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).
69Such a heartwarming story. Thank you. Reminds me of my grandfather and his garden when he was alive.
15What 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.
10Not 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
11Depending on where you live the common dandelion may not be a native plant. They were introduced to North America from Europe.
7DM me with your location and I can pass you some resources. :)
Dandelions are the best. I try to harvest them when I can get a bunch for lotion and things. They're nitrogen affixers. They help heal the soil.
1
Aesthetically pleasing my ass.
28I don't want to...
3
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.
17Don'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.
9He'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.
9
It's not even aesthetically pleasing.
17Down with monoculture! Down with monoculture!
12I 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.
8…touch grass, you internet tough guy
2
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.
8Fun 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.
5how
1Cut 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.
5
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.
1
I see all this about grass not being native, but to where? It must be native somewhere.
5Grass is native to lots of places, lawn that's meticulously kept clean of every other plant species? Not so much.
9The 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.
2
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.
5euclidean micro-zoning sounds like a terrible idea
1Jokes on you, my back yard is a non euclidean space.
1
Just scalp it and you have more native weeds than you want
4Aesthetically pleasing like a blank canvas, a bare concrete wall, a block of clay, an empty manuscript: Brimming with potential to become something.
4I hope the city has figured out by now I'm not cutting my "weeds". Gave me shit last year. The ordinance is so vague and allows the city to just go onto your property and cut everything down and bill you for the time. I fucking dare them.
3Most of the time these local ordinances have exceptions for raised beds, and their definition of "raised bed" is so vague you can just line your yard with decorative bricks and declare the whole thing is a raised bed.
Alternatively you can have your property designated as a wildlife preserve, even in residential neighborhoods.
3Where you live I'll come help mow your shit for you. Barely any cost.
If you wanna live in the woods live in the woods, you live in town and your property drives value down for your neighbors... Well you're gonna get what you get.
Theslad below has some good ideas to game the system, but "fuck you" isnt it. You don't get to unilaterally decide, that is entitled as fuck.
1After a certain height your weeds aren't providing any extra value to pollinators and are just inviting creatures that carry disease to hold up there. That's why the city insists on cutting them. Just keep your weeds to a reasonable height, it still helps the pollinators and keeps rats from breeding incessantly. Untended to yards are shown to increase rats in the area. You don't want the plague do you? Cuz that's how you get the plague. (The last two sentences are hyperbole obviously.)
1Our city (in Germany) gave us shit a few times, but it was because of our hedge growing onto the street. At a certain point I get it, you are responsible for your plants and if they obstruct traffic etc. Another hypothetical scenario would be where you have a bunch of invasive plants that the city tries to eradicate? But if they just complain about the aesthetics it is really pathetic...
1Its purely aesthetics. They put it in because like a third of the "city" (like 5k people) is abandoned so they want to go on to those properties to cut everything down. Which is dumb because you have to poison the invasive weeds that are here to kill them. They just pop right back up if you cut them. But I guess thats how they keep the money coming in, they charge like $400 per hour. I manage my garden, its far away from the road, I pull or poison any invasives. But I let native plants grow. Old people just see plants that aren't perfectly manicured and call the city. And nobody has lawns here, they want the entire city to just be bare gravel.
1
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.
3Eaten 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.
9Please let the Pemberton area of BC know this. As wild as it gets, I have never seen so many mosquitoes in my life.
2You 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?
0
No mow summer
2Followed by HOA intervention fall!
1Haha I've never got that as a culture when it's your land. Tell them to get in the compost bin
1
Oh, you didn't need to do that. You won't find a study supporting your argument, I've looked thoroughly before. Case in point, the study you shared. It actually opposes your argument, by finding suburban lawns support a diverse and abundant bee community. Of the three mowing frequencies they studied (one, two, and three week intervals), they actually found every two weeks was optimal for the bees.
Like I said to begin with, I just don't think what species of green you plant in your lawn matters nearly as much as not using insecticide.
1Saw 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
1Ridiculously bougie in the US means “no meth zombies running up to your car when you stop at a red light”, correct?
0No, 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.
0
Bugs don't care what type of green you have in your lawn. You can even mow.
Just don't spray insecticide on your lawn.
Edit: also, why the fuck would you remove existing lawn to replace it with new growth? That's like indiscriminately bulldozing every home in a city to rebuild them with whatever is the current trend in sustainable housing. Where do people live in the mean time? Please don't let this person, or me for that matter, inform your opinion.
-1That's just simply vastly and easily proved to be untrue.
Insecticide is a lot of it but lack of variety, lack of height, lack of pollinators, lack of pollinating plants and light pollution are all compound factors.
5Grass monoculture lawns are basically deserts. You are not hurting anything by ripping it all out and letting native plants take over
5
I mean I'd rather have my entire yard and have no bugs live close to me and not have to worry about the grass. Would absolutely love getting rid of all plants near me except maybe having one little greenhouse to grow some weed in. Insects and bugs of any kind are not welcome anywhere I might encounter them.
-2Yet you won't. You will just post memes about it on the internet.
-7I literally just planted a bunch of native seed bombs yesterday to catch the rain lol.
5
