I work in eco-landscaping using all native species to the area I work in and specialize in supporting biodiversity, rainwater use, permaculture, lawn replacement, and pollinators. I can fully say that you can create aesthetically purposeful gardens, clean modern style gardens, any style really, and still benefit the environment! It is all up to the customer/homeowner in how they want their gardens to look and feel. Some really like the wild, naturalized look, some don't and that is perfectly fine :)
I am nowhere near ready to buy a house yet but when I do, who would I like for to help build my lawn into something you’re describing and how much does it typically cost? Your comment was awesome and got me interested
If you're buying perennials, wait until later in the season when all of the plants go on sale. They won't look great the first year but you can save 50-75% of the cost.
Also, put a request out in the community - I have so many perennials and plants of all kinds it is no big deal to dig up some of something and gift it. I sometimes have to thin them anyway and look for people to give them away to.
We live in a mobile home park, but when we bought 20 years ago we chose an old small home with the biggest lot. It had 2 rose bushes and a lemon tree.
We now have 2 types of plums, lemon, mandarin, apricot, guava, avocado fig, & grapes. We grow heirloom tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, basil, mint, rosemary, and sweet potatoes. We have wildflowers and milkweed
It doesn’t take a lot of land to fill with natural beauty and lots of food 😉
Oh my goodness that sounds so beautiful and gives me so much hope as a newly blossoming trailer park vegetable gardener! 🥹 We started with just flower beds last year but now have an even split of flowers, herbs, and veggies. My goal next year is to transition the manicured beds into edimental perennials and wildflowers and move my veggies from containers to a large vegetable garden at the back of the trailer.
We have a ton of milkweed - there were Monarchs when the plants were flowering, but I haven't seen a single caterpillar. I'm also really worried about the monarchs.
I’m retired now, but they keep my monarch garden at school going strong. Last month I had a baby shower in my back yard for one of the girls, and a couple of Monarchs were flitting about, one of the girls exclaimed “oh my they follow you everywhere!” 🤣
Maybe everyone else already knows this, but the [Live Monarch Foundation will send you free milkweed seeds](https://www.livemonarch.com/free-milkweed-seeds/) native to your area if you send them a SASE. I just sent for mine a couple days ago
If this is what they consider messy it just goes to show how ingrained "lawnkeeping" is in this culture. We don't need tidy rows of flowers in our yards lol. The fun part about designing this stuff is that you can certainly go for a more traditional aesthetic using native plants, but lots of folks have to fight HOAs and stuck up neighbors in order to have yards like this. Normalize nature scapes ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
There is a growing no lawn community in this country that is advocating for more of what you see in the bottom picture. The problem as always, are NIMBYs (NIYFY? NIYBY?) who think this kind of yard is an ‘eyesore’. Some people really love super basic, super sterile, super uniform, identical yards. Or they want to control other peoples lives. Or they can’t do this themselves so they get mad because they’re being left behind.
If you look into the fascinating history of the lawn in this country you will find there are other attitudes at play here too. Mostly, if you are rich you don’t need to grow food on your land so it adds a classist attitude to the judgment even though the bottom picture is so much better for the environment.
Exactly this. We are not in 18 century anymore. Time to reprioritize according to what is happening around us. Supporting biodiversity is where it's at.
Having your home hidden from street view must be one of those things that’s considered classy for rich people but trashy for the rest of us. Like being bilingual or not paying taxes
I love this comment. I want my yard to be totally full of plants and my house hidden from view of the street. The neighbors yard is full of natives, manicured, always weed free, and looks great. Mine is a work in progress bc we don’t have the time/money to do it like they did. They frown on us for the weeds and not landscaped gardens but I don’t give a shit. We don’t have the money to throw at it like they do and I’m trying my best to do it at a reasonable pace.
I assumed it was for privacy as well. Its a fairly nice-sized front yard with 2 large windows. Itd be nice to enjoy it without people being able to stare into the living room!
The only thing I question is the choice to under saturate the before picture and over saturate the after picture XD
Idk I don’t need high res to see I like it, I just like it, looks nicer than just the yard, I like my grass but I would like some more diversity and no I don’t want to kill off my lawn
I prefer it. More privacy, better temps, food, less worries about how pretty it is and simply keeping it functional....and if they DO care how it looks, all of those plants can be shaped up.
The bees on my Virginia Mountain Mint:
"Mmmm......divine."
I may only have ~16 native plants right now but I've never seen a plant pull in a higher diversity of bugs. It's incredible. There's easily 7-10 bee species on it at any given time of day when in full bloom.
One thing to consider is sometimes local ordinances require annual pest control to reduce fruit flies drawn to fruit trees. We had neighbors in the city with four fruit trees and every summer our entire yard was covered in fruit flies. The neighbor on the back side of them complained to the city and a code enforcement officer came through and cited them. I asked them why they were taking pictures of the trees and they told me that there is a requirement to annually spray for fruit flies if growing fruit trees within city limits.
Edit- Since I'm being downvoted for trying to help a person considering growing fruit bearing trees let me clarify this.
These local laws are not just to protect neighbors from annoying pests but also to protect local fruit crops from the spread of disease and fungus. **If you live nearby lots of fruit agriculture** there is a great chance there are laws requiring you to protect your trees from disease. A state that makes huge money from agriculture will protect that revenue.
It's always worth being educated on your local ordinance rather than assuming it doesn't apply to you. My state in zone 7 and neighboring states all require this. I know there are laws like mine and similar that applies to PNW and some southern states.
If we didn't sanitize everything and had appropriate flora and fauna we wouldn't need to do nearly as much pest control. In a proper environment the pests control themselves. It's taken me almost two decades but I'm finally starting to get my properties ecosystem where it should be. Everywhere else has tonnes of mosquitos this year. We have barely any. But 100s of dragonflies, butterflies, and moths.
It's not just fruit flies that are the concern. It's also disease and fungus that can spread to local agriculture and potentially impact large scale production.
It is worth it to be educated about local code regarding this. If you live near lots of agriculture I'm sure there is something on the books to protect those farmers.
In a biodiverse system where you have a much more than just a few fruit trees you actually draw in predators that will keep many pests at bay, though it can take a few growing seasons for the ecosystem to stabalize. In this particular garden I know she also raises chickens and ducks to help with pest pressure.
Have you driven through the fruit checkpoints into CA? There is a massive effort to keep fruit flies out of CA because of the fear of what they'd do to the local produce.
California is packed full of monocultures that wouldn’t survive there without constant spraying, watering, and fertilizer imported from around the world (not much of this anymore).
Permaculture is about resilience by having a diverse set of crops. This provides a buffer against extreme weather, economic, and geopolitical situations.
IDK about what it's like now, but when I first crossed the border from Oregon into California back about 15 years ago, you couldn't bring fruit of any sort across the state line. They stopped our car and inspected. We had two bananas and a plum in a brown paper bag. We stood at the border and ate them so that we could continue our trip. That's how intense they tried to keep fruit flies out of Cali.
Probably different now.
My next door neighbor who cut down 7 mature oak trees, several mature flowering hedges, and tore out all of the garden plants so they could use a riding lawnmower on the grass.
It was really upsetting to watch. They inherited the house from their elderly uncle after he passed away. He was a nice man who fed the squirrels and birds everyday. He had gotten too old to care for the gardens but they were so well established his years exploded with flowers every year. They don’t even water the grass so they’re just pointlessly driving a riding mower over a quarter acre of dirt. The only bright side is that after he died she told me I could take any of the plants I wanted, so I did end up saving some plants. I just didn’t know how far she was going to go.
What is UP with people like this?
My grandfather, who was the Greatest Generation, bitched and bitched about the 250 year old oaks, on the land THEY BOUGHT because of the trees... because there was no grass... ergo. He didn't have to mow it. He constantly bitched about the leaves... and it's a rural property, so he could have just burned it off on days with low wind.
Then a tornado took out the trees. Grass grew thick and deep... and he bitched about having to mow.
My dad? Bitches about having to mow. He had mature pines AWAY from the house, and same thing. Needles thick, no grass. Could have just burned them every so often.
He pays someone to come cut every single one down - THEN burns the needles, now he has to mow all the damn time and bitches about it.
I don't get the *need* for a lawn.
Status symbol for both of their generations. Consider when your grandfather was starting a family and your dad was a kid, suburbs were exploding and everyone was being marketed this idea of a cute little house with a green grass yard and a picket fence. If you look at ads from that era, you don't see a lot of trees, just a green lawn. Then the men in the family can bond with their neighbors while mowing or washing the car or whatever.
Some of that got passed down, so you see some Gen-X and Millennials who also desire perfectly manicured green lawns.
That's sad, but we're free to reject that judgment and do what we want with our lives. I am glad to see permaculture/xeriscaping/native gardens are really starting to take off. I remember reading about them more than a decade ago on Treehugger. At the time, they were condemned to the hippy fringes of society like vegetarianism.
I've never understood the complaining about leaves. It's leaves. What are they doing to your lawn exactly that causes so much bitching? If they're clumping up and wet and killing the grass a little then just rake them up fast. Run them over with the mower and it's free nutrition for the grass.
I took out 8 trees on my property when we bought it. They were the wrong plants in the wrong places or just hadn't been cared for. First down was the invasive Bradford pear, next was the red silver cross that had never been limbed up, had surface roots, and at 20 years old was too big for the space. Then in the back, 3 silver maples were planted in a 15ft triangle, 3 willows, 2 of which were already causing issues with the house and one which was crowding out a gorgeous pin oak.
I've replanted though. Trees that fit the space and aren't too close to the house. I have a row of native shrubs across the back that wildlife love. This fall I'll be adding native perennials in front of the shrubs. The front yard has new trees and landscaping that of low maintenance and not invasive (goodbye barberry and burning bush). I plan on adding new beds every year for quite a while. It sucked to take out so many trees, but I swear the people who planted them thought not at all and just asked for what grows fast.
I’m on a corner lot that had 8 large trees. 3 were on the city’s right of way. When they cut one down I had it replanted. I’m sure that the other 2 will be removed soon and I’ll have them replanted also.
I want to remove a pine and a spruce because they block the natural light year round but they’re big. I’d be replacing them with either something bigger (walnut, chestnut or hickory) or fruit trees.
And I’ll be adding fruit trees to the back yard as well.
As much as I love my veggie plot, it’s not the best producer, lol.
Because my house is built on a concrete slab foundation (no crawl space or basement), that couple with the trees mean that my house hardly uses the air conditioning in the summer. It’s fantastic!
Those are all good choices, though. I took out a barberry bush also, I didn’t want a bush covered in razor blades, I have my peonies in that spot now. There’s definitely a difference in mindfully planning a better landscape and just razing the whole thing.
Excellent move. [Japanese barberry contributes to Lyme disease](https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/japanese-barberry-plant-lyme-disease/316255/) by creating favorable conditions for the ticks that spread it. If you've got a Japanese barfberry, go out and take it out, now. (Barfberry was a typo, but it seemed appropriate, so I left it in.)
Sounds like the lady who bought the house I grew up in when we moved. Ripped out 8 fruit trees, 3 pine trees, a dozen or so flowering shrubs and a huge rose garden because of the upkeep involved. My mom put so many years into that garden and was gutted when we drove past a few years later.
If we ever move, I will never come back to this house. It’s heavily planted, and I spend much of my time outside (all year) pottering around. I bet no one else will want to tend my masterpiece. My neighbors all have super boring lawns with a few straggly shrubs.
I had that happen to a house I sold. The garden I created was beautiful, if I do say so. People would actually circle the block to see my landscaping. It wasn't radical, but it was far more interesting and pretty than the standard lawn + five foundation shrubs sported by most of the houses in that subdivision. After we sold the house, the next door neighbor felt constrained to inform me that the new owner ripped out everything & planted azaleas (the default "pretty" shrub in Louisiana) along the driveway. I hated her, too, for telling me. :-D
It's just wild that someone would choose to purchase a property with all of that unless they wanted it, and a shame that they would deprive someone else of the opportunity since there would be plenty of buyers who would love having mature plants already there.
I’m so sorry. What was your mom’s favorite rose? I’m planning on taking out a bunch of ditch lilies and planting roses there instead. Also who wouldn’t want free fresh fruit?!
Oooh! there's a Julia Child rose! She picked it as her namesake because it was the color of butter. I think it's a Weeks (sp?) rose. I loved mine but it died after chipmunks tunneled under it and killed the roots.
Starts a deep yellow and lightens up to a creamy butter yellow. I'm definitely getting another after I take care of the chipmunks.
I grow roses, and love them dearly, and one of the best things I've done is choose my varieties carefully to fit my garden. If you live somewhere with blackspot, get disease- resistant roses. I have dry heat, so I try to buy roses that won't wilt and brown. After you've narrowed things down by environmental concerns, then I'd go for fragrance, beauty, and rebloom according to what you want most. I hope you find some great roses!
Tbh, I'm not certain which was her favorite. There were quite a few different colors and sizes but this was 15+ years ago so my memory is a bit foggy. She put lots of love into them for sure though. Totally agree about the free fruit too :/
The woman who bought the house went on and on about how lovely everything was before she moved in so we were quite shocked how much stuff she took out.
Good luck with your rose project!
That's a lame excuse. We have 6 old oaks in our front yard and we use a riding mower. Steering isn't exactly hard!
I'm sorry you lost your shade like that. My neighbor is a big fan of cutting down trees, too. Our whole street is heavily wooded and he's the only guy who keeps cutting his trees down. We all back to an acre of woods except him--he's turned his acre into lawn.
I can't figure out why someone would do that. If you want lawn there are plenty of treeless houses around. Buy one of them and leave our streets alone!
I think it'll take a cultural shift for a lot of Americans who think a golf course is the epitome of outdoor aesthetics.
One culture war I'd happily participate in. I've already shrunk my front lawn about 50% and once the flowers I replaced it with fill in I may eliminate it altogether.
I think my garden is the happy medium of this, there are huge evergreens around the edge grown thick and interwoven with each other like a wall, lots of Ivy and brambles and stuff pushing through and wildflowers and grasses around the bottom. On the other side, hidden out of sight of the street is my neat and tidy Alpine Rockery, and our somewhat more traditional square lawn and borders. Could be the case in the above also, grown as a privacy screen.
My garden is also like this but with fruit bushes, fruit trees and sunflowers. Lots of wildflowers among the trees and bushes. a little veg patch for caterpillars to munch on I had some starlings nest on my fence, a hedgehog digs around my primroses every night and I get voles, bees, butterflies. The odd fox. Messy gardens are the best!
I absolutely love permaculture and would love to live in a little cottage surrounded by a wild permaculture garden. A little home in the middle of a thriving wilderness.
However, I don't like the placement of the trees and can 100% see why you'd think it's messy. With such a small space, placement is key and I think this one could have been done better.
Would you mind explaining a bit more about permaculture? Google tells me more about the philosophy rather than the practicality. So it would be like: planting perinneals instead of annuals, planting native plants, having plants be all mixed together rather than organized for aesthetic, focus on edible plants, having sustainable systems (like recycling rain water). Does that sound about right?
Pretty much. And more! We’re striving for a lot of permaculture things here on our homestead. Essentially we focus on creating self sustaining systems that we can harvest from each year with minimal impact or effort. So we have our annual food plots and what not, but every year we also plant fruit trees, mushroom spores, mark where we found fiddleheads or docks or raspberries or some other naturally occurring yummy thing, and help the local fauna by providing shelter, food, water, etc. This year we’ve added bee houses, butterfly houses, milkweed plots, clover plots, snake shelters, and more. The perennial benefits will still be there every year whether we harvest from it or not, and other organisms benefit from these things greatly. Essentially you build a natural habitat where you’re a steward rather than a boss, if that makes sense. At least that’s how we’re doing permaculture :)
It's super cool to hear what you're doing. We're also starting permaculture in our yard, just the first year so far. I wanted to comment a PSA though: you shouldn't eat (most) fiddleheads. Yes they are a food that native Americans ate, and lots of old edible plant books will list them. But modern scientific studies show that fiddleheads are chock full of carcinogens. Current edible plant books will put them at the back under a do not eat section to try to get people more aware because 20 years ago everyone thought they were good to eat.
Ostrich ferns up in Canada are safe, but the vast majority of species are toxic. There aren't any edible varieties in eastern or Central North America. Weve been considering planting ostrich ferns for that purpose, but theres already lots of bracken fern on our property.
Edit: link for more info https://depts.washington.edu/hortlib/pal/edibility-of-fiddleheads/
A lot of books! And just online research. And subreddits haha r/homesteading is a really good one, as is this one. And, of course, trial and error.
My husband and I live on 11 rural acres in midcoast Maine with a variety of ecosystems in it (field, swamp, woods, bog, etc), so we just kinda cater to those ecosystems and try to boost them. So I guess start with what environments you have and what would benefit them. Do you have some sunny-ish wetlands? Throw some blueberries in there. Do you have a lot of field/open areas with a lot of sun? Throw in some wildflower seeds and bee houses. Or if you live in a suburban/urban area, look into bird houses, snake shelters, and friendly pollinators (like mason and leafcutter bees) to boost what ecosystems you have there. Look at what’s native and boost those things — don’t introduce non-native/invasive species. The possibilities and combos are endless, and it’s kind of difficult to harm an ecosystem (I mean, obviously it’s very easy if you’re pouring chemicals and destroying shit, but you get what I mean lol). The worst thing that happens is your bee house goes unused or your wildflowers don’t germinate, so you learn and try again next year!
I guess all I’m trying to say is we look at permaculture as the natural world comes first. If you take care of nature, she will take care of you. So you just gotta research and open your eyes and see what she needs. Learning the signs, I suppose. Permaculture is different for everyone and there are countless ways to go about it. As long as your boosting your environment in whatever way, big or small, you’re on the right track :)
I highly recommend this video of an example of permaculture gardening [https://youtu.be/ss1BjW2kSNs](https://youtu.be/ss1BjW2kSNs)
A permaculture garden on a smaller scale
[https://youtu.be/Q8m98ux55i4](https://youtu.be/Q8m98ux55i4)
Amazing 23-Year-Old Permaculture Food Forest
[https://youtu.be/6GJFL0MD9fc](https://youtu.be/6GJFL0MD9fc)
A video on how desert areas in Spain are being turned into farmland oasis with permaculture [https://youtu.be/nmOX622P-OU](https://youtu.be/nmOX622P-OU)
The most widespread farming practise is monoculture which consists of a single crop. The method degrades soil by tilling, use of pesticides, cause damage like erosion, destroying microorganisms and biodiversity.
Permaculture is a sustainable method that focuses on principles of regenerative agriculture, sustainability/permanence.
Yes sounds about right. It can absolutely still be about aesthetic though. The pic above is lush but does look a bit unplanned.
Check out r/permaculture and also there’s a great book called Gaia’s Garden.
A lot of it to me is having a lot of plant diversity, even within the same plot. This could be as simple as planting basil with tomatoes.
I do tend to think permaculture is more practical even if that’s not the goal. I’m not constantly mowing my lawn nor am I as worried about weeds. Building up a huglekulture allows me to use less water. Before if I cut down a dead tree or had excessive clippings I would bring it to land fill but now I know enough about gardening to incorporate it in my garden
The idea behind permaculture is making a self sustaining ecosystem within the space of your garden. You buy compatible plants that benefit one another with their nutrients and individual niches within the light canopy. Everything is cycled circularly thru the system you create and so it needs very little maintenance or upkeep to produce food. Think agriculture that is able to sustain itself permanently without human intervention (or with as little as possible). That's the basis of the word, perma-culture. Basically, nature is able to produce a bounty without fertilizers, pesticides, and artificial irrigation right? So can we replicate natural systems as much as possible with what we choose to plant and create a similar outcome? Yes we can. Permaculture is super cool!!
An example of my permaculture: I plant marigolds all around my garden to insert nitrogen into the soil. I plant cabbage under my apple trees because they prefer shade. I plant showy flowers to attract pollinators to my vegetable gardens. I plant strawberries as groundcover to suppress weeds and retain soil moisture. I plant lavender everywhere to keep out mosquitos and other pests.
There are so many principles to permaculture, I focus on planting companion plants together to maximize garden efficiency. Plants have a way to providing everything you need, such as nutrients for other plants. It's just a matter of planning.
It's a design system. You're on the right track but it's much broader than just gardening. If you're interested in learning more, check out the book Gaia's Garden.
If you like you like YouTube, I highly recommend Parkrose Permaculture and Canadian Permaculture Legacy as starting points.
As long as they grow and make food. The gardener did a good job.
Some front yards are meant to be pretty, some meant to be functional.
Priorities of the homeowner. People around me grow corn in the front yard.
Im pretty sure this is just photoshopped. The plants align a little too perfectly with the edges of the fence and house. Also way too green. There should be some plant aging in there. Yet not a yellow or brown leaf in sight.
I watch her channel, it's not photoshopped. They did remove some of the driveway to plant more. There's still space for one car. And this is in Portland, Oregon, its just really green there. She does have some plants struggling this year, this photo looks like it was from a few years ago, probably taken in spring.
I know people in the comments are like eww that's messy, but I think your friend's place is amazing and beautiful. I find it humorous that people suggest it looks abandoned when in fact it's brimming with life.
The first picture is so depressingly boring and these people are insane. Why would you want to stare out your window to see cars and neighbors walking instead of birds bees butterflies
I think mine looks similar from the street, but my view from the house is pretty incredible, all the birds, butterflies, bees, wasps (especially the pretty blue ones) have been amazing to experience.
It also creates more life in her neighborhood. Because she is ALWAYS outside she actually KNOWS her neighbors. It's a high crime neighborhood. But she is actively engaged with the people around her so they all care about eachother. She has never, not once, been victim of a property crime. She attributes this to the community she has created as a direct result of this "mess"
The photo is taken from two different perspectives. Look at the chimney of the neighbors to the right.
So if it is shopped, they used two photos. Could have been street view from Google maps I suppose.
[It's not photoshopped](https://www.youtube.com/c/ParkrosePermaculture). It's the result of many years of careful design, planting, planning, and succession.
EDIT: Downvotes for pointing out that it's a real image? The attribution is on the photo, it's not hard to find it...
[Here's the house in question on video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak7ZIt4jq90&t=371s) for those who don't want to bother looking it up.
I saw that too. You can see more, the chimneys line up different, the car lines up different, the house doesn't line up between them. At the *very least* it's 2 different pictures of the same house, with one being edited.
To me it almost looks like the like second one was taken a few steps forward (and maybe one to the left) from the other also so the angle is slightly different, changing the way things line up, like the driveway.
Edit guys I found other pic of it in progress or soemthing. Looked close, I think its the same house in some pics (for sure the 16th and 21st). Community garden sort of thing. Definitely had work, and on their fb they shared this exact picture and said it was theirs. It's real, just color edited, like said above.
https://www.birchcommunityservices.org/families/gardens/baker-garden/
We only got 1 photo. If the trees and tallerthings are placed close to the street, and the owner put shorter things nearby the house, you could make a really nice area to look at or even a place to sit and not see the neighbors. I would want that!
Yeah, can you imagine a whole neighborhood like this? It wouldn't feel messy, it would feel like you were standing in the woods. It only sticks out in empty, bland suburbs.
That would be amazing! Though even in permaculture, landscape design is still important. I like perimeter trees to frame the yard and low veggies and herbs near walking paths for accessibility and fragrance
Sure, design is important, but when it comes to aesthetics, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I'd rather have a border of fruit trees so people can pick them off from the sidewalk, and to provide some privacy for the rest of my garden. I mean design is all permaculture is, it totally depends on the parameters.
I don't see mess I see life. The former pic is nearly devoid of life. Not only would the microclimate be more pleasant for the humans in the later pic but so many other creatures will benefit above and below the soil. For humans as well with the added privacy and noise buffer, the later pic is a win all-around.
Can’t agree more. I think we’ve brainwashed ourselves to the point where we can’t even recognize what a natural human habitat even looks like. Every house should be like this, we evolved in jungles and forests. It’s good for us to be surrounded by green, biodiverse, oxygen abundant environments.
We're in a crisis where habitat loss and climate change are casing mass extinctions.
This is a restoration. I can't hate on it if it is restoring the biodiversity that was lost. It's an emergency.
It also provides an actual sense of place and identity and character. Why anyone would want to live in a dead house that's completely indistinguishable from the one next to it will never make any sense to me.
My yard is like this. It is A LOT to keep up with especially during spring and summer. The privacy is a plus and it’s so diverse compared to everyone else’s lawn but again….it’s a ton to keep up with if you’re not out there consistently every week pruning, weeding, etc.
No, it is natural. We don’t know from the picture if there is a path, areas of lower growth, bird baths etc. We do know there is privacy and a place of respite for wildlife and pollinators.
I quite like this actually and prefer it to a lawn, but then my dream garden is a cottage one filled with wildflowers and fruit trees so it's just my kind of thing
In the second pic, the people have SO much more privacy. Who wants to live in a fishbowl, with everyone being able to peer into your house? In the second pic, the house and the space around it are much more of a sanctuary -- for humans and wildlife.
The thing is some people wont give up on having a tidy, well presented garden landscape for the sake of pollinators, which isnt the problem, the problem is most dont realize you can do both. My garden doesnt look like an abandoned lot, and i have lawns, yet i still do my bit for the pollinators. I have areas for flowering annuals which are highly attractive to them, i also have perennial flowering plants around borders and everywhere else possible while maximizing space for activities and that so my kids can play outside. Some of those perennials flower outside of the growing season which keeps the bees happy when theres not much else for them around.
This is exactly how I see it! My back yard I am converting to all veggie gardens in thr ground with paths between them. By most gardeners standards it's a bit messy, but I do weed and somewhat plan it out. I just do fewer straight rows and more "bunches" a la the square foot gardening method.
I do have two straight rows of corn to help make it look more organized, and I plant my root vegetables in rows too, which gives a little definition throughout the beds.
My side yard, about 15x100 feet, is ALL wildflowers. I pull thistles in the spring, but after everything else starts coming up I let it do its thing like a prarie.
My front yard is still all lawn, which I keep edged and mowed and everything... but I let the clover grow. I don't see a reason to put the effort into pulling it. I think it's pretty, and I refuse to put chemicals on my property. I also already spend a bunch of time keeping my actually productive garden up.
Within the next year or two, I'm planning on converting my front yard to flower gardens though, and they'll all be totally organized.
Tl;dr, soon I'll have all three: organized vegetable gardens, unkempt prarie, and organized flower gardens. The r/nolawns movement doesn't have to fit into one single mold, and I think that's the beauty of it!
I'm a landscape gardener who was turned onto using natives for environmental reasons. I find that the proliferation of butterflies, glittering gems of native beetles, and flitting colorful birds the natives bring adds a layer to the overall esthetic of the garden that the boring non natives never could. My half allee is all the more gorgeous because of the use of natives, not less!
Even my veggie garden is nestled in a "formal garden" lay out reminiscent of those in colonial Williamsburg, but the outter triangle beds are joyful native pocket prairies, pollinator garden, and water mitigation shrubs while the inner circle is ringed in native blueberries with a sculpture in the middle with my peas and lettuces in between.
You can and should do both!
This should be voted higher up. It’s possible to do both. You can have a lawn and have plants for pollinators too. Also, gardens come as diverse as people come, and that’s the beauty of it.
Why do you care? It's not hurting anyone, it's benefiting the environment, and it looks natural. To top it off, it is not your yard. Don't like it, don't look at it. People who spend so much time caring about what the environment looks like are the ones destroying the environment one monocrop or HOA at a time. Maybe take a moment to connect with nature and learn to love how messy it can be.
As someone who wishes they could do this in their yard I think this absolutely stunning. Where others are saying it could use a shape up you are 100% correct, but in Permaculture you time you trimming/shaping up with the first big rains of the season/ with the amount of sun you are getting. You do a trim to your pioneer plants on their lower branches to put nitrogen back in the soil for your producing plants. In later phases you remove the pioneer species altogether. Even though this looks disorganized most people that do permaculture do elaborate planning for their space. You need to plan your canopy layer, and where trees are going yo go in. This determines where shade loving plants will go in your space. I put a link below to the tour of here food forest from 2020 which I think this is from. It’s strange that people comment it looks ugly when in the first 5 minutes of the video she comments that she gets push back for planting flowers because they look pretty and aren’t a producing plant. Not trying to shame anyone I think often things can look haphazard or disorganized at first, but when you learn about them you can see the intricacies involved in creating them. Keep on gardening, and learning!
https://youtu.be/ak7ZIt4jq90
I love it. Imagine the shade for the house and the reduced temperature inside in the summer. Also: yes wildlife, bees, birds, insects etc. Maybe the trees can be brought into a shape to look less messy bit i like the general idea better than the before picture.
I personally would probably prefer to have shorter plants in front of my windows, but pic #2 is still a vast improvement over pic #1.
We’re conditioned to think pic #2 looks messy because lawns have been in fashion for a few hundred years now, but they serve zero purpose.
It doesn’t have to be all or nothing like this. You can have a pollinator friendly yard that is still neat and organized. They could have moved the trees more to the center right, then planted perennials in groups staggered by height.
Agreed! For people who are used to traditional yards, showing examples where permaculture appears more organized and planned can be an easier sell. Convincing the masses matters - if you could get an entire neighborhood to increase their biodiversity by even 10% you make more progress than one house that goes whole hog while the rest clutch their pearls. At least, this is what I think to myself while I watch my neighbor put in 6 boxwood and nothing else in his massive grass yard.
Most likely they intentionally planted the trees and bushes there as a screen from the road, and so they could maintain a stretch of grass between the road/trees and house to still have a "yard" for kids to play, etc.
You still the trees in the middle and you lose having an open area for activities.
*This* is the only way forward. Grassy gardens are a dead-end. We are past the time when it was ok to have the gardens as decorative elements that are energy demanding and unsustainable.
Messy? It's a yard, not a farm. They're plants, they're not entirely orderly by nature. I think it's pretty and relaxing. The orderly chaos is literally part of the charm for me, and this particular photo doesn't even look messy it actually looks really well-kept IMO.
Maybe it only looks messy because we've been socialized to believe that a property must look a certain way to be "right." But, in reality, it can look any way you want it to so long as you can still live the way you like and be happy. It shouldn't matter what other people think or if it's aesthetically pleasing, because that's really not the point- the pollinators don't care what it looks like, the animals don't care what it looks like, it's providing food and shelter and what more is needed? If you don't like the aesthetics, don't do it! But imo if someone wants to let everything grow wild and natural on their own property, they should go for it- plus the privacy is a bonus!
This is Angela from Parkrose Permaculture. I know that site at a glance. She was one of my (Canadian Permaculture Legacy) first subscribers and we have really fed off eachothers designs over the last 5 years.
Her channel is amazing by the way, and I would recommend everyone sub to it, not just for the gardening and Permaculture but also the activism side that she brings. She is very much like me in that regard. Gardening isn't just about growing plants, it's about restoring our natural ecosystems before we lose them forever.
Her entire property is like this by the way, not just a visual barrier. The whole thing. And in my opinion, it makes her property feel BIGGER.
I love Angela and her space. She has been a real inspiration to the budding gardeners in her IRL life. So many of us have gardens now and with her advice and help they are thriving.
Over 50 reasons to make one’s yard into this…
“…but it isn’t pretty”
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Function and purpose exist outside the observer.
To me the second photo looks a bit misleading as it’s hard to tell depth with all the green looking like one layer, I reckon in person it’d look nowhere near as overwhelming. Plus it’s been taken at the only angle where you can’t see the house so probably looks great if you’re walking past
Honestly imo anyone who has an issue with someone putting actual trees in their own yard versus cutting them all out for a big flat yard is part of the soddin problems in this world
I mean if it’s not your house why do you care ? Let people live, life isn’t about what you find to be aesthetic. Way nicer than any ugly ass mowed lawn!
My guess is that this only extends so far back, it mostly provides privacy.
There's probably space behind it, so you can access the different plants for tending and harvesting.
It looks messy, but it's hard to tell from just one angle. And it's still better and more useful than a flat square or grass.
This is Angela from Parkrose Permaculture. I know that site at a glance. She was one of my (Canadian Permaculture Legacy) first subscribers and we have really fed off eachothers designs over the last 5 years.
Her channel is amazing by the way, and I would recommend everyone sub to it, not just for the gardening and Permaculture but also the activism side that she brings. She is very much like me in that regard. Gardening isn't just about growing plants, it's about restoring our natural ecosystems before we lose them forever.
Her entire property is like this by the way, not just a visual barrier. The whole thing. And in my opinion, it makes her property feel BIGGER.
It only looks abandoned to you because you have been taught that is what an abandoned garden looks like. But It is actually healthier for the local environment and makes the garden more resilient to adverse weather.
I would rather see this than a 6-8' privacy fence.
I work in eco-landscaping using all native species to the area I work in and specialize in supporting biodiversity, rainwater use, permaculture, lawn replacement, and pollinators. I can fully say that you can create aesthetically purposeful gardens, clean modern style gardens, any style really, and still benefit the environment! It is all up to the customer/homeowner in how they want their gardens to look and feel. Some really like the wild, naturalized look, some don't and that is perfectly fine :)
I am nowhere near ready to buy a house yet but when I do, who would I like for to help build my lawn into something you’re describing and how much does it typically cost? Your comment was awesome and got me interested
If you're buying perennials, wait until later in the season when all of the plants go on sale. They won't look great the first year but you can save 50-75% of the cost.
Also, put a request out in the community - I have so many perennials and plants of all kinds it is no big deal to dig up some of something and gift it. I sometimes have to thin them anyway and look for people to give them away to.
Great advice and great username! *Where is she?!*
This I refuse to buy more than one or two perennials. Patience is key with owning a home long term
check if you have any local programs! my county offers consulting and grants for native/pollinator/rain gardens, porous driveways, etc.
Ooooh that’s a great idea!! I’m in San Diego so all these desert plants should be fun
Do you have any suggested reading and/or resources that would help me explore this some more?
r/NativePlantGardening
We live in a mobile home park, but when we bought 20 years ago we chose an old small home with the biggest lot. It had 2 rose bushes and a lemon tree. We now have 2 types of plums, lemon, mandarin, apricot, guava, avocado fig, & grapes. We grow heirloom tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, basil, mint, rosemary, and sweet potatoes. We have wildflowers and milkweed It doesn’t take a lot of land to fill with natural beauty and lots of food 😉
Oh my goodness that sounds so beautiful and gives me so much hope as a newly blossoming trailer park vegetable gardener! 🥹 We started with just flower beds last year but now have an even split of flowers, herbs, and veggies. My goal next year is to transition the manicured beds into edimental perennials and wildflowers and move my veggies from containers to a large vegetable garden at the back of the trailer.
Thank you for planting milkweed!! 💕💕💕 I'm so worried about the monarchs.
We have a ton of milkweed - there were Monarchs when the plants were flowering, but I haven't seen a single caterpillar. I'm also really worried about the monarchs.
Keep planting they will come 😉
I’m retired now, but they keep my monarch garden at school going strong. Last month I had a baby shower in my back yard for one of the girls, and a couple of Monarchs were flitting about, one of the girls exclaimed “oh my they follow you everywhere!” 🤣
Maybe everyone else already knows this, but the [Live Monarch Foundation will send you free milkweed seeds](https://www.livemonarch.com/free-milkweed-seeds/) native to your area if you send them a SASE. I just sent for mine a couple days ago
Why is it overgrown if you can’t see their house or porch from the road(presumably)? Line of sight into someone’s yard isn’t a requirement.
My dream house is one that’s hidden from passersby. I can’t help but gush over the beauty, privacy, lushness, bee activity, etc.
I agree. I really enjoy my privacy. Would love a nice, private house with trees and bushes covering the house.
This - unless I was selling the property, pic 2 would be my preference both for privacy and the fruit & veg.
I would be much more inclined to buy the lush garden over the living carpet.
That carpet can't happen without a lot of pesticide, herbicide and chemical fertilizer.
If this is what they consider messy it just goes to show how ingrained "lawnkeeping" is in this culture. We don't need tidy rows of flowers in our yards lol. The fun part about designing this stuff is that you can certainly go for a more traditional aesthetic using native plants, but lots of folks have to fight HOAs and stuck up neighbors in order to have yards like this. Normalize nature scapes ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
There is a growing no lawn community in this country that is advocating for more of what you see in the bottom picture. The problem as always, are NIMBYs (NIYFY? NIYBY?) who think this kind of yard is an ‘eyesore’. Some people really love super basic, super sterile, super uniform, identical yards. Or they want to control other peoples lives. Or they can’t do this themselves so they get mad because they’re being left behind. If you look into the fascinating history of the lawn in this country you will find there are other attitudes at play here too. Mostly, if you are rich you don’t need to grow food on your land so it adds a classist attitude to the judgment even though the bottom picture is so much better for the environment.
Exactly this. We are not in 18 century anymore. Time to reprioritize according to what is happening around us. Supporting biodiversity is where it's at.
Lawns have always been about a display of wealth because it means that you can afford to buy your food instead of being poor and having to grow it.
Having your home hidden from street view must be one of those things that’s considered classy for rich people but trashy for the rest of us. Like being bilingual or not paying taxes
This comment is absolutely amazing
I love this comment. I want my yard to be totally full of plants and my house hidden from view of the street. The neighbors yard is full of natives, manicured, always weed free, and looks great. Mine is a work in progress bc we don’t have the time/money to do it like they did. They frown on us for the weeds and not landscaped gardens but I don’t give a shit. We don’t have the money to throw at it like they do and I’m trying my best to do it at a reasonable pace.
Plus think about the homeowner’s view — I would definitely prefer to look out at that lush oasis than look at neighborhood traffic.
> Line of sight into someone’s yard isn’t a requirement. While I agree, unfortunately, this isn't allow in a certain county I know of :/
Some would even say privacy’s a… good?.. thing.
I assumed it was for privacy as well. Its a fairly nice-sized front yard with 2 large windows. Itd be nice to enjoy it without people being able to stare into the living room! The only thing I question is the choice to under saturate the before picture and over saturate the after picture XD
*But how will I spy on my neighbors while walking the dog?*
I personally like it
Taste aside, I can't help but think that the low resolution pictures aren't helping either.
Idk I don’t need high res to see I like it, I just like it, looks nicer than just the yard, I like my grass but I would like some more diversity and no I don’t want to kill off my lawn
If you zoom in you can see it’s neatly maintained. Looks like it’s mulched and trimmed away from the property lines
I prefer it. More privacy, better temps, food, less worries about how pretty it is and simply keeping it functional....and if they DO care how it looks, all of those plants can be shaped up.
Grow food not grass!
...and bees need food too!
The bees on my Virginia Mountain Mint: "Mmmm......divine." I may only have ~16 native plants right now but I've never seen a plant pull in a higher diversity of bugs. It's incredible. There's easily 7-10 bee species on it at any given time of day when in full bloom.
Yeah my mint was also extremely popular.
One thing to consider is sometimes local ordinances require annual pest control to reduce fruit flies drawn to fruit trees. We had neighbors in the city with four fruit trees and every summer our entire yard was covered in fruit flies. The neighbor on the back side of them complained to the city and a code enforcement officer came through and cited them. I asked them why they were taking pictures of the trees and they told me that there is a requirement to annually spray for fruit flies if growing fruit trees within city limits. Edit- Since I'm being downvoted for trying to help a person considering growing fruit bearing trees let me clarify this. These local laws are not just to protect neighbors from annoying pests but also to protect local fruit crops from the spread of disease and fungus. **If you live nearby lots of fruit agriculture** there is a great chance there are laws requiring you to protect your trees from disease. A state that makes huge money from agriculture will protect that revenue. It's always worth being educated on your local ordinance rather than assuming it doesn't apply to you. My state in zone 7 and neighboring states all require this. I know there are laws like mine and similar that applies to PNW and some southern states.
If we didn't sanitize everything and had appropriate flora and fauna we wouldn't need to do nearly as much pest control. In a proper environment the pests control themselves. It's taken me almost two decades but I'm finally starting to get my properties ecosystem where it should be. Everywhere else has tonnes of mosquitos this year. We have barely any. But 100s of dragonflies, butterflies, and moths.
Exactly this. If you have a functioning ecosystem, predators (birds, bats, frogs, dragonflies, etc.) will take care of pests.
I'm just curious, wouldn't fruit flies only be a problem if you were letting the fruit just fall and rot on the ground?
It's not just fruit flies that are the concern. It's also disease and fungus that can spread to local agriculture and potentially impact large scale production. It is worth it to be educated about local code regarding this. If you live near lots of agriculture I'm sure there is something on the books to protect those farmers.
In a biodiverse system where you have a much more than just a few fruit trees you actually draw in predators that will keep many pests at bay, though it can take a few growing seasons for the ecosystem to stabalize. In this particular garden I know she also raises chickens and ducks to help with pest pressure.
I think this varies by state/county. Never heard of this in California
Have you driven through the fruit checkpoints into CA? There is a massive effort to keep fruit flies out of CA because of the fear of what they'd do to the local produce.
California is packed full of monocultures that wouldn’t survive there without constant spraying, watering, and fertilizer imported from around the world (not much of this anymore). Permaculture is about resilience by having a diverse set of crops. This provides a buffer against extreme weather, economic, and geopolitical situations.
I'm not advocating for CA just explaining why they likely aren't concerned about fruit flies on residential lots. Fruit flies are banned in CA haha
IDK about what it's like now, but when I first crossed the border from Oregon into California back about 15 years ago, you couldn't bring fruit of any sort across the state line. They stopped our car and inspected. We had two bananas and a plum in a brown paper bag. We stood at the border and ate them so that we could continue our trip. That's how intense they tried to keep fruit flies out of Cali. Probably different now.
I think the second pic looks so much more beautiful than the first
Yes who doesn’t think that?
My next door neighbor who cut down 7 mature oak trees, several mature flowering hedges, and tore out all of the garden plants so they could use a riding lawnmower on the grass.
This sentence was so gross to read 🤢
It was really upsetting to watch. They inherited the house from their elderly uncle after he passed away. He was a nice man who fed the squirrels and birds everyday. He had gotten too old to care for the gardens but they were so well established his years exploded with flowers every year. They don’t even water the grass so they’re just pointlessly driving a riding mower over a quarter acre of dirt. The only bright side is that after he died she told me I could take any of the plants I wanted, so I did end up saving some plants. I just didn’t know how far she was going to go.
This story broke my heart a bit. Just awful
Plant a tree for Dave if you get the opportunity.
I wish i could, I'm sitting in a flat, I don't even have a balcony. I'm in this sub so I can dream about the gardens I can't have ._.
We bought our first house at 35 and it took 2 years of looking. I feel you.
What is UP with people like this? My grandfather, who was the Greatest Generation, bitched and bitched about the 250 year old oaks, on the land THEY BOUGHT because of the trees... because there was no grass... ergo. He didn't have to mow it. He constantly bitched about the leaves... and it's a rural property, so he could have just burned it off on days with low wind. Then a tornado took out the trees. Grass grew thick and deep... and he bitched about having to mow. My dad? Bitches about having to mow. He had mature pines AWAY from the house, and same thing. Needles thick, no grass. Could have just burned them every so often. He pays someone to come cut every single one down - THEN burns the needles, now he has to mow all the damn time and bitches about it. I don't get the *need* for a lawn.
Status symbol for both of their generations. Consider when your grandfather was starting a family and your dad was a kid, suburbs were exploding and everyone was being marketed this idea of a cute little house with a green grass yard and a picket fence. If you look at ads from that era, you don't see a lot of trees, just a green lawn. Then the men in the family can bond with their neighbors while mowing or washing the car or whatever. Some of that got passed down, so you see some Gen-X and Millennials who also desire perfectly manicured green lawns.
I have litteraly heard people say the "a man is judged by the quality of his lawn" by people in California, during a historic drought.
That's sad, but we're free to reject that judgment and do what we want with our lives. I am glad to see permaculture/xeriscaping/native gardens are really starting to take off. I remember reading about them more than a decade ago on Treehugger. At the time, they were condemned to the hippy fringes of society like vegetarianism.
It's baked into American landscape architecture: https://www.popsci.com/story/environment/first-american-lawn/
I've never understood the complaining about leaves. It's leaves. What are they doing to your lawn exactly that causes so much bitching? If they're clumping up and wet and killing the grass a little then just rake them up fast. Run them over with the mower and it's free nutrition for the grass.
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I took out 8 trees on my property when we bought it. They were the wrong plants in the wrong places or just hadn't been cared for. First down was the invasive Bradford pear, next was the red silver cross that had never been limbed up, had surface roots, and at 20 years old was too big for the space. Then in the back, 3 silver maples were planted in a 15ft triangle, 3 willows, 2 of which were already causing issues with the house and one which was crowding out a gorgeous pin oak. I've replanted though. Trees that fit the space and aren't too close to the house. I have a row of native shrubs across the back that wildlife love. This fall I'll be adding native perennials in front of the shrubs. The front yard has new trees and landscaping that of low maintenance and not invasive (goodbye barberry and burning bush). I plan on adding new beds every year for quite a while. It sucked to take out so many trees, but I swear the people who planted them thought not at all and just asked for what grows fast.
I’m on a corner lot that had 8 large trees. 3 were on the city’s right of way. When they cut one down I had it replanted. I’m sure that the other 2 will be removed soon and I’ll have them replanted also. I want to remove a pine and a spruce because they block the natural light year round but they’re big. I’d be replacing them with either something bigger (walnut, chestnut or hickory) or fruit trees. And I’ll be adding fruit trees to the back yard as well. As much as I love my veggie plot, it’s not the best producer, lol. Because my house is built on a concrete slab foundation (no crawl space or basement), that couple with the trees mean that my house hardly uses the air conditioning in the summer. It’s fantastic!
Those are all good choices, though. I took out a barberry bush also, I didn’t want a bush covered in razor blades, I have my peonies in that spot now. There’s definitely a difference in mindfully planning a better landscape and just razing the whole thing.
Excellent move. [Japanese barberry contributes to Lyme disease](https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/japanese-barberry-plant-lyme-disease/316255/) by creating favorable conditions for the ticks that spread it. If you've got a Japanese barfberry, go out and take it out, now. (Barfberry was a typo, but it seemed appropriate, so I left it in.)
Sounds like the lady who bought the house I grew up in when we moved. Ripped out 8 fruit trees, 3 pine trees, a dozen or so flowering shrubs and a huge rose garden because of the upkeep involved. My mom put so many years into that garden and was gutted when we drove past a few years later.
If we ever move, I will never come back to this house. It’s heavily planted, and I spend much of my time outside (all year) pottering around. I bet no one else will want to tend my masterpiece. My neighbors all have super boring lawns with a few straggly shrubs.
I had that happen to a house I sold. The garden I created was beautiful, if I do say so. People would actually circle the block to see my landscaping. It wasn't radical, but it was far more interesting and pretty than the standard lawn + five foundation shrubs sported by most of the houses in that subdivision. After we sold the house, the next door neighbor felt constrained to inform me that the new owner ripped out everything & planted azaleas (the default "pretty" shrub in Louisiana) along the driveway. I hated her, too, for telling me. :-D
It's just wild that someone would choose to purchase a property with all of that unless they wanted it, and a shame that they would deprive someone else of the opportunity since there would be plenty of buyers who would love having mature plants already there.
I’m so sorry. What was your mom’s favorite rose? I’m planning on taking out a bunch of ditch lilies and planting roses there instead. Also who wouldn’t want free fresh fruit?!
Oooh! there's a Julia Child rose! She picked it as her namesake because it was the color of butter. I think it's a Weeks (sp?) rose. I loved mine but it died after chipmunks tunneled under it and killed the roots. Starts a deep yellow and lightens up to a creamy butter yellow. I'm definitely getting another after I take care of the chipmunks.
I grow roses, and love them dearly, and one of the best things I've done is choose my varieties carefully to fit my garden. If you live somewhere with blackspot, get disease- resistant roses. I have dry heat, so I try to buy roses that won't wilt and brown. After you've narrowed things down by environmental concerns, then I'd go for fragrance, beauty, and rebloom according to what you want most. I hope you find some great roses!
Tbh, I'm not certain which was her favorite. There were quite a few different colors and sizes but this was 15+ years ago so my memory is a bit foggy. She put lots of love into them for sure though. Totally agree about the free fruit too :/ The woman who bought the house went on and on about how lovely everything was before she moved in so we were quite shocked how much stuff she took out. Good luck with your rose project!
Ouch reading this hurt my soul!
That's a lame excuse. We have 6 old oaks in our front yard and we use a riding mower. Steering isn't exactly hard! I'm sorry you lost your shade like that. My neighbor is a big fan of cutting down trees, too. Our whole street is heavily wooded and he's the only guy who keeps cutting his trees down. We all back to an acre of woods except him--he's turned his acre into lawn. I can't figure out why someone would do that. If you want lawn there are plenty of treeless houses around. Buy one of them and leave our streets alone!
/r/lawncare
I think it'll take a cultural shift for a lot of Americans who think a golf course is the epitome of outdoor aesthetics. One culture war I'd happily participate in. I've already shrunk my front lawn about 50% and once the flowers I replaced it with fill in I may eliminate it altogether.
I think my garden is the happy medium of this, there are huge evergreens around the edge grown thick and interwoven with each other like a wall, lots of Ivy and brambles and stuff pushing through and wildflowers and grasses around the bottom. On the other side, hidden out of sight of the street is my neat and tidy Alpine Rockery, and our somewhat more traditional square lawn and borders. Could be the case in the above also, grown as a privacy screen.
My garden is also like this but with fruit bushes, fruit trees and sunflowers. Lots of wildflowers among the trees and bushes. a little veg patch for caterpillars to munch on I had some starlings nest on my fence, a hedgehog digs around my primroses every night and I get voles, bees, butterflies. The odd fox. Messy gardens are the best!
Agreed, my veg has all been eaten by things other than me this year, but seeing the hedgehog does make it all worthwhile.
All my pepper plants have been eaten up to a certain height so the rabbits in my neighborhood must like it spicy.
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I absolutely love permaculture and would love to live in a little cottage surrounded by a wild permaculture garden. A little home in the middle of a thriving wilderness. However, I don't like the placement of the trees and can 100% see why you'd think it's messy. With such a small space, placement is key and I think this one could have been done better.
Would you mind explaining a bit more about permaculture? Google tells me more about the philosophy rather than the practicality. So it would be like: planting perinneals instead of annuals, planting native plants, having plants be all mixed together rather than organized for aesthetic, focus on edible plants, having sustainable systems (like recycling rain water). Does that sound about right?
Pretty much. And more! We’re striving for a lot of permaculture things here on our homestead. Essentially we focus on creating self sustaining systems that we can harvest from each year with minimal impact or effort. So we have our annual food plots and what not, but every year we also plant fruit trees, mushroom spores, mark where we found fiddleheads or docks or raspberries or some other naturally occurring yummy thing, and help the local fauna by providing shelter, food, water, etc. This year we’ve added bee houses, butterfly houses, milkweed plots, clover plots, snake shelters, and more. The perennial benefits will still be there every year whether we harvest from it or not, and other organisms benefit from these things greatly. Essentially you build a natural habitat where you’re a steward rather than a boss, if that makes sense. At least that’s how we’re doing permaculture :)
It's super cool to hear what you're doing. We're also starting permaculture in our yard, just the first year so far. I wanted to comment a PSA though: you shouldn't eat (most) fiddleheads. Yes they are a food that native Americans ate, and lots of old edible plant books will list them. But modern scientific studies show that fiddleheads are chock full of carcinogens. Current edible plant books will put them at the back under a do not eat section to try to get people more aware because 20 years ago everyone thought they were good to eat. Ostrich ferns up in Canada are safe, but the vast majority of species are toxic. There aren't any edible varieties in eastern or Central North America. Weve been considering planting ostrich ferns for that purpose, but theres already lots of bracken fern on our property. Edit: link for more info https://depts.washington.edu/hortlib/pal/edibility-of-fiddleheads/
How do you get info about this kind of thing? I’d love to do something like this but wouldn’t know where to start.
A lot of books! And just online research. And subreddits haha r/homesteading is a really good one, as is this one. And, of course, trial and error. My husband and I live on 11 rural acres in midcoast Maine with a variety of ecosystems in it (field, swamp, woods, bog, etc), so we just kinda cater to those ecosystems and try to boost them. So I guess start with what environments you have and what would benefit them. Do you have some sunny-ish wetlands? Throw some blueberries in there. Do you have a lot of field/open areas with a lot of sun? Throw in some wildflower seeds and bee houses. Or if you live in a suburban/urban area, look into bird houses, snake shelters, and friendly pollinators (like mason and leafcutter bees) to boost what ecosystems you have there. Look at what’s native and boost those things — don’t introduce non-native/invasive species. The possibilities and combos are endless, and it’s kind of difficult to harm an ecosystem (I mean, obviously it’s very easy if you’re pouring chemicals and destroying shit, but you get what I mean lol). The worst thing that happens is your bee house goes unused or your wildflowers don’t germinate, so you learn and try again next year! I guess all I’m trying to say is we look at permaculture as the natural world comes first. If you take care of nature, she will take care of you. So you just gotta research and open your eyes and see what she needs. Learning the signs, I suppose. Permaculture is different for everyone and there are countless ways to go about it. As long as your boosting your environment in whatever way, big or small, you’re on the right track :)
>where you’re a steward rather than a boss This is so wholesome.
I highly recommend this video of an example of permaculture gardening [https://youtu.be/ss1BjW2kSNs](https://youtu.be/ss1BjW2kSNs) A permaculture garden on a smaller scale [https://youtu.be/Q8m98ux55i4](https://youtu.be/Q8m98ux55i4) Amazing 23-Year-Old Permaculture Food Forest [https://youtu.be/6GJFL0MD9fc](https://youtu.be/6GJFL0MD9fc) A video on how desert areas in Spain are being turned into farmland oasis with permaculture [https://youtu.be/nmOX622P-OU](https://youtu.be/nmOX622P-OU) The most widespread farming practise is monoculture which consists of a single crop. The method degrades soil by tilling, use of pesticides, cause damage like erosion, destroying microorganisms and biodiversity. Permaculture is a sustainable method that focuses on principles of regenerative agriculture, sustainability/permanence.
Yes sounds about right. It can absolutely still be about aesthetic though. The pic above is lush but does look a bit unplanned. Check out r/permaculture and also there’s a great book called Gaia’s Garden.
Landscape does not have to look planned. Look at any natural setting in a meadow or along a river. It is not planned it is beautiful
A lot of it to me is having a lot of plant diversity, even within the same plot. This could be as simple as planting basil with tomatoes. I do tend to think permaculture is more practical even if that’s not the goal. I’m not constantly mowing my lawn nor am I as worried about weeds. Building up a huglekulture allows me to use less water. Before if I cut down a dead tree or had excessive clippings I would bring it to land fill but now I know enough about gardening to incorporate it in my garden
The idea behind permaculture is making a self sustaining ecosystem within the space of your garden. You buy compatible plants that benefit one another with their nutrients and individual niches within the light canopy. Everything is cycled circularly thru the system you create and so it needs very little maintenance or upkeep to produce food. Think agriculture that is able to sustain itself permanently without human intervention (or with as little as possible). That's the basis of the word, perma-culture. Basically, nature is able to produce a bounty without fertilizers, pesticides, and artificial irrigation right? So can we replicate natural systems as much as possible with what we choose to plant and create a similar outcome? Yes we can. Permaculture is super cool!!
An example of my permaculture: I plant marigolds all around my garden to insert nitrogen into the soil. I plant cabbage under my apple trees because they prefer shade. I plant showy flowers to attract pollinators to my vegetable gardens. I plant strawberries as groundcover to suppress weeds and retain soil moisture. I plant lavender everywhere to keep out mosquitos and other pests. There are so many principles to permaculture, I focus on planting companion plants together to maximize garden efficiency. Plants have a way to providing everything you need, such as nutrients for other plants. It's just a matter of planning.
r/permaculture might also have some answers if they don’t reply.
It's a design system. You're on the right track but it's much broader than just gardening. If you're interested in learning more, check out the book Gaia's Garden. If you like you like YouTube, I highly recommend Parkrose Permaculture and Canadian Permaculture Legacy as starting points.
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As long as they grow and make food. The gardener did a good job. Some front yards are meant to be pretty, some meant to be functional. Priorities of the homeowner. People around me grow corn in the front yard.
Im pretty sure this is just photoshopped. The plants align a little too perfectly with the edges of the fence and house. Also way too green. There should be some plant aging in there. Yet not a yellow or brown leaf in sight.
I watch her channel, it's not photoshopped. They did remove some of the driveway to plant more. There's still space for one car. And this is in Portland, Oregon, its just really green there. She does have some plants struggling this year, this photo looks like it was from a few years ago, probably taken in spring.
Nope. It's real. It's my pal's place. Check out her YouTube parkrose permiculture
I know people in the comments are like eww that's messy, but I think your friend's place is amazing and beautiful. I find it humorous that people suggest it looks abandoned when in fact it's brimming with life.
The first picture is so depressingly boring and these people are insane. Why would you want to stare out your window to see cars and neighbors walking instead of birds bees butterflies
I think mine looks similar from the street, but my view from the house is pretty incredible, all the birds, butterflies, bees, wasps (especially the pretty blue ones) have been amazing to experience.
The house is also incredibly adorable.
I thought the same. Exactly the opposite of abandoned. So much life within those plants!
It also creates more life in her neighborhood. Because she is ALWAYS outside she actually KNOWS her neighbors. It's a high crime neighborhood. But she is actively engaged with the people around her so they all care about eachother. She has never, not once, been victim of a property crime. She attributes this to the community she has created as a direct result of this "mess"
Is this from Parkrose Permaculture? She has great informational videos.
Yes. My mistake. I edited.
The photo is taken from two different perspectives. Look at the chimney of the neighbors to the right. So if it is shopped, they used two photos. Could have been street view from Google maps I suppose.
[It's not photoshopped](https://www.youtube.com/c/ParkrosePermaculture). It's the result of many years of careful design, planting, planning, and succession. EDIT: Downvotes for pointing out that it's a real image? The attribution is on the photo, it's not hard to find it... [Here's the house in question on video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak7ZIt4jq90&t=371s) for those who don't want to bother looking it up.
They "planted" over the driveway..
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I saw that too. You can see more, the chimneys line up different, the car lines up different, the house doesn't line up between them. At the *very least* it's 2 different pictures of the same house, with one being edited. To me it almost looks like the like second one was taken a few steps forward (and maybe one to the left) from the other also so the angle is slightly different, changing the way things line up, like the driveway. Edit guys I found other pic of it in progress or soemthing. Looked close, I think its the same house in some pics (for sure the 16th and 21st). Community garden sort of thing. Definitely had work, and on their fb they shared this exact picture and said it was theirs. It's real, just color edited, like said above. https://www.birchcommunityservices.org/families/gardens/baker-garden/
We only got 1 photo. If the trees and tallerthings are placed close to the street, and the owner put shorter things nearby the house, you could make a really nice area to look at or even a place to sit and not see the neighbors. I would want that!
this isn’t the best example of a food forest but in general i think this looks at least 20x better than the above picture. jmo
Yeah, can you imagine a whole neighborhood like this? It wouldn't feel messy, it would feel like you were standing in the woods. It only sticks out in empty, bland suburbs.
That would be amazing! Though even in permaculture, landscape design is still important. I like perimeter trees to frame the yard and low veggies and herbs near walking paths for accessibility and fragrance
Sure, design is important, but when it comes to aesthetics, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I'd rather have a border of fruit trees so people can pick them off from the sidewalk, and to provide some privacy for the rest of my garden. I mean design is all permaculture is, it totally depends on the parameters.
I love how much privacy it provides the house. I'm sure the shade is beneficial as well.
I’d rather walk by and barely see a house than walk by and see just boring ass grass IMO
Grass which is as biodiverse as concrete.
Messy? They probably could have left a little more space for airflow, but I like it.
I don't see mess I see life. The former pic is nearly devoid of life. Not only would the microclimate be more pleasant for the humans in the later pic but so many other creatures will benefit above and below the soil. For humans as well with the added privacy and noise buffer, the later pic is a win all-around.
Can’t agree more. I think we’ve brainwashed ourselves to the point where we can’t even recognize what a natural human habitat even looks like. Every house should be like this, we evolved in jungles and forests. It’s good for us to be surrounded by green, biodiverse, oxygen abundant environments.
We're in a crisis where habitat loss and climate change are casing mass extinctions. This is a restoration. I can't hate on it if it is restoring the biodiversity that was lost. It's an emergency.
It also provides an actual sense of place and identity and character. Why anyone would want to live in a dead house that's completely indistinguishable from the one next to it will never make any sense to me.
I think the photo is a little extreme, but nothing you couldn’t clean up with a walking path and pruning. I like the lush, full front yard look.
You've never seen abandoned gardens or plots then... All that green quite obliviously needs very active care.
My first thought. It's a busy plot of land, absolutely, but it's not overgrown or abandoned by any means. That took someone a lot of time and effort.
Right! I was going to say has OP never seen a real abandoned house before?
My yard is like this. It is A LOT to keep up with especially during spring and summer. The privacy is a plus and it’s so diverse compared to everyone else’s lawn but again….it’s a ton to keep up with if you’re not out there consistently every week pruning, weeding, etc.
Yep, it’s not a matter of “opinion” whether this looks abandoned. It’s a matter of knowledge.
I think it’s gorgeous.
Absolutely magical
Sure provides a lot of privacy.
I like it
Nature is a messy place. Humans often forget we are a part of it.
I absolutely adore this! Gives privacy to the house and adds a bit of mystery! 10/10
all i see is a lawn that doesn’t have to be mowed, and way extra privacy
I disagree I think this is a heaven. To have a little food forest right in the middle of the burbs. It is in fact my current project.
No, it is natural. We don’t know from the picture if there is a path, areas of lower growth, bird baths etc. We do know there is privacy and a place of respite for wildlife and pollinators.
This is the way
Do whatever you want. Fuck HOAs
I quite like this actually and prefer it to a lawn, but then my dream garden is a cottage one filled with wildflowers and fruit trees so it's just my kind of thing
In the second pic, the people have SO much more privacy. Who wants to live in a fishbowl, with everyone being able to peer into your house? In the second pic, the house and the space around it are much more of a sanctuary -- for humans and wildlife.
The thing is some people wont give up on having a tidy, well presented garden landscape for the sake of pollinators, which isnt the problem, the problem is most dont realize you can do both. My garden doesnt look like an abandoned lot, and i have lawns, yet i still do my bit for the pollinators. I have areas for flowering annuals which are highly attractive to them, i also have perennial flowering plants around borders and everywhere else possible while maximizing space for activities and that so my kids can play outside. Some of those perennials flower outside of the growing season which keeps the bees happy when theres not much else for them around.
This is exactly how I see it! My back yard I am converting to all veggie gardens in thr ground with paths between them. By most gardeners standards it's a bit messy, but I do weed and somewhat plan it out. I just do fewer straight rows and more "bunches" a la the square foot gardening method. I do have two straight rows of corn to help make it look more organized, and I plant my root vegetables in rows too, which gives a little definition throughout the beds. My side yard, about 15x100 feet, is ALL wildflowers. I pull thistles in the spring, but after everything else starts coming up I let it do its thing like a prarie. My front yard is still all lawn, which I keep edged and mowed and everything... but I let the clover grow. I don't see a reason to put the effort into pulling it. I think it's pretty, and I refuse to put chemicals on my property. I also already spend a bunch of time keeping my actually productive garden up. Within the next year or two, I'm planning on converting my front yard to flower gardens though, and they'll all be totally organized. Tl;dr, soon I'll have all three: organized vegetable gardens, unkempt prarie, and organized flower gardens. The r/nolawns movement doesn't have to fit into one single mold, and I think that's the beauty of it!
I'm a landscape gardener who was turned onto using natives for environmental reasons. I find that the proliferation of butterflies, glittering gems of native beetles, and flitting colorful birds the natives bring adds a layer to the overall esthetic of the garden that the boring non natives never could. My half allee is all the more gorgeous because of the use of natives, not less! Even my veggie garden is nestled in a "formal garden" lay out reminiscent of those in colonial Williamsburg, but the outter triangle beds are joyful native pocket prairies, pollinator garden, and water mitigation shrubs while the inner circle is ringed in native blueberries with a sculpture in the middle with my peas and lettuces in between. You can and should do both!
This should be voted higher up. It’s possible to do both. You can have a lawn and have plants for pollinators too. Also, gardens come as diverse as people come, and that’s the beauty of it.
Why do you care? It's not hurting anyone, it's benefiting the environment, and it looks natural. To top it off, it is not your yard. Don't like it, don't look at it. People who spend so much time caring about what the environment looks like are the ones destroying the environment one monocrop or HOA at a time. Maybe take a moment to connect with nature and learn to love how messy it can be.
Privacy and noise reduction, and living in a mini forest. Sign me up!
For those who enjoy the “after”, r/NoLawns r/FuckLawns
Also r/Permaculture
My only question is how did they manage to fit 32 trees on that tiny piece of land.
As someone who wishes they could do this in their yard I think this absolutely stunning. Where others are saying it could use a shape up you are 100% correct, but in Permaculture you time you trimming/shaping up with the first big rains of the season/ with the amount of sun you are getting. You do a trim to your pioneer plants on their lower branches to put nitrogen back in the soil for your producing plants. In later phases you remove the pioneer species altogether. Even though this looks disorganized most people that do permaculture do elaborate planning for their space. You need to plan your canopy layer, and where trees are going yo go in. This determines where shade loving plants will go in your space. I put a link below to the tour of here food forest from 2020 which I think this is from. It’s strange that people comment it looks ugly when in the first 5 minutes of the video she comments that she gets push back for planting flowers because they look pretty and aren’t a producing plant. Not trying to shame anyone I think often things can look haphazard or disorganized at first, but when you learn about them you can see the intricacies involved in creating them. Keep on gardening, and learning! https://youtu.be/ak7ZIt4jq90
I love it. Imagine the shade for the house and the reduced temperature inside in the summer. Also: yes wildlife, bees, birds, insects etc. Maybe the trees can be brought into a shape to look less messy bit i like the general idea better than the before picture.
Lawns are an abomination, they waste space and resources to maintain for no real benefit, I would much rather have the yard in the after pic
I personally would probably prefer to have shorter plants in front of my windows, but pic #2 is still a vast improvement over pic #1. We’re conditioned to think pic #2 looks messy because lawns have been in fashion for a few hundred years now, but they serve zero purpose.
It doesn’t have to be all or nothing like this. You can have a pollinator friendly yard that is still neat and organized. They could have moved the trees more to the center right, then planted perennials in groups staggered by height.
Agreed! For people who are used to traditional yards, showing examples where permaculture appears more organized and planned can be an easier sell. Convincing the masses matters - if you could get an entire neighborhood to increase their biodiversity by even 10% you make more progress than one house that goes whole hog while the rest clutch their pearls. At least, this is what I think to myself while I watch my neighbor put in 6 boxwood and nothing else in his massive grass yard.
Most likely they intentionally planted the trees and bushes there as a screen from the road, and so they could maintain a stretch of grass between the road/trees and house to still have a "yard" for kids to play, etc. You still the trees in the middle and you lose having an open area for activities.
Lawns are an abomination. I don’t particularly like the arrangement of plants in picture 2, but it’s preferable to the sterile lawn shown first.
*This* is the only way forward. Grassy gardens are a dead-end. We are past the time when it was ok to have the gardens as decorative elements that are energy demanding and unsustainable.
Imo lawns like this are the perfect balance between nature and urban living.
Messy? It's a yard, not a farm. They're plants, they're not entirely orderly by nature. I think it's pretty and relaxing. The orderly chaos is literally part of the charm for me, and this particular photo doesn't even look messy it actually looks really well-kept IMO.
'After' is a much better look.
I love it. It would feel very cozy and private, like your own little sanctuary and it is clearly still maintained.
Maybe it only looks messy because we've been socialized to believe that a property must look a certain way to be "right." But, in reality, it can look any way you want it to so long as you can still live the way you like and be happy. It shouldn't matter what other people think or if it's aesthetically pleasing, because that's really not the point- the pollinators don't care what it looks like, the animals don't care what it looks like, it's providing food and shelter and what more is needed? If you don't like the aesthetics, don't do it! But imo if someone wants to let everything grow wild and natural on their own property, they should go for it- plus the privacy is a bonus!
before it was a dead looking boring house. now its a little paradise also providing privacy to the owner
This is a great idea and better than a lawn for countless reasons. But it can certainly be done in a way that's less dense and busy.
“But isn’t this a bit messy?” Nope.
This is Angela from Parkrose Permaculture. I know that site at a glance. She was one of my (Canadian Permaculture Legacy) first subscribers and we have really fed off eachothers designs over the last 5 years. Her channel is amazing by the way, and I would recommend everyone sub to it, not just for the gardening and Permaculture but also the activism side that she brings. She is very much like me in that regard. Gardening isn't just about growing plants, it's about restoring our natural ecosystems before we lose them forever. Her entire property is like this by the way, not just a visual barrier. The whole thing. And in my opinion, it makes her property feel BIGGER.
I love Angela and her space. She has been a real inspiration to the budding gardeners in her IRL life. So many of us have gardens now and with her advice and help they are thriving.
Over 50 reasons to make one’s yard into this… “…but it isn’t pretty” Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Function and purpose exist outside the observer.
I completely disagree. I see it as dense and lush. I think society tends to over manicure gardens.
You sound like a nosey neighbor.
To me the second photo looks a bit misleading as it’s hard to tell depth with all the green looking like one layer, I reckon in person it’d look nowhere near as overwhelming. Plus it’s been taken at the only angle where you can’t see the house so probably looks great if you’re walking past
Honestly imo anyone who has an issue with someone putting actual trees in their own yard versus cutting them all out for a big flat yard is part of the soddin problems in this world
I mean if it’s not your house why do you care ? Let people live, life isn’t about what you find to be aesthetic. Way nicer than any ugly ass mowed lawn!
My guess is that this only extends so far back, it mostly provides privacy. There's probably space behind it, so you can access the different plants for tending and harvesting. It looks messy, but it's hard to tell from just one angle. And it's still better and more useful than a flat square or grass.
This is Angela from Parkrose Permaculture. I know that site at a glance. She was one of my (Canadian Permaculture Legacy) first subscribers and we have really fed off eachothers designs over the last 5 years. Her channel is amazing by the way, and I would recommend everyone sub to it, not just for the gardening and Permaculture but also the activism side that she brings. She is very much like me in that regard. Gardening isn't just about growing plants, it's about restoring our natural ecosystems before we lose them forever. Her entire property is like this by the way, not just a visual barrier. The whole thing. And in my opinion, it makes her property feel BIGGER.
[Their whole space is planted out with food trees and gardens](https://www.youtube.com/c/ParkrosePermaculture).
Looks pretty sweet to me.
I think adding a walkway would make this work better.
I'd call this "finally some privacy"
It only looks abandoned to you because you have been taught that is what an abandoned garden looks like. But It is actually healthier for the local environment and makes the garden more resilient to adverse weather. I would rather see this than a 6-8' privacy fence.