When Sara Weaner Cooper and her husband bought their first home in Pennsylvania, they knew they didn’t want a perfectly manicured front lawn like their neighbours. They wanted something that was more than just turf – a flourishing, wild meadow home to diverse species of plants and animals.
Weaner Cooper had always wanted to focus on native plants in her lawn and do less mowing, so rewilding their front lawn felt like the right move. But the Coopers’ lawn is a different animal than her father’s. It’s in full Sun and consisted of over 1,500 sq m (16,000 sq ft) of turfgrass – narrow-leaved grasses designed to look uniform that had to be dealt with before a meadow could fully take over.
Rather than rip everything up and live with a drab, brown lawn for months, they decided to try strategically seeding and planting native plants into the existing turf, hoping it would eventually weed the turf out naturally. “It’s easier in the sense that you don’t need to be beating back as many weeds,” explains Weaner Cooper. “The native plants came in so thickly that they outcompeted a lot of the weed pressure that would have been there if we would have just made it brown.”
It took about two years, lots of planning, some careful weeding, and some trial and error, but eventually a medley of waist-high native plant species blanketed their vast front lawn.
I do this.
Well, I say I do this, I’m really just a lazy bastard who could never be bothered to mow.
But it’s fashionable now, so I’m sticking to it. Looks much nicer than some nobby old grass, and certainly better than that plastic shit people are putting everywhere like a giant sign that says “I hate nature”…
I just wish I had more than a few square meters of land.
HOA’s have entered the chat.
Anyone have a link on how to best do this? I have a sort of wild yard situation happening and it would be nice to have some practical tips on how to guide it towards a meadow and away from the current situation of weeds (both annual and perennial).
I’m worried there is no “easy” way and it’s basically hand-weeding every square foot?
All for it.
Unfortunately where I live grass or plantings for a lawn above a certain height gets you a letter and possibly a citation from the town. You’d have to rip out the whole lawn and “landscape” the space. Not sure how much good that would do as you’d constantly have to maintain it so as not to leave all the dead plants around as the flowers died.
That said, one can still do a lot with lawn space to make it at least low-mow with various plants and flowers that will still look great and provide something for insects to eat.
Everyone where I live: “Nothing grows out here!”
I mean, if you tear out all the local growth and try to instead grow foreign things that aren’t suited to this environment, yeah.
There are many, many programs - sometimes as simple as a one-form rebate - available to help with and often completely cover costs related with:
- replacing grass lawns with native plants, drought resistant plants and food gardens
- adding cisterns, rain barrels and grey water systems
- replacing with or adding new “smart” sprinkler controllers that check weather forecasts to plan irrigation around the rain
- ordering and planting trees, including fruit trees
- compost barrels, compost and mulch, drip irrigation hoses, pool covers, and more
Some of my favorites include programs where you can get trees delivered and sometimes even planted for free, programs to help restore local parks and buisness landscaping to native flora, volunteer programs to remove invasive species from local parks, and money for replacing turf lawns with plants, bushes and trees that help bird and beneficial insect populations. Sometimes lanscaping companies and volunteers can even do the work utilizing the grants and rebates with little or no cost to you! Shoutout to the arbor day foundation that provides native trees, delivered to your door.
Here is a list (not just the US) of programs, and another here. Your local water utility likely has a list of rebates and such available in your area, as well as your county extension office if youre in the US, and any government office from city up to the federal level, especially if you live in a drought prone area like the southwestern US. You can also search for “xeniscaping” to find more, or talk to your local hardware store or nursery.
Partner and I got 50% of our rain barrel purchase covered by attending a small state run course on sustainable gardens. Totally worth it, and we can take it again to get assistance with other resources, like garden beds, standalone greenhouses…etc…
We’ve been doing this at our local park and I have a friend who does this for a living. Native plants are amazing.
I think this is great. Hoping to do something similar with my yard. Why is this community so trash? Very disappointing. If you don’t get the idea behind no lawns, why don’t you go somewhere else. This is pointless. Also there won’t be any ticks or snakes in the middle of suburbia surrounded by ecological wasteland lawns. Clueless commenters.
Bonus: Free snakes
Extra Spicy Bonus: Free ticks!
Nice, saves money on rat poison.
And free pest control!
Now that is a nice looking fron yard.
Picture alone is making me sneeze.
The flowers in the image are pollinated by bugs and birds. Their pollen is not what you’re sneezing at. More likely it’s tree pollen or ragweed, which grows in competition with these wildflowers. Doing this might actually reduce your seasonal allergies.
I’m all for growing native plants, but I worry about ticks whenever I see an article like this.
Tick populations explode because tick hunting animals like porcupines and voles need tall grass to avoid being hunted themselves. And because cars run them over and cats murder them.
Do you also worry about the collapse of natural systems by preventing pollinators from doing their job?
It’s sad that this is so funny because it’s true.
No
I suppose that depends on the area but that’s largely not going to be a concern. Just have paths where you need that don’t require you do wade through bushes directly. If one has the space, slap a guinea hen in there they love eating ticks
You probably have ticks in your yard anyway. They can make their nests in the grass.
was going to say my yard produced as many ticks when it was a regularly mowed lawn as after it was turned into gardens …
I worry about chiggers and wasps with grass that high. Not to mention the townships.
I don’t have a lawn… or a house…
You’re saving heaps on landscaping costs! 🙌
Skipping lunch is now “intermittent fasting”.
Not mowing the lawn is now “meadowscaping”
Meadowscaping is just not gardening. A more environmentally conscious idea is to grow your own vegetables, to cut down on the fossil fuel used to transport food and reduce the amount of money going to agribusiness.
Even if you don’t have a garden, you can grow things like tomatoes and chillis in pots if you have a window that gets good light. Anything you can grow yourself helps.
Providing habitat for local species is environmentally conscious.
If a food crop will grow easily in your garden, it’s probably also growing on local family farms.
Nothing wrong with home food gardens (as long as they don’t introduce invasives or toxic runoff, which I’m sure you’re careful about) but they’re not necessarily superior to rewilding.
Ok where I live is essentially a town built into the wilds and every spring the wilderness threatens to reclaim the streets. The sea, however is heavily polluted from commercial shipping and tourism so cutting down on things brought in from other places is more of a burning issue for me. The local farms supply all the meat and potatoes you could ask for but, pretty much all veg is shipped in from places with longer growing seasons. The chillis I buy are grown 2000 km away for example.
Ah, makes sense, O Scot of the Arctic.
It’s also very satisfying growing things up here that really aren’t supposed to grow here. I’m going to try growing watermelon this summer.
Wow good luck! I guess you get plenty of sun in that window. You’ll need to hand-pollinate, it’s usually bees. If it works you can try zucchini.
I’m in Southern California, but in an apartment. I grow tomatoes, blueberries, pomegranates and lemons on my balcony. Along with an assortment of native and non-native flowers. Most of their water comes from filling a jug while waiting for the shower water to heat up, because we’re always careful of drought here.
Yeah I have friends in San Jose and Methdesto they say the water situation is pretty grim. Not exactly a concern here.I’m planning on setting up an automatic watering thing on the balcony, but that’s more to do with laziness than water conservation.
Basically my situation is that I have to start plants inside and get them up to a decent size by mid may. I then have until mid September at which point growth is basically at a standstill due to the cold. First hard freeze usually comes in early October.
Sometimes it’s not about feeding yourself and about feeding the ecosystem.
Why not both?
What’s your reasoning for thinking its not gardening?The article goes into some detail to explain that a fair amount of gardening skill is involved and its a lot more than just letting your lawn grow wild.
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Just not gardening, not not just gardening.
