Native plants

[Spongebob]

I've been studying up on the concept of introducing native plants to my property.  Don't know about the rest of you, but I'm dog tired of tending to turf grass when I don't really care about it all that much.  I would love to build a lawn with native plants that don't need to be mowed weekly.  There are a lot of advocates out there for this very thing.  The replacement of native plants has caused all sorts of changes in wildlife.  Ultimately, I may have to ditch my neighborhood house and move to the county and get a larger piece of land.  Anyone out there with this in mind?

[brewer]

Well, my wife wants to move to the country but not for plants, for goats and sheep.

And I'd still have to mow, and then some.

[Ranjr]

When I lived in town, I didn't follow the regimen of poison, water and mow.  It's wasteful and odd to me.  Too uniform, and a waste of water and gasoline.  I cut the grass when it got too high but didn't maintain a fairway.  Most of the front was stone beds with bushes and perennials.


Out in the county, I have too many trees to even consider turf.  In the front, I have two sections of forsythia, lilac, knockout roses, a few perennials and whatever the dish wants to add each year.  Another section along the street, we put native wildflower seeds.  This was a good year for them.  So far, the swamp rose (wild hibiscus) and wild azalea are becoming more established, but another late winter like the last one could do them in.  The butterfly bushes are non-native and potentially invasive, but they're beautiful, fragrant and loved by pollinators.

On one side is a bed of wild dwarf irises, and other large irises that I dug up from abandoned homesteads.  In back, under a walnut, is a big stand of daffodils.  We have potted flowers, herbs, and edibles on all the decks.  The rest is whatever grass or weeds come up, which I mow when it gets too high.  I weed-eat the hilly section along the path to the water, but leave the rest for the deer and birds.

[Spongebob]

That sounds like what I have in mind. I am a big fan of trees and I enjoy planting new plants building a diverse garden. Not everything works out but I still enjoy the process. It's only recently that I've become aware of the idea of planting native versus all the stuff you can buy at Lowes, most of which originated somewhere else and has the tendency to destroy local plants and animals. I just recently found out that some states have banned Bradford pear trees because they are proliferating in the wild and taking over native trees. And their blooms stink.

[Ranjr]

In Fayetteville, the city offered a free dogwood for every Bradford pear you cut down.  I wish they had specified it had to be YOUR pear.

[onlinebiker]

If they were native - wouldn' t they already be there?

[Brian37]

I've been studying up on the concept of introducing native plants to my property.  Don't know about the rest of you, but I'm dog tired of tending to turf grass when I don't really care about it all that much.  I would love to build a lawn with native plants that don't need to be mowed weekly.  There are a lot of advocates out there for this very thing.  The replacement of native plants has caused all sorts of changes in wildlife.  Ultimately, I may have to ditch my neighborhood house and move to the county and get a larger piece of land.  Anyone out there with this in mind?

The concept of a manicured lawn is human invented. In reality long before humans, vegetation did what all life does. The manicured lawn is an manifestation of European royalty hundreds of years ago.

If your lawn is overgrown and your neighbors hate you for it, it means you are letting nature do it's thing.

[Spongebob]

If they were native - wouldn' t they already be there?

I mean, yeah; they were here.  We (new occupants) killed them and replaced them with plants for things lawns that look like a golf green, not to mention asphalt.  I've done some reading on this and it dates back to English gardens that were once only possible if you were rich.  Americans in the 20th century began similar practices across the country and it's become something of a cultural expectation.  Lots of wildlife depended on those native plants, so the ecological change has been tremendous.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

If they were native - wouldn' t they already be there?

Not necessarily. A tremendous amount of landscaping is done with introduced plants. This is almost always a bad idea.

Boru

[Spongebob]

The concept of a manicured lawn is human invented. In reality long before humans, vegetation did what all life does. The manicured lawn is an manifestation of European royalty hundreds of years ago.

If your lawn is overgrown and your neighbors hate you for it, it means you are letting nature do it's thing.

I wouldn't get carried away with this.  I still want my property to look good; not looking for a wild patch of weeds.  Reducing the area of turf grass is a start and building beds with more native species is the general goal.  Last year I cleared a large area in my back yard and put down a small patch of gravel and moved a bench swing there and surrounded it with flowers and plants.  That eliminated around 600 square feet of turf grass.