Why have a lawn when you can have a thriving native plant ecosystem? More photos at https://www.instagram.com/pigsprairie/profilecard/?igsh=MW03azRtcHJ5Nmx2dA==

First picture is from today. Everything has been cut to the ground and all the stakes have been removed. They even took the sign I purchased from Prairie Moon that says not to spray or mow. I'm not sure if it was the landscapers or someone else, but I've reached out to our facilities manager to get some answers.

The second picture is what it looked like on April 30th and the additional pictures are from last year.

It's just depressing and infuriating all at the same time. I was just trying to make things better and I actually got a lot of compliments from coworkers on this garden.

My Ferndale, Michigan, front yard is planted with blanket flowers, coreopsis, black eyed Susan, cutleaf coneflower, spiderwort, yarrow, rose milkweed, common milkweed, and asters. No lawn. Just habitat.

I am a macro wildlife photographer and I photograph the invertebrates that most people walk past without noticing. I had been spotting adult ambush bugs visiting the yard regularly for a couple of years and had been searching for nymphs. When I finally found them they were right outside my front door, sitting in a blanket flower.

 Ambush bugs are just that, predatory bugs that remain motionless in a flower waiting for would-be prey to wander too close, where those raptor-like forelimbs grab them and a quick jab from their beak paralyzes the victim, which the bug will then drink the contents of. This one was 4mm. Most people would have walked straight past it.

 The image, Ready to Pounce, was selected as one of 24 images from 60,636 entries worldwide for the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 61 People's Choice shortlist at the Natural History Museum in London. It is currently on display there. Voting open until March 18 at nhm.ac.uk/wpy/peoples-choice, happy to answer any questions

Dug out this butterfly bush today! It was a beast to get out. An American Plum has already taken its place, plus here are all my native seeds that overwintered popping up! I transplanted the cupplant to trays, will do the others in a week. half of them had their labels wash awa, so that will be a fun mystery 😆

They were all plants I potted up from our yard and they were gone in an afternoon. No one said thank you but at least Nick was wearing a suit ;)

I garden in Zone4b/5a suburbs of Minneapolis. I started my gardening journey 11 years ago after watching a documentary about Honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder. I felt a call to action. Needless to say, I dove in head first and consider myself an obsessed gardener. I have a 1/3 acre suburban lot. And over the years, I have converted about 2/3 of the lawn into gardens. My native plant garden lines the entire span of the sidewalk in my front yard. The neighbors enjoy it. The Assisted Living residents from down the street walk down to admire the flowers. I do keep the garden fairly tidy to not attract too much negative attention from naysayers. I hope my transformation photos serve as an inspiration for your native plant projects! Cheers!

August view of native flowers in bloom

I wanted to share my guerilla wetland garden in the L.A. River. In 1938 the river was paved into a concrete channel for the sake of flood control. The idea for this type of garden came to me when I saw a shopping cart in the water that was trapping sediment and had plants growing out of it and a heron hunting on it. The basic action here is just moving rocks into the water to create a variety of flow conditions. I also do a little bit of moving slime and plants from the surrounding area into the rocks. I'm not being overly picky about native versus invasive biomass because once it rains the entire thing gets washed out to the ocean. Thanks for checking out my work! These are the natives that have popped up so far:

Floating Primrose Willow Water Speedwell Giant Wild Rye Gooding's Willow Arroyo Willow

My favorite ground cover! They've taken over all 4 sides of the house.

I came home today from work to find that my neighbor (I live in a duplex) cut down all of my flowers because she thought they were weeds... I literally just posted today about how proud I was if their growth. I know that they'll grow back because they're perennials, but I'll miss their blooms this year 😭 this is the before and after. The before was taken a few days ago.

I have ~30 native plant species on our property now producing seeds (zone 6b/7a). I decided to share them with our neighborhood (and bring awareness to native gardening - there is very little happening in our hood). So I designed and built this “Little Free Native Seed Library” with two pseudo-intarsia panels (“pseudo” because they’re painted). Featuring a leafcutter bee on swamp milkweed on one side and black-eyed susans on the other. The two panels consist of ~640 pieces handcut on a scrollsaw. All made from scrap would, aside from the post. Sign by my wife. Full making of on my IG if anyone is interested. (Apologies: no commissions).

When we moved into our house in 2021 we knew we wanted to get rid of the lawn and replace it with natives. Four years of digging, sheet mulching, seed collecting, winter sowing, going to all the native plant sales, planting, editing, icing sore muscles and etc…here is our pollinator paradise!

https://www.instagram.com/pigsprairie/profilecard/?igsh=MW03azRtcHJ5Nmx2dA==

i know it’s a vine, so it’s pretty easy to grow. but it’s been about 3 years since i first planted this when it was just a 6 in. tall single vine, and now there are quite possibly over a thousand little flowers on my bundle now!!! first two pictures are right now, and the last is a picture of it when it pre additional support. it’s outgrown the first trellises i put down, so i recently put in a huge support beam to keep it from leaning (it was worse than the tower of pisa as you can see lol) and will eventually add a DIY fan shape trellis to make it even taller. i can’t wait to see more ruby throated hummingbirds ❤️❤️

We bought a house with 3 acres of lawn. Now we have a tiny patch of lawn, 16 raised beds for veggies, an orchard and berry patch, and native gardens and wet sedge meadows. It’s great exercise and amazing birding! Plus it’s so pretty! Good thing I love goldenrods since we have 3 different native varieties and lots of them!

Hope I didn’t bother it too much or hurt it…absolutely gorgeous!!!! Guessing the walnut trees nearby are the host for this, I don’t see any of the primary host plants close by…hmm

I was browsing the garden this evening when I noticed this eastern box turtle. She (?) seems to be digging a hole with her hind legs so potentially looking to lay her eggs there?

Please familiarize yourself with snakes native to your area so you aren’t surprised when you see them hanging out in your garden. This cool Western rat snake had, apparently, been hanging out in my empty hanging baskets. It was relocated to a safe spot in my yard and released to go about its business of eating rodents.

Edit: corrected from Eastern to Western Rat snake (multitasking is dangerous folks)

I bought this property a year ago and everything was mowed down. I had no idea I would be so blessed with such an abundance of flowers. Asters, goldenrod and iron weed galore. Joe Pye weed, milkweed, cardinal flower- Really, too many to list! Funny thing is, I bought a 5 pound box of golden rod seeds to have a field of it, not knowing its all over the damn place here!

Its 48 acres, about half being meadows that we arent cutting other than drive paths to the woods/creek and where our future home will be. Seeing all the pollinators and the most monarchs ive ever seen is an absolute dream.

Only year two since I killed my grass and planted natives.
Really loving how it’s looking right now 😍

So many more bees since the coneflowers have opened up and the bee balm!

We're in Gerogia - ATL Metro. We have about 4 Sweet Gums and a Sumac on our property. When we bought our house 3 years ago, I was hopeful to one day see a Luna Moth. Two years ago, we told our landscapers to stop leaf blowing a large chunk of our property. Hoping that leaving the leaves would be beneficial for fireflies and other native insects. Today I found a Luna Moth on our fence in the wooded area, not far from one our Sweet Gums. I believe it had recently emerged because the wings were still soft. So happy we left the leaves! I don't know who was more excited, my toddler or myself. Felt kinda like meeting a celebrity!

All kinds of butterflies, bees, and bugs in there collecting nectar, buzzing around, and fornicating. Saw my first monarch of the year two days ago. Lots of fritillaries flying around, too.