I have already expanded garden beds and built a path to remove most of the lawn in the front.All my new plantings are native plants. (PNW zone 9A) I would like to get rid of the remaining lawn. I have a few design challenges.
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The property line is really close to the oak, where the temporary fence garden bed is. My neighbour has been very supportive of the garden transformation but I don't want to do a design that encroaches.
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The in front of the oak is a short bit steep slope that has eroded when bare. I added clumps of sod I removed from elsewhere in the yard in the eroded patches.
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Manhole and water main cover that I can't cover.
I was thinking of tarping the front slope, hand-removing along the driveway and manholes to lower the level and sheet composting the rest. I would then add wood chips. Will this look odd where it adjoins my neighbour's yard? I would like to add additional plants but I don't want to shade what I have already planted.
Any advice or suggestions?
by BeginningBit6645
6 Comments
Build islands and then connect them. If you try to do the whole thing at once, which you absolutely can, it’ll look pretty chaotic and patchy for a while. If you start with a shrub or something, and surround it with more (ideally native) plants, and then have a clump of something else somewhere else, it’ll be more orderly and manageable. Eventually, the islands will connect.
Also, killing your lawn and replacing it with beautiful, natural stuff that builds an actual ecosystem becomes a labor of love / obsession pretty quickly, so I’m sure you’ll make it work.
I would be a bit concerned about using anything like plastic over tree roots, for your tree’s health.
Golf courses look odd. A bunch of native plants feels normal.
Add a mix of grasses, create a meadow garden
I like odd . I don’t like uniform in planting beds . Odd looks natural
I went onto the internet and ordered a sign that said “pollinator patch in progress” a week after pinning down cardboard (we have a really walkable street and I could see people giving my project some side-eye because it does look hella trashy). I have been moving it to each new flower bed I add them.