Invasives are invasive for a reason: they outcompete the natives. No one would care about them if they didn’t.
That means you need to intervene if you want the natives to survive. So if you really want a no-mow native garden and aren’t in some natural desert or such, you’re committing to a lot of work to maintain that useful, healthy native garden. Weeding, care and attention, re-seeding, researching, undoing the soil damage caused by years/decades of unsustainable practices, and all that.
I encourage anyone to do it. I totally understand if people don’t have the time to do it and just prefer mowing a few times a month to maintain turf grass – in my area, turf grass is ALSO native and mowing is HOW you maintain it, absent the grazing animals that once would’ve handled that.
Yeah, I tried to do the whole no-mow thing for a while. Between invasive vines shading the soil and heavy rains washing the now-loose soil away, my backyard is pretty much dead.
Okay, good. I was starting to wonder if I was. I’ve mowed my lawn 3 times already this year (first in late February).
Bit of a secret tip, you don’t need to mow lawns. That stuffs just boomerism, even better if you replace it with native flora.
But where will I host my royal garden parties?
In the garden? Please tell me you haven’t been hosting lawn parties and calling them garden parties. I am positively clutching my pearls.
Invasives are invasive for a reason: they outcompete the natives. No one would care about them if they didn’t.
That means you need to intervene if you want the natives to survive. So if you really want a no-mow native garden and aren’t in some natural desert or such, you’re committing to a lot of work to maintain that useful, healthy native garden. Weeding, care and attention, re-seeding, researching, undoing the soil damage caused by years/decades of unsustainable practices, and all that.
I encourage anyone to do it. I totally understand if people don’t have the time to do it and just prefer mowing a few times a month to maintain turf grass – in my area, turf grass is ALSO native and mowing is HOW you maintain it, absent the grazing animals that once would’ve handled that.
Yeah, I tried to do the whole no-mow thing for a while. Between invasive vines shading the soil and heavy rains washing the now-loose soil away, my backyard is pretty much dead.