!
Aesthetically pleasing like a blank canvas, a bare concrete wall, a block of clay, an empty manuscript: Brimming with potential to become something.
I don’t know where you live but where I’m at you will be eaten alive unless you are literally wet with deet spray(in areas that have all native plants and grasses). I don’t mind visiting but as far as my backyard, I’ll pass.
Eaten alive by mosquitoes and blackflies, which do well even with grass. As someone who also lived in an area like that (Ottawa) I was amazing when I moved across the river to Gatineau where they let their green spaces be wild and was amazed I was biking along the same river at the same time of year and there were very few bugs.
Naturalized ecosystems allow predators of mosquitoes and flies to thrive and control their numbers.
Please let the Pemberton area of BC know this. As wild as it gets, I have never seen so many mosquitoes in my life.
You have ticks and chiggers up there too? I bet they spray the god damn dog shit out of those green spaces and make sure any standing water has been treated if it’s a yuppy area like you are describing. Plus your cold winters kill a lot of them off right? You ever been in the deep south near Louisiana? Even better, South America?
No mow summer
Followed by HOA intervention fall!
Haha I’ve never got that as a culture when it’s your land. Tell them to get in the compost bin
Just scalp it and you have more native weeds than you want
Saw a man watering his yard the other day omw home from work. I drive through a ridiculously bougie area on my commute and see so much weird and out of touch shit
Ridiculously bougie in the US means “no meth zombies running up to your car when you stop at a red light”, correct?
No, bougier. Like mansions and supercars and garages the size of my house and gigantic yards with topiaries. Absolutely crazy shit that screams “We have fuck you levels of money”
It’s honestly kind of disgusting, tbh.
I see all this about grass not being native, but to where? It must be native somewhere.
Grass is native to lots of places, lawn that’s meticulously kept clean of every other plant species? Not so much.
The meme doesn’t say that grass isn’t native, but that they want to replace it with native plants. I do get your point though, it sounds like it excludes grass. According to Wiki, Lolium perenne (hugely cultivated grass worldwide) “is native to Europe, Asia and northern Africa”. I think why people explicitly say that they want to replace their lawn with native plants is because less knowledgeable people might go with introduced and widely cultivated species. This would not be as effective in bringing back wildlife. Introduced plants are often not great host plants for pollinators for example. So it is great when people specifically replace their lawn with plants that are native to their region.
