Or, how we transformed Lila’s yard in a weekend

Dear Yardener,

I headed back to Dutchess County, New York, last week for a tree-planting ritual for Eva and her father. I’m not going to describe it, because the magic would be lost in the telling. Basically, we planted two redbud (Cercis canadensis) trees on Zoe’s property, mixing each of their ashes into the earth under a tree, along with our intentions and gifts. It was incredibly moving.

Pete and I stayed on to spend time with the girls, hiking, sharing meals, and working with Lila on her garden. We tried to keep it light, made easier by Sofi’s ability to find humor in everything — even a portrait of George W. Bush next to our restaurant table; she discovered it was collaged from pornographic magazines. (A week later, we thought she was still joking when she texted that the same artist painted King Charles’ controversial first portrait. No, ​it’s true​.)

Invasives spoil the mood

Sofi had no patience with Zoe and my shared native plant obsession, especially when we got really excited and our conversation devolved into a stream of Latin names. We worked to stick to more general topics, but it became difficult when we all hiked the gorgeous Poet’s Walk along the Hudson.

“Ooh, look at the buttercups,” Lila said.

“Invasive!” Zoe and I said at the same time.

“Ooh, I love honeysuckle!” Sofi said, her nose close to a butter-colored bloom.

“Invasive!”

Lila’s yard was likewise filled with invasives. Creeping Charlie and mock strawberry permeate the “turf,” while pools of Japanese stiltgrass seedlings and stands of nipplewort and garlic mustard encroach from the perimeter. Unfortunately, Lila doesn't have time or budget to remove them immediately.

The fast, cheap, nice enough native yard

Lila’s landscaping goal was a quick fix to make her scruffy half acre significantly more attractive ASAP for her Airbnb guests, as well as herself, for the lowest possible cost. Here’s the fast, super cheap, OK solution we used to transform her all-turf yard:

1. Let the grass grow.

2. Mow paths and destinations.

3. Put seating in the destinations.

4. Seed and plant into the long grass.

5. Screen with native shrubs and trees.

Paths and destinations

As a student in our ​Transform Your Yard​ course, Lila had created a design of paths and destinations that took her low budget into consideration. Designing paths and destinations is key to creating a biodiverse yard that you’ll use; unfortunately, it’s often ignored — as in an otherwise excellent recent Washington Post article (see below) that presents mowing as an either/or. In Transform Your Yard, our students spend several weeks imagining destinations — reasons to get out into their yards — and designing paths to stroll among them. The default path and destination material is simply mown turf.

Destinations can be lots of things — a vegetable garden, an outdoor gym, a badminton court — but seating is the easiest way to create a destination that will draw you into the far reaches of your yard. That’s why I began scouring Facebook Marketplace for patio furniture as soon as we started working on Lila’s yard. I was looking for seating for three destinations — a bench, a pair of chairs, and a pair of sun lounges. You can score these for free, but I couldn’t resist paying up for a pair of vintage Brown Jordan Tamiami lounges (pictured below).

Lila referenced her design to mark the paths and destinations with flags in the overgrown grass. She made a few adjustments on the ground, for example, replacing the planned rain garden with a path and curving a planned path around a couple of small peony bushes we discovered.

Then we mowed. You can see the results in the photo of the first four-foot wide path below. Note that we did not mow a verge along the road, which many people recommend as a sign of care and I’ve done myself here in Rhode Island, but that’s always an option. In Lila’s case, I thought her small, sloped front yard would look better if the meadow continued right up to the edge of the road.

Plant picks

Lila’s yard was already looking pretty good with neatly mown paths and destinations surrounded by what looks like lush meadow. She wanted to add some native plants for color, to hide the road and neighboring yards, and to support native wildlife. In Transform Your Yard, we recommend choosing a color scheme to unify a landscape, and Lila wisely chose a single color — yellow — which will make the scheme readable even with only a smattering of new plants. Here’s what I chose:

• 100 black-eyed Susan plugs (Rudbeckia hirta) sprinkled evenly among the main front and back meadow areas

• 50 taller cutleaf coneflowers (Rudbeckia lanceolata), arranged in rows to screen the road and the back the property

• 12 bayberry bushes (Morella pensylvanica), two to screen the road and 10 to provide privacy from the neighbor’s yard

• 6 bushy St. John’s wort (Hypericum prolificum) with 6 lady ferns (Athyrium filix-femina) below them to neaten the shady edge of the driveway

• 5 spicebush shrubs (Lindera benzoin) to provide spring color against the woods on the east and south of the property

• 1 six-foot eastern red cedar (Juniperus virginiana) to hide a neighbor’s shed

Previously, Lila and Zoe winter-seeded with a meadow mix, plus a few tall species to screen the perimeter. It's too soon to tell how many of these seeds will germinate in the existing dense vegetation, but the late goldenrods (Solidago gigantea) are thriving. They'll extend the yellow palette into the fall, while also hosting native caterpillar species and providing seeds for birds.

Cost, impact, and future state

The main aesthetic impact of Lila’s lawn transformation was free — letting the grass grow and mowing paths and destinations into it. We could have gotten the furniture for free, too. We spent $500 for 150 flowering plugs, which will add the most oomph in the short term, starting this July through September. The seeds cost $350 and the tree and shrubs, a longer term investment in structure, cost $1,000.

To control the invasives, our longer-term plan is to introduce aggressive, rhizomatous natives to outcompete them. (A tickseed species would be a better yellow-flowering choice for this purpose than black-eyed Susan, a biennial species that spreads by seed. My bad.) In the short term, the invasives in the meadow — dandelions, creeping Charlie and Queen Anne’s Lace among them — will provide significantly more nectar for pollinators and seeds for birds than clipped grass. We will keep the invasive-filled patches around the perimeter mown short to weaken them and prevent seeding until Lila has the budget for more seeds or plants.

By the way, May 22 is International Biodiversity Day. It’s a good day to get outside and celebrate transforming your yard. Learn more ​here​.

— The Avant Gardener

Why, How, Wow!

Why?

It’s No Mow May! And, yes, No Mow May is grounded in science. There’s no magic to the month of May; the idea is to delay mowing for a month to provide early support for pollinators. In Georgia, for example, that means starting to mow mid-April instead of mid-March, as professional landscaping veteran Mark Wolfe did.

No Mow May was started in 2019 by citizen scientists in the United Kingdom as part of a conservation study to support struggling pollinators. Homeowners were encouraged to leave their lawn mowers in storage through the month of May and allow their lawn weeds to grow and bloom. The idea was that participants’ lawns could then produce essential pollen and nectar for bees and other pollinators during the critical period in which they were emerging from hibernation.

Results in the U.K.’s initial study included a massive increase in floral diversity when these beneficial bugs need it most. A year later, residents of Appleton, Wisconsin, organized their own No Mow May, and the results were impressive. Researchers reported a threefold increase in bee species diversity and a fivefold increase in the number of bees in no-mow yards compared with neighboring yards that were mowed as usual. — Mark Wolfe at ​bobvilla.com​

Letting lawn weeds grow is not a long-term solution to biodiversity loss. Non-native weeds will not support native specialist insects that rely on specific native plants with which they evolved to complete their life cycles. But flowering weeds are better than clipped grass for generalist pollinators:

Doug Tallamy: Dandelions are invasive but I don't consider them a problem. They do help a few generalist pollinators early in the season and their foliage supports some generalist caterpillars. I wouldn't worry about them.

Brandon Hough: In addition to Doug's thoughts, when you plant a prairie or something like that, Dandelions get pushed out really fast. They cannot compete against native wildflowers, grasses, etc. I have never seen a dandelion in the middle of a prairie! — Homegrown National Park

How

Consider following Lila’s lead and stop mowing part of your yard permanently. If you don’t have time or energy to create an overall plan as she did, just get some flags and start placing one every four feet along possible paths and around the outside of possible destinations. If you’re going to be investing in buying and installing perennials, shrubs, trees, and hardscaping, as our students plan to do, it’s important to evaluate existing conditions, brainstorm evidence-based attributes of a restorative landscape, and experiment with alternative designs — among other things. But if all you’re going to do is mow paths and destinations into turf, there’s little risk in getting it wrong. You can always mow it all down and start over. So get out there and wing it.

Wow!

Lila's yard is already looking much better than it did before our weekend transformation.

Related Resources

• Interested in a custom tree-planting ritual for a lost loved one? Contact ​Saga Blane​, who created an amazingly moving ceremony for us.

• Want to see what just letting your grass grow looks like? Check out the visualization by climate journalists at the Washington Post in ​Why you should let your grass grow​.

• Prefer to take the time to create a comprehensive plan for your yard? Sign up for the waitlist and get early access to the all-digital version of ​Transform Your Yard​.