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My neighbor HATES me because I’ve been converting my backyard into clover. We have fireflies, Butterflies, bees, bunnies, all sorts of wildlife. It smells beautiful, but we are an oasis amongst upper-middle class lawn zombies… Mowing, edging, pesticide spraying, weed killing zombies.
Meanwhile, I have milkweed, clover, chive, snapdragons, black eyed susans, grapes, raspberries, lilac, echinacea, chamomile, lavender, hydrangea, coreopsis, and salvia. I welcome wasps that eat pests, I buy bags of ladybugs, I compost… I’m really trying. It’s only 1/4 an acre, but I’m trying.
Please keep doing it. As a poor landless peasant I celebrate your attempt to preserve some of nature. You’re buying time, which is vitally important
Since getting my own place I can actually have a more natural garden, removed so much concrete. So many bees! I can even hear them from inside now that they are swarming around the poppies. Sage and to some extent chive flowers got a few bees earlier in the year but those flowers have died off now.
Should take pictures of them so that in the future we can remember what bees were.
From 1 internet stranger to another, thank you. It really means a lot to me that people are doing what they can at their own level like you. I know how demotivating and isolating it can feel to be the only one doing the necessary work.
Lightning bugs never get costed where I live 😞 I didn’t realize they were real until my mid teens even
#nolawnsI have a small, yet still growing, grove of wild flowers and grasses. I just let my side yard grow whatever it wants (except invasives).
Man im working so hard to be that yard, but its not as easy as just stop mowing!
Always on the lookout for invasives, poison ivy, tree sapplings (my yard isnt big enough to support any more trees without threatening the house), and other undesirables.
Then theres also the english ivy encroaching from the corner that I’ve pretty much given up on :/
English ivy is a tough one, but at least getting the vertical growth is a fairly easy to manage. the vertical growth is also more problematic because it is a requirement for producing berries and killing trees
It’s great that you’re helping your native plants stand against the invasives, they’re like the schoolyard bullies of the backyard.
It’s great that you’re helping your native plants stand against the invasives, they’re like the schoolyard bullies of the backyard.
Mine too! My lawn is slowly turning into a sea of clover, I throw wild flower seeds all over the place, and get to see all kinds of cool bugs! Hopefully they enjoy my 8 acres of natural habitat.
Incredibly based thank you for your service o7
My lack of mowing gives us a light show every summer night.
Friendly reminder that lightning bugs need tall grasses present in addition to wildflowers and leaf litter. You can also improve their survival rates by removing artificial lighting or even just setting any safety lighting (like motion activated lamps) to their shortest “on” duration. Another obvious step is to avoid pesticides.
My yard is the only reason we have frogs and dragonflies.
Ha! This is me and my yard. Let’s go!
I believe like two people in this thread lol.
Just not maintaining your shit isn’t some praiseworthy, heroic effort to benefit the community. Letting your once normal lawn grow out of control is not rewilding anymore than throwing your food scraps out the window is composting.
Sure, vast expanses of perfectly manicured fescue are not helping fireflies or other bug species, but let’s be real, knee high thistles, dandelions, and crabgrass is not providing a profound service either.
I mean, nobody asked if you believed anyone
👏👏👏
Sure, maybe. But my yard has frogs and fireflies in it and my neighbors’ don’t. That seems pretty empirical to me.
The best bit of your nonsense is where you say composting isn’t composting
I’m not maintaining most of my shit, half-assed maintaining some, and meticulously maintaining some (veg patch).
The meticulous part doesn’t do well unless the unmaintained part is left to do its thing. When people interfere it suffers. That’s how nature and biodiversity work. Leave it to do its thing and generally it works out itself. Every now and then you may need to intervene if something is becoming problematic and choking out everything else, but generally nature knows what it’s doing.
The thing that makes not maintaining your shit some great intentional effort, is the constant battle against other humans who wish to cut everything down and maintain order. If you’re a sole owner you can tell them to fuck off, but if members of your family disagree or it’s a communal space, that may be far more difficult.
Funny you chose those plants in particular though, because dandelions and various types of thistle are both recommended by the Royal Horticultural Society as being of particular aid to pollinator insects.
https://www.rhs.org.uk/science/research/plants-for-pollinators
Wow you stepped right into the point and didn’t even notice.
Technically yes, you are composting by throwing food out your window and onto your yard. Technically yes, you are reclaiming space for insects and animals by not maintaining any area outside your house. Functionally, if you want to make compost, you designate a spot or get a container and learn anything about browns, greens, necessary turning, decomposition, and so on. If you want to help insects you might get a sod cutter and turn a section of (or all) of your outdoor space, you learn about what trees or flowers are native to your area and serve that purpose, then you plant. Unless your yard was grassland originally, there’s more work to do than just let it go until code enforcement comes and tells you to stop being a turd.
The most common weed plants are indeed good for pollinators, and spread chicken bones and pizza crusts will eventually add some value to your soil. However, I don’t think they bring you any more credit than, say, helping the bugs in your neighborhood by not cleaning up your food spills or washing your laundry.
Standing around high fiving because youre the nuisance house in the neighborhood who can’t be assed to pick up after yourself is fucking weird. Apparently you (specifically) can do some research so maybe you ARE being intentional, but that is not the general vibe I ever get from the “I don’t even mow, you’re welcome neighbors!” threads like this usually devolve into.
Edit: My garden growing in my compost on my lawn with a few of our fireflies. Would make a better gif but idk how to do it.
I appreciate your viewpoint, your garden looks great, but that short grass is a barren wasteland for biodiversity. You have to work out what’s important for you, and all sides should respect that decision.
It would be possible to maintain some of it as a native wildflower meadow instead, and keep the overall length managed without using weed killers and poisons and huge amounts of water like grass requires. There’s no such thing as a native weed, but you do have to remove some individuals for diversity and soil health if they grow too large. I do this with brambles and other large light blocking species, as I don’t have the space to support them, even though they’re great for wildlife, they end up having a short term negative biodiversity impact in a small space. Even a small corner or container of native wildflower would support native pollinators and vastly improve the health and biodiversity of your entire garden. Get a solitary bee hotel, if they exist in your country. Leave a pile of sticks/logs somewhere for insects. Get a pond if you can. You already compost so that’s good. Nature isn’t meant to be tidy, neat or uniform. But I understand that not everybody can appreciate the value that could be gained from millions of gardens improving thier biodiversity, and that conforming with others and past practices and traditions may be a stronger factor for some people to want to keep their gardens neat. You’re clearly a good gardener, but no wildlife conservationist, you can have both though. It’s not about being intentionally messy, it’s about creating conditions for wildlife to be invited in. Those fully overgrown gardens are probably great for nature, but you are right that they have to consider the size of the space and the proximity of neighbours before doing that, and not being considerate of that can make them a bit of an asshole.
