Year 1: Success!

I’ve been helping my folks create a pollinator garden and we’ve had tremendous success in year one. My father had put in a wildflower seed blend that was not native, but we also put in 72 native plugs in the spring. As the natives take hold, we’ll start removing the non-natives.

I wish we had done the cardboard method as we’ve had to battle an insane amount of weeds once we took out the grass. So to anyone wanting to save themselves a lot of trouble, even on bare ground you’ll be better off with cardboard, then mulch, then new top soil. We vastly underestimated how much weed seed existed in the soil.

Native Flowers:
Black-Eyed Susan
Purple Cone Flower
Butterfly Milkweed
Prairie Clover
Great Blue Lobelia
Colorado Columbine
Yarrow
Dotted Blazing Star
Bee Balm

Non-Native:
Garden Cosmos
Red Clover
Sweet William
Cornflower
Sulfur Cosmos
African Marigold
Wallflower
Various sunflowers
California Poppy
Field Poppy