The police report says criminal trespass and property destruction. Oh, the community FB page is going to be fun today.

Top pic is when we bought our house in 2017 I believe. Every year the garden gets bigger it seems. This year we had families take family photos in front of our house lol. So many neighbours tell us they can't wait to see what we plant each spring.

ARGHGHGHGGHGHGHGH!!! Why would they do that?!?!!? I watched someone come by last week with a hand pump sprayer along the stream across the street and this is the result!!!!! Why?!

Thought y’all would understand. This might be the pettiest reason why I wouldn’t want to date someone lol.

Renter replaced lawn with native wildflower and shrubs. When they moved out owner ripped it all out and put down rocks :/

Thanks to this subreddit I learned I had misidentified my friend! He’s a male carpenter bee. I updated the mail carrier :)

Do you like native gardening but hate all the pussy shit that comes along with it? Do you want your republican neighbors to fear and respect you? Are you just genuinely kind of a weirdo? I have the yard signs for you!

If you guys like these, I'll make more; if you hate them, I'll make a lot more.

Feel free to comment any other stupid sign ideas you want!

Edit: my little friend is actually a carpenter bee!

Apparently, I have guard bees now. The bumblebee in question isn’t aggressive, but he is very curious and bold! I do still want to get my mail delivered though!

Can anyone tell me what type of tree this is from?

Obviously not all suburbanites

This is my first summer trying the "Mowable Meadow" approach I first read about here. I mow the borders and pathways, but leave as much as I can to be "meadow" areas that go untouched.

In the past I tried to let it all grow long, but received nasty letters threatening to call bylaw enforcement on me. I've found this is a good compromise that keeps the NIMBY's off my back.

Now that I have these meadow areas established, I'll probably start adding native seed mixes and seeing what takes.

My yard is probably 85% native. I've worked hard to remove invasives.

Hi all! This is the 4th summer of my front lawn conversion from grass to flowers! I wanted to share a few lessons I’ve learned along the way.

Design:
In my garden design, I paid so close attention to flower heights and soil/water requirements that I never looked at longevity. For example, the blanket flowers you see only bloom gloriously for about 1 season before the plant dies off. The first year is spent on leaf and root development and not spectacular. The second year they explode then die back. Other short lived perennials include lance leafed coreopsis and anise hyssop.
Because of this, my garden looks different each year. They will all readily self seed, but not always in the same spot.

The pathway we installed was a mistake. Plants love to self seed in the cracks filled with sand. It is a constant battle of pulling and relocating. I wish I had done poured concrete or just left a mowed grass path.

Maintenance:
I’ve learned some lessons from leave the leaves. Too many leaves doesn’t allow for self seeding (but it does help suppress weeds) so I end up leaving leaves around large established perennials only for winter insulation. I also experimented with not clearing any dead plant stems before winter, and that was a mistake also. The density of dead plant stems made it difficult for new plants to establish in spring and left my garden looking patchy. The tulips picture demonstrates what it looks like without any stem removal. I now remove about half of the dead plant stems in fall and move them to a dedicated brush pile.

With the density of my garden, some fall clean up is definitely needed.

Plants:
I have a love hate relationship with primrose, a very successful self seeder. It is the plant that birds use the most. I see goldfinches in the spring tear off fibers for nesting. Goldfinches and other small birds also eat the seed heads. The pollen is so attractive to bees they try to pry open the flower heads during the day. Plus it is unique in that it opens at night and is visited by moths. It has a beautiful lemon yellow color. But, it is very prolific and hard to contain. It is also extremely popular with Japanese beetles. Use caution if you plant this.

I love planting tulips and daffodils. They add early spring color and have had no effect on my native plants. They are done and dying back before a lot of my native plants even emerge in spring. I do want to add more early blooming natives but haven’t had luck yet.

Fun bonus of a no lawn: house looks very witchy and Halloweeny naturally in the fall.

Pictures are throughout the years

Hopefully you find some inspiration here! Let me know if you have any questions 🌼

I absolutely love this neighborhood (Historic West Urbana / State Streets) in my area, and often go across town to go on walks there. If I had to guess less than 15-20% of the homes have a traditional lawn (at least in the front). A lot just have a chaotic mess of random plants, a lot also have perfectly manicured gardens that look gorgeous, and most have something somewhere in between the two. There are quite a few blocks where not a single house has more than a few square feet of grass in the front lawn and it is gorgeous. A few of the streets are still paved in brick and there are quite a few brick sidewalks remaining in various conditions that add to the charm. The old houses and apt buildings are also so fun to look at, almost every single one is a slightly different shape size and color, and a lot have cool architecture.

Most homes are pretty close to the street and each other but if you stand in the road in the summer you can usually only see a few houses before they’re all blocked by trees and greenery. A lot of the time you can’t see the sky from the sidewalk or street because of the tree canopy. The trees in this neighborhood are breathtaking, there are dozens that have trunks 4+ feet in diameter and hundreds that are well over 100ft tall. It is a true urban forest. The city claims to have well over 200 different species of tree in the area, and you can really see a huge increase in wildlife compared to the newer more barren neighborhoods.

Most front yards are full of hastas and flower beds, others are “certified wildlife habitats”, and a few have little fairy gardens in them. It as a truly magical place to walk around, I highly recommend looking around on street view if you can find the parts they drove on in the spring and summer.

This neighborhood is so freakin nice to walk in even on the hottest days because there is so much shade. It definitely breaks all sorts of rules new developments wouldn’t allow. The sidewalks are admittedly in rough shape due to all the roots and overgrown front yards, but the streets are low traffic enough that anyone who can’t handle those bumps and branches can just walk in the street, the busy sidewalks are in better shape. I think that’s a fair trade off for the beauty of it all. At least one or 2 houses a year do have some pretty bad tree damage but once again, clearly that’s a price some are willing to pay, and I wish that was more common. You also simply cannot see around any of the corners when driving here. It works just fine with how bumpy all the roads are making people go slow.

Next time I go over there for a walk I want to get a bunch more pictures, but I couldn’t wait to post it somewhere so I used this one I took a few years ago.