No Lawns

We have honey and solitary bees, sunflowers lavander and a lot more :) Our journey started last year and it only gets better!

I was surprised to see so many tubes sealed (it's on its second year but it looks like we missed the window to swap in the replacement tubes I'd made). If you spot any other issues please let me know.

The project of converting my front yard from turf grass with Asian shrubs to all native plants.

If you're going to plant grass, make it native to your area, wildlife depends on it.

I need something that isn't grass to plant on my lawn. Ideally something hard wearing and can be mowed because my kids will tear it up aha

I've tried clover but it doesn't seem to have survived a first mow+the summer sun.

TIA

A couple of weeks ago I detailed how I was letting my grass do whatever it wanted until I found the foxtails were taking over.

I took alergy pills for three days straight and was able to cut the grass and rake it without an allergy attack.

I'm slowly adding natives in between my indoor projects.

Would anyone like to give me advice on what would work well for a front yard in zone 5a/5b? The house is on a pond and there is a lot of tree cover.

I really have no idea where to start.

A comprehensive mapping of old subreddits to new communities.

Would love to see lists from all over the world!

If you love your lawn, fine, but maybe hear me out: Lawns are the worst. Even if you don’t mind the watering, mowing, and chemicals, most lawns—including yours—are terrible. A non-comprehensive list of why lawns are awful

Grass, as a plant, is worthless. It’s a monoculture, meaning that there’s no diversity, and more susceptible to disease because they lack defenses from fellow plants. Biodiversity is why we plant nasturtiums next to vegetables—to protect the vegetables—and a lack of such diversity is why people often treat their lawn with chemicals.

Lawns also provide nothing to pollinators or animals, and often hurt surrounding wildlife with those same chemicals that are absorbed into the soil and plants nearby. Lawns rob soil of nutrients and are constantly in need of fertilizer. Chemicals and fertilizer often end up in the runoff, which pollutes our waterways and harms aquatic life. Lawns require a lot of water, time, effort, and money. Lawns simply suck. Be smart about killing your lawn

Don’t use chemicals to kill your lawn. If you want to benefit the soil, waterways, and nearby wildlife, using chemicals obviously defeats the purpose.

A lesser evil, but one you may also regret, is landscape fabric. Laying this black propylene is problematic for the soil and going to be a pain for you eventually. Once it’s stapled down, it’s almost impossible to get back up, and it also sheds, adding plastic to the soil, so any future plants will have to contend with both plastic and compacted, starved soil. Every gardener I know has had to extricate this nightmare from their yard eventually, and the irony is that it still doesn’t actually stop weeds. They grow through, practically giving you the finger. How to kill your lawn for free

You can rent a sod cutter, but they’re unwieldy and expensive. You can also turn over all your lawn with a shovel, but that’s a lot of work. Both of these methods are pretty fine, environmentally. But you can just sheet mulch your lawn, which is both easy and free.

Sheet mulching is the act of covering the ground with cardboard or something else that easily degrades. Cardboard is a nice, solid material that will block out the sun and oxygen from your lawn, and once starved of both, the grass will die—and better yet, it will compost in place. The cardboard will too, usually in a season or two, sticking around just long enough to kill the lawn. And as everything composts in place, it feeds the soil, creating microbes, mycorrhizae (the good fungus), and creating food for worms. It’ll also create pockets in the soil for other useful insects, and with the worms and insects will come birds and other small animals.

And cardboard is basically free. Use your Amazon boxes that you otherwise toss away, ask your neighbors for theirs, or ask your local grocery store. Remove the tape and staples, and use only uncoated cardboard (if it’s shiny, skip it). Lay it down, layering the ends, and make sure every spot is covered. Multiple layers is fine.

Reasonable people can agree a yard full of cardboard isn’t going to win the hearts and minds of your neighbors, so cover the cardboard with (also free) wood chips. Those chips will provide a uniform layer on your sheet mulch, help keep the cardboard in place, and hide the ugliness underneath. The chips will also compost over a few years, helping create a rich soil.

You can plant into your chips after a season. As you dig, you’ll see what’s left of the cardboard covered in white, which is mold and mycorrhizae—a sign of a healthy soil base. Those chips will break down in a year or two, and you can continue layering them on with new chips if you enjoy the look. They’re great to walk on and keep the ground nice and cool, in my opinion.

If you want to plant a ground cover or alternative lawn, you can. After a year, rake out the bigger chips still left, and you’ll be surprised to see how much has already broken down, leaving the smaller chips and compost behind. Layer on some more compost, and plant your ground cover right into it. There are also plenty of companies now like PT Lawn that specialize in alternative lawns of all kinds, from dog park mixes to pasture mixes. These diverse mixes look great, feed the soil and pollinators, and need less water and mowing.

Here's another link to Wild Ones explaining why to choose native plants over non natives.

What natives do you have growing?

We managed to score a bunch of slate and small boulders for free on Nextdoor. Most of the slate even matches what we already have around our garden so it’s working out perfectly. We are going to begin slowly extending the gardens out into the lawn, ripping out the sod as we go.

We had already begun planting micro clover last year, though it doesn’t seem very micro and is actually pretty large. But that is ok, it has filled in the back yard well and seems to be out-competing the ground ivy that has been plaguing us for a while. With this find though I think we will be able to get rid of all the lawn, maybe except for a small section so our kid can use the slip and slide.

Pretty excited and can’t wait to not have to mow anymore!

From the street my house looks abandoned but luckily I'm not keeping up with the Joneses

I am planning on killing my lawn and filling the area with raised beds with gravel in between the beds. I will be using the sheet mulching strategy to kill the grass. I've used this strategy successfully to prep for my existing beds. My question is this: should I put a layer of anti weed tarp before installing the gravel, or should the sheet mulching do enough to prevent weeds?

My hometown's newspaper just published an opinion piece about the disastrous effects, ecologically and financially, that lawn care causes. Not totally surprising but it's important to note that this is a retirement community in the bible belt!

Y'all, it's working! Keep spreading the word!

Obviously these plans aren't inclusive of the entire US but from what I understand they are working on adding even more garden plans to their list.

This can be beneficial if you live in any of these towns and would like to have a list or a plan for natives in your own yard and your don't know where to begin.

Just sharing this link since everyone always loves American meadows so much. The only issue I take with them is they sell seed packs that are "native to your area" and some are not.

One of our Reddit mods has said he's had great luck with Pheasant Forever as a US based option who focuses on natives for habitat restoration.

I've never used them personally but I wanted to drop it as a link since I had never heard of them before.

I've basically been letting the grass in my back yard grow all spring. Cut some paths through so my small dogs could easily navigate and small patch for my senior dog.

Then I saw the foxtails I thought I had killed were back. I started cutting the grass so I could get better access to the foxtails and my allergies went crazy. Instant runny nose, eyes burning, etc.

This has really dampened my enthusiasm. (/rant