I posted this pic 1 last year of my front garden. For context, I’m in Zone 7B in a large city with this small front “yard.” I’m renting and the space was a blank canvas except for the ground being covered with some kind of weed cloth and allllll this gravel. The landlord said I could plant whatever I want, so I bought a bunch of native perennials from a local garden spot and got everything in place between August and October of last year. Fast forward to Spring and a lot of the plants are starting to wake up and things looks promising. BUT, the weeds are also awake and are here in force (pic 2). I’m sure it’s not helping that the adjoining neighbor has a yard about the same size as mine and does nothing to care for it, so it’s just completely covered in weeds year round.
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Suggestions for managing the weeds while encouraging the growth of the natives I planted?
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Will continuing to fill in the space with more natives eventually drive out the weeds, or will this be a perpetual problem?
For those suggesting to get rid of the gravel – that’s a no go. The landlord wants to keep it.
Thanks!
by munsterwoman
7 Comments
Pick stuff that likes rocky soil so it can thrive (stonecrop?). And just keep on pulling.dont let them go to seed, and try to be careful pulling them so you don’t stir up the weed seed bank. It will get much easier as the natives get established and as you get more of them.
You’ll probably always be weedin’ a least a little bit. The plants will definitely grow and shade out many of the weeds but you’ll still have spring time weeding. If it’s me, I’d buy a hula hoe and stay on top of cultivating to keep it clean. Just keep adding natives! Also, some of those weeds could be the “natives” you’re out to buy–I’d invite you to use an app or LLM and start trying to identify some of the weeds in your yard. Good luck!
Weeds are a part of life, and since your control methods are limited by what the landlord will allow, that will be especially true in your case.
On the bright side, your yard is a completely manageable size for hand weeding and digging. The first few passes will be relatively labor intensive and then it’ll be an hour or less a few times a season to keep it looking great. Personally I still find it therapeutic to see my physical work yield such immediate results.
The more your native perennials fill in, the easier it will get, but you’ll never be completely free of the need to control unwelcome intruders.
That looks like the former lawn growing through the gravel. Unless it was properly killed that will keep happening. Weed barrier is garbage.
Yes you can keep adding natives but with the ground covered with barrier and gravel they won’t fill in naturally because the seeds won’t be able to contact the ground. You might get spread via rhizome on certain types of aggressive natives like milkweed and goldenrod that are strong enough to break through the barrier.
If I were you I would not invest in a lot of plantings for a rental you can’t properly remediate and you have no idea what your landlord and future tenants will do.
I lived in rentals a long time and would dig up some of my plants to move with me. The most hardy ones like cup plant and asters basically were the only ones that survived.
One house I had an incredible native garden I planted out over 3 years and the next tenant replaced it all with grandma annuals and sent me a photo after and it was horrific.
Anyway maybe focus on some really big, impactful plants that will bring you joy now and you can potentially move with like a silphium.
Consider using a grass specific herbicide like Grass B Gon to kill the lawn growing through the weed cloth and gravel. Other than planting densely and hand weeding until your natives get established, there’s really nothing more you can do. Established plantings tend to have less weeds.
Pretty much across the board in any situation, you’ve got 4 options for weed control. You’ll need to employ some combination of the below:
1) Physically weed the area regularly. Eventually the weed pressure lessens if you don’t let things go to seed. It never *fully* stops in sunny open areas, weeds are early successional plants that occupy open space naturally. So you have to change the site conditions or you will continue to get weeds.
2) Overplant, making plantings dense to crowd the area out. Spreading ground covers or dense shrubs work great. This is how weeds are naturally kept at bay in established ecosystems.
3) Completely shade the area with something large, like a tree, in combination with shrubs/perennials/groundcover. Weeds will still occur at the margins, but drastically less.
4) Spray. This has limited uses, like if you have a large infiltration of noxious invasives or are establishing a large new planting area. Spraying is the least effective option for ongoing maintenance, because it doesn’t address the reason why weeds are infiltrating the space – but it makes people feel like they’ve addressed the problem, which leads to further negligence that makes the problem worse. Plus it’s nasty for the environment and your health, and pretty lazy besides.
The gravel and the weed fabric are a bitch to work with, sorry. It’s a dumb, lowest common denominator landscaping error that makes managing weeds exponentially more frustrating.
Given that this is a rental, how long do you plan to live there and how much money do you want to spend on it?