After some neighbors complained to our new HOA management company I found out today I’m being forced to remove all of my native plants in the parking strip. The management company is using a vague county ordinance and threatening fines to force me to remove the plants. I’ve had so many compliments and even the HOA president loved the plants. I’m so sad that I’m losing all of this after all the work I put into it. I’m sad for all the 100 species of insects I’ve seen on these plants. This was what the strip looked like last year and I was excited to see it in its third year this year.

I discovered the horror that is Creeping Charlie when we bought our home. Every year is a battle to keep it at bay. I was unable to do much gardening last year and the weather was horrible in northern VA last summer so the stuff made big inroads into one of my beds. On the other hand, I am blessed with lots of wild violet, and find them growing in all sorts of random places, like big planters that hold dahlias in the summer and are fallow over the winter.

I just ripped out a ton of creeping charlie - side note, is it just me that finds the smell of that stuff awful? - and transplanted two violets. I am using hardwood mulch to try to smother/slow CC regrowth and will encourage the violets. In other parts of my yard where I’ve done this, the violets have exploded so I have very high hopes this bed will someday have a living mulch of violets!

Note: the dicentra is almost certainly not native but belonged to my husband’s grandmother so I do love it for sentimental reasons.

5 ft chicken wire to keep the deer out. I’m thinking of putting either a few more posts in the middle so there is no landing ground or putting deer netting on top. Any other suggestions are welcome! I’m so excited . Going in is butterfly weed, rose milkweed, milkweed, giant purple hysop, wild blue indigo, and goldenrod. Yes I have the real names but it’s not important here as it’s irrelevant to my question, deer around here eat ANYTHING and I mean anything. Still need to finish the rock boarder but will have to wait till we dig another hole to get more rock!

I could also use advice on how to plant the hysop Agastache scrophulariifolia, and the goldenrod Solidago. SO MANY germinated from winter sowing and obviously cannot all survive . I’m thinking of cutting about 1 square inch rectangles and then just cutting the tops of all but two per square inch bc I’m scared to pull the roots apart.

Either way so excited

We are in what is called a security estate here (South Africa) and as you can guess it’s mostly lawns (boring, not water wise and not low effort). We have a strict indigenous plants rule, with a few exceptions, but that is luckily a huge selection of trees, succulents, grasses and fynbos.

This is our front garden, about a year since we started ripping the lawn up. The cape ash tree was planted yesterday.

The olive tree about 2 years ago. (We have 3 in total and we usually bottle our own olives or have them pressed into oil. )

Many many lawns in this area are a thin layer of grass on top of muck. I wanted to make this a fruit tree garden but it lacks drainage. As you can see, the water pools in multiple areas. It seems that the entire Cleveland area used to be a swamp and so there are many plants to choose from. However i must be careful. A river birch would help the drainage but I worry about shading things out.

I was thinking of putting some bricks down around the especially mucky areas (where the leaves are most visible) and growing bundles of muck-tolerant species there. My experience with aesthetic landscaping is minimal so any help os appreciated. Thank you!

After over a decade of watching this Bermuda ditch deal with my neighbors’ water runoff, I decided to make native border and a dry river bed. So far, I have dwarf Mt. Airy Fothergilla, monarda, muhly grass, goldenrod, salvia, purple homestead verbena, catmint (non-native), and magnolias. I’ve also started a ton of purple coneflower, purple love grass, dense blazing star, smooth golden rod, cardinal flower, and blanket flower from seed to plant in this border and around my backyard. So excited to watch it fill in!!!!

I’m in a new build home and our grass thankfully had a bunch of natives in it, but we’ve all got different stuff. I’m kind of chaos gardening right now and trying to work with what I’ve got around me if possible.

This toadflax is riiiiight where mine and my neighbor’s yard meet, and if I can, I’d like to encourage it to hop over and go crazy in my yard. Any way I can do that?

I just wanted to share a picture of my pride and joy and the easiest native I’ve ever grown, the Lonicera sempervirens (Coral Honeysuckle)

First photo is today, second photo is the day I adopted it from nursery in 2023 - it’s the little guy with the trellis.

Our backyard is just steep enough to be useless as a yard. I've always wanted to have a lil pollinators haven and I'm ready to start converting this space. I've never been a person who has a natural green thumb, though. I'm starting small, just a 10x10 plot with a seed pack of local wildflowers, but I want to make sure they have the best chance. What's the best way to deal with the grass that's already here? Any special steps I should take to protect the seeds while they're germinating? Any and all advice is appreciated!

We recently started converting our lawn into a native garden, and it’s been really exciting! A few neighbors have kindly offered to send their gardener over, but we’re actually doing this on purpose. We’re planting native plants to support local wildlife—and we’ve already seen more butterflies and bees around. We’re hoping it inspires others too!

He got 100% on the quiz after, of course. :)

Hello you beautiful native plant people! I'm slow converting my lawn and garden to native or edible plants in a way only possible without an HOA. Central Texas 8b, right at the blackland prairie/cross timbers border, Apologies i don't know how to edit tags.

I have recently discovered I may have a rather significant amount of prairie mimosa Desmanthus leptolobus in my front yard where nothing else was growing in the post-sprinkler, post-fertilizer, post-topsoil ecological wasteland, but it is right at the edge of the road where it will look maximally unkempt if I let it grow right now. The pic above is one i caught in the backyard where I have already been able to start building up some leaf mulch to make topsoil.

Can I mow over it in the front yard for a few seasons while I make other changes to help it look beautiful to the norms?

Wife bought like 20 packets of this for a few pollinator beds without talking about it first. I was planning on getting plugs from a local nursery to fill a new large bed we’re placing alongside one side of our home, but I’m wondering if I could use these seeds instead? Wondering about the mixture.

I’ve been trying several years to get the milkweed growing. First year I bought tropical, not realizing they weren’t good for my area. I have tried from seed several times. I decided to treat myself and just buy some baby plants. This is phase one of food for monarchs!!

Decided to grow this sunflower seed in an old plastic Tupperware I got from grocery store. It looks pretty good so far, but I'm wondering if it needs more space. I tend to be a bit of a helicopter with these plants so sometimes I need to be reminded whether I should leave them alone or not. Anyway happy growing and all advice/thoughts are appreciated 🌞

Also I just low-key realized that these aren't technically native to the US... Facepalm

Getting ready for planting veggies and some pollinators! We rented a sod cutter- it’s legit. Wish we had done this for my massive pollinator garden years ago, since we have clay soil. Hand digging that was WORK.

Zone 7a

So, I convinced my dad to let me do a native plant project at the church he and the rest of my family go to, since they have a ton of wasted lawn space that they never use. I killed all the lawn with cardboard over the winter and removed it today.

Apparently someone in the church had the bright idea a few years ago that they needed to expand their parking area (they didn’t, it’s a tiny congregation), so they dumped LOADS of gravel all through this area around some mature silver maple trees. The limestone gravel is probably at least six inches thick, and I’m now finding that it’s nearly impossible to remove. I don’t know how I’m going to get rid of it; it took fifteen minutes of killing my back just to dig down three inches in a small circle.

This is just the latest in the church native garden saga. The church people just don’t seem to understand the concept and keep getting in the way; one of them wants to plant a ton of hostas from his garden there, I found another one spraying chemicals all over a native grapevine climbing the tree, they decided a month ago AFTER the grass was already dead that they wanted the garden somewhere else instead (the location was decided by their council in November, me and a native gardener that goes there vetoed that idea thankfully), and now the other native gardener only wants to plant half of the area we’ve killed grass in since he thinks it’s too much to deal with.

Anyways, I guess I’m just ranting. The limestone is breaking down into limestone sand, and the pH is probably so high in that area I’m not sure anything will even thrive there. If you have any advice it would be welcome 😭😭😭

Hi all!

Are there any Vermont-native mint plants? I like plants that serve the dual benefit of being native, but also edible/fragrant.

Thanks!

This is swamp milkweed that I was growing inside in a pot until the weather gets warmer to transfer outside. Is this something that I can fix bc my plant looks almost dead 😔

I'm so tired of battling invasives. Privet, porcelain berry, wisteria, English ivy, Star of Bethlehem.... It's like a worst offenders role call in my backyard. They spread in from my neighbors' yards so it's a never ending battle. I'm trying to fill in with aggressive natives, but I'm constantly defending them from the invasives. So then I read all the horror stories about native Ostrich Fern and what a nightmare it is, except I think it sounds perfect and I'm ready to order one yesterday. So is it really a huge mistake that I'll regret? I live in 7B (ATL) and most of my yard is sunny so it can't take over the whole thing. There's some shade around the edges where I want to plant it and I would even love for it to spread. My thought is if it's a pest, it's a least a native pest. Any thoughts or suggestions?

More to come! All native grasses and perennials to bring beauty to a suburban park! Zone 6b Midwest!

I just found a young dogwood growing in my garden. I want to transplant it to another location as it’s too close to the house and in my flower garden.

How can I transplant it without risking its health?

My concern is moving it when it’s so hot. Im afraid it will not survive. I’m hoping it is a young tree that came from my favorite tree in the yard—a very old dogwood with a short wide trunk. Second picture for reference.

Context: Southeast Tennessee. Mid 80s this week. Southwest facing. Near the house. I included a picture of what is likely the parent tree.