Natural yard full of native species > gross manicured yard
Clip dragonfly models to wire rods. Scares the ever living crap out of anything that flies. https://www.getyourbug.com/
That’s fair, but you don’t gotta invite them in. And I will remind you that “outside” is kind of their domain, not ours 😉
All that said though, a rock or sand yard is still vastly better than a manicured lawn which serves basically no purpose other than to take in resources (mostly water) with no real output. Hell, even if you paved over your lawn with one big slab of concrete that would still probably be ecologically better than the waste involved in maintaining a manicured grass lawn!
Slabbing is much worse, holds heat and cold and prevent groundwater absorption. Crushed lava rock over sand and gravel would be a good idea though, nice and solid to walk on but drains out no problem.
I gotta disagree there. My yard even when mowed is a haven for all sortsa critters. Lizards, squirrels, and birds prance around by day, and at night you can find hundreds of varying spiders and wasps hunting smaller insects. Rocks might afford some of that but just about nothing would be happy with plain sand backyard. Then again, I live in an area with lots of rain and no shortage on water.
I try to mow pretty high and I let it grow for a few weeks between, but unfortunately I cant just leave it be due to my hoa.
I have spaces in my yard that look like that, but it takes soooo many hours of meticulous hand weeding to encourage and protect the wildflowers and discourage the goat head burr, fox tails, storks bill and burr clover. And forget hiring anyone to help, professionals call them all weeds will only eradicate the whole lot (which would start it back to the beginning since those nasty ones are the first to take over when the earth is bared). Every year there are few more flowers and friendly “weeds” and few less horrible thorny noxious weeds, but it’s been a process over about 8 years and it’s not finished and probably never will be.
The easiest to maintain part of my yard is my “no mow” native fescue lawn, that would never be allowed in an HOA and you can’t really walk on it, but it houses a billion bugs and the birds and spiders and cats love it.
Yes! The anti mow people don’t understand that your yard doesn’t turn into a wildflower meadow if you stop mowing.
I spent hundreds of dollars on wildflower seeds and tiller rentals to get a wildflower meadow started.
5 years later and it’s just weeds. And not nice weeds- It’s 1/2" long thornbush weeds- perfect for spreading tics onto the local deer population.
As an anti-mow person, I don’t care, if it’s a wildflower meadow. I don’t call random plants “weeds”, they’re all cool with me. Like, alright, if you’ve got a super-invasive foreign species that’s actively killing the local ecosystem, then I’m on board with doing something against that. But it can hardly be worse than mowing the local ecosystem.
That’s the thing, the super invasive weeds are what establish the best. I’ve got a broader definition of “wildflower” than anyone I know, but if you’re encouraging foxtails and goat head burrs in your yard, you’re a dick.
I live in an area where a lot of people raise sheep and you can check out x rays of storks bill seeds that burrow down through the fleece, skin And fat, into the poor bastards muscles. Being all “Look at me! I don’t judge plants, they’re all welcome!” is going to cause a lot of pain and suffering and punctured tires and shoe soles.
The weeding is insanity. It felt like that’s all we did last summer. I’m now paying some teenagers $40/hr to hand weed it because all the professionals just want to spray everything, and the kids are willing to be really meticulous because they don’t want to jeopardize a really well-paying job.
One of my biggest disappointments with my neighborhood is that the otherwise effectively non-existant HOA came down on someone with a beautiful “cottage garden” style space in their front yard. It was traditionally wild local flowers and it wasn’t unkempt by any stretch.
I think they just disliked that so much of the person’s front yard wasn’t grass. Or there was some petty personal beef going on.
It’s even more ridiculous when we have a “community beekeeper” with hives in the back of some of the community open spaces. We have people with vegetable gardens in their back yards (hell fucking yes) when it’s explicitly against the HOA rules (I ain’t no snitch). But god forbid someone have well kept local wildflowers and mulch as half of their front yard.
With my yard layout I had hoped to do the same with my front and side yard.
My landlords HOA would bitch at me if my grass was slightly too long.
That’s how I feel every time I have to mow the lawn even though I’m renting from them.
Free labor for them.
Is it in your lease that you need to mow the lawn? Here, it’s the landlord’s responsibility unless you specifically agree to it.
check with local state and native plant groups – there’s several cases where native plant species are protected even from HOAs
for California, the Monkeywrench Collection
You forgot scythes
Every year, we dump wildflowers in three spots on our property, and every spring, I spread clover seeds the entirety of my lawn.
Each year, the clover takes over more and more, and with that, you get a short lawn that is drought resistant and bee friendly.
If you’re in the US, I have gotten good results/ seeds from ptlawnseed.com. They have a bunch of different options and tell you what works well in your climate zone!
I just looked up what type of clover grows well in my climate, then every spring, I order a 5 lb bag and just walk around throwing that everywhere. Add some water and let it go nuts. Once clover is established, it starts to spread on its own, but I like to give it more friends to speed up the process. Plus, bunnies love it, and with bunnies comes bunny poop. It’s one of the best fertilizers you’ll find. It’s a work in progress, but once it’s completed, I’ll have to mow like 2 times a season, I won’t have to worry about weeds, and it doesn’t need fertilizer. Clover is an incredible plant and I can’t wait until it’s completed.
