#native lawns

[ecopunkfox]

Close-ups of my lawn! Lots of good stuff! Lots of bad grasses too, but I try to rip up as much grass as I can, by now our strip of grass is noticeably wilder than our neighbors’, but we can’t stop the gardeners from cutting it or anything, we’re in a complex. Lots of good stuff though! Plantain, clover, dandelion, etc.

#i really don’t wanna give the ids for everything esp cause I can’t remember the specific names for a couple #so screw it #my plants #plantblr #plants #plant #lawns #fuck lawns #lawn culture #plantcore #plantwave #native lawns #plantain #clover #dandelion

[onlytiktoks]

#tiktok #andrew_the_arborist #urban gardening #urban landscape #ecofriendly #native wildflowers #eco friendly #eco lawn #native plants #garden #gardening

[typhlonectes]

Plant native plants, y’all!

#lawns #gardens #home and garden #gardening #native plants #ecology #environment #conservation #nature #outdoors

[headspace-hotel]

i don't want to be angry any more. let's look at prairie gardens and tapestry lawns :)

don't cry, future is beautiful

#native plant gardening #kill your lawn #tapestry lawn #meadow

[gettingintoknives]

i think we should all take this guys advice

#this is abt replacing ur lawn w native plants

[julianplum]

🪻🌱🐝 💜 🌿 ✨ // violets & violet miner bees // part of my natives + pollinators series // gouache on paper

tiny violet miner bees (Andrena violae) are a specific pollinator: they pollinate wood & dog violets in the Northeast, and show a strong preference for blue violets. letting your grassy yard rewild itself and grow violets every spring not only lets you make violet syrup, it also gives violet miner bees their most important food source and increases local pollinator diversity.

#my art #gouache #illustration #painting #art #cottagecore #artists on tumblr #botanical #spring #violet #pollinator #pollinators #native wildflowers #native plants #eco lawn #botanical illustration #violet miner bee #bees #cw: insects #insects

[pnwnativeplants]

“Whatever it was, their neighbor’s mounting resentment burst to the fore in the fall of 2017, in the form of a letter from a lawyer for their homeowner association that ordered the Crouches to rip out their native plant beds, and replace them with grass. The couple were stunned. They’d lived on their quiet cul-de-sac harmoniously with their neighbors for years, and chose native plants to help insects, birds and wildlife thrive. Now the association was telling them that their plantings not only violated the bylaws, but were eyesores that hurt property values. “Your yard is not the place for such a habitat,” the letter read. The Crouches were given 10 days to convert their front yard into a lawn that looked like everyone else’s. But instead of doing what they were told, the couple fought back, and ended up paving the way for a groundbreaking state law.“

#kill your lawn #save the bees #wildlife restoration #ecology #native plants

[plantanarchy]

listen i love and grow and appreciate native plants as much as any plant ecology nerd but good god the energy of a lot of native plant discussion on social media continues to be so............ much

#like got a comment a few weeks ago on work facebook on baptisia saying 'and it's native to this country!!' #which is so... idk the energy of that is off #people comparing the nectar of non-native flowers to candy with no nutrition #people bashing no mow may because it's not doing enough and lawns are invasive #assigning moral worth to plants #etc etc #that garlic mustard's not evil karen it's a plant

[rebeccathenaturalist]

So, long story short--a Master Gardener who has been maintaining a native plant garden for years is now being harassed by a neighbor, with whom the city code enforcers sided, and she's facing daily fines if she doesn't turn at least half of her yard into grass lawn. Apparently the only plants that are allowed to grow higher than seven inches are those that are edible, useful, or decorative.

If you are at all ecologically aware, you know that grass lawns are essentially ecological wastelands. A monoculture of non-native grass, especially if it's sprayed with herbicides, fertilizers, and so forth, is not going to support much in the way of native wildlife. Moreover, it can be argued that native plants do fall under the allowable category of "useful" and "decorative", and some are even "edible."

The article above is dated from two days ago, but this apparently started last year. And I found an article in their local paper from this past July that says she's still fighting the city about it, plus it has a bunch of photos of her garden if you want to see what the fuss is all about. Do be aware that if you decide to contact the Prospect Code Enforcement Board, City Council, and/or Mayor with a polite note in support of her, the website only allows you to send five messages every hour and you can only message one person at a time.

ETA: I did hear back just now from one of the code enforcement folks, who says--in their words--"Prospect City asked Ms. McGrail to redesign her current plantings into a more attractive and organized layout with edged definitions to her plant beds and a more obvious ‘walking path’ in between with a more “lawn-like” appearance, using native and no-mowing options"

#native plants #gardening #native species #plants #flowers #botany #nature #wildlife #habitat restoration #environment #conservation #ecology #lawns #no lawns #food not lawns

[snekdood]

*casually posts this at the same time to further my agenda of growing native plants instead of grass and shitty ornamentals*

#gardening #water conservation #biodiversity #kill your lawn #native plants #native pollinators #pollinator garden #climate change #sustainability #environmental rehabilitation #habitat restoration #wildflowers #native flowers #animals #water crisis #didnt mean to post that grass one whoops. i think i skimmed it and wasnt thinking about it too much #but ig its true grass would be better than roads. lets just uh. make it native grass yaknow?

[notwhelmedyet]

need to mow a lawn? why don't you

#no i don't have a scythe but i want one #desperately #this post is directed at all of my neighbors who are using their motorized lawnmowers #while i'm on conference calls for work #lawnmowers suck #using a scythe will take longer which is why you should plant most of your lawn in native perennials ;) #that way there's less to mow #image description in alt text #thank you to the bookbinding chat for helping make the graphic design as awful as possible #scythes #blazed post #mine

[palmtreepalmtree]

#one of the houses in my neighborhood #has low water native plants instead of a lawn #it is so fucking gorgeous right now #i am losing my mind #i saw a lizard scurry across the sidewalk #i am going to beg my mom to do this #(but she won't)

[lichen-thr0pe]

#native plants #fuck lawns

[cryptidcrew]

So I needed a metric fuckload of organic material to heap onto the areas of lawn I will be killing off to plant with natives in my new yard. And also I feel SO EXTREMELY STRONGLY about people removing vital vital so important leaves from their yard why would you deprive your soil of that free compost and why would you deprive all the bugs+other wildlife of cozy overwintering habitat!!! Assholes!!!

So. I went trick or treating at midnight the night before yard waste collection day. Got a couple. leaves.

#if your HOA or other bullshit requires you to remove leaves I’m not calling you an asshole #leave the leaves #no lawns #fuck lawns #native gardening #permaculture

[headspace-hotel]

I don't think it really hits for most people how much topsoil is an incredibly depleted resource that is virtually nonrenewable under current land management practices.

Topsoil you buy at a garden center most likely is not real topsoil, but rather simply compost mixed with sand. Many people have never touched topsoil. In vast swathes of inhabited land, topsoil simply does not exist anymore.

On the lawn care subreddit, people will occasionally be alarmed that their soil feels "mushy" and "soft" after the addition of lots of organic matter, or post something greatly alarmed about the area of "soft" soil in their yard.

These people would shit their pants in awe if they felt the soil in a forest. Their frame of reference for "soil" is so completely, sadly spoiled by compacted, concrete-like lawn dirt. This is a big reason I'm "anti-lawn." Lawns consistently have some of the worst, most devastated soil imaginable.

Topsoil is a LIVING community of microbes, plant roots, decaying organic matter, and perhaps most importantly of all, fungal mycelium. You cannot buy it. You cannot synthesize it. No amount of fertilizer will turn compacted lawn dirt into topsoil. It takes a hundred years to build one inch of topsoil.

In the USA, prairie soil was plowed up to make fields, and we all learned about the Dust Bowl in school, but we don't talk enough about the fact that plowing up the prairies engulfed half the country in devastating dirt storms that turned the sky black and had people choking and coughing up dirt all the time and sweeping deep drifts of dirt out of their houses. Like that happened. Damn.

What we did was something utterly devastating, the near total destruction of hundreds and hundreds of years' worth of an irreplaceable natural resource. And it's happened all over the country. We will never comprehend how much we lost when we lost the topsoil.

#soil #dirt #anti lawn #native plant gardening

[thebashfulbotanist]

We’re pro-moss here*

*by here, I mean the Pacific Northwest. 

I think you can get to know a lot about a person by what internet beefs they’re involved in, which doesn’t exactly bode well for me. My internet beef is sort of strange. My beef is with the anti-moss lawn sentiment that erupted on Tumblr, seemingly developing overnight in response to the rather naïve pro-moss lawn sentiment that preceded it. It seemed that you needed to pick a side - pro-moss lawn everywhere, or pro-traditional grass lawn everywhere. I’m going to refer to these as bryophytes a lot, though, because if I were told at gunpoint to distinguish between certain nonvascular plants without a dichotomous key and scope, well, tell my mom I love her. 

This post isn’t about grass lawns, though - that’s a topic for a different day. This post is about why moss gardening in the Pacific Northwest is a wonderful thing to do. Bryophytes will blanket almost everything stationary here, especially in shady and damp area, but I’ve seen it clinging to concrete in the full sun, too. 

The Seattle Japanese Garden uses native mosses that look just incredible!

I think when I say I’m pro-moss and pro-moss gardening, this might make it seem like I’m pro-buying non-native mosses (Lord help the folks who buy Sagina subulata “Irish moss”, a Caryophyllaceae and not a bryophyte at all), cramming moss in a blender (please don’t do this - as gardening guru Cisco Morris says, this will only lead to divorce), ripping out your lawn, or trying to moss garden in an arid climate where most moss would give up the ghost in three days. Nah. Bryophytes out here will grow on your face if you stay still long enough - no need to buy it, you can simply let it take over your lawn naturally (IT WILL), transplant it and glue it down somewhere nice, or buy some native moss from a native plant nursery. 

The natural mosses at Lime Kiln Park and Lena Lake are stunning.

What both of us think is most important is to plant species that are native to your region as much as possible. Native plants are critical for the survival of native insect species and the birds that eat them - you can’t slap petunias down in Washington State and expect the wildlife to survive on them. We grew up on land that belongs to the Snoqualmie Tribe, which is very actively involved in restoring the landscape, removing invasive species, and educating the public about responsible foraging and planting.  If you’re living on someone else’s ancestral land, like we did, it is responsible to practice land acknowledgment with your gardening and recreation, not just with your words and wallet. Native plants play a tremendous role there. 

Native Polytrichum for sale at the UW Arboretum! This would be a perfect way to start moss gardening in the Seattle area. 

#...we do hate grass lawns though. That's a topic for a different day. #the member of this blog who is an honest-to-God professional botanist hates them MORE than the other casual citizen member #but the solution is the begin gardening with native plants!