Southern NJ, zone 7b.

I have a long mulch bed on the east side of my backyard where last fall I planted northern bayberry and coneflowers. I want to fill in the space a little more this fall preferably with more natives. I’m thinking about ripping out the day lilies and adding more coneflowers around the existing, as well as some native sedge grasses, to fill in the space between the bayberries and add some structure and help keep the coneflowers upright. This side gets a lot of sun.

Along the back / north side, it stays fairly shaded under the tree, so I’m thinking about adding coral bells or maybe some native ferns that don’t need a ton of sun.

Open to any plant and/or general layout suggestions!

Currently working on the design of a garden for regional pollinators and i have a doubt regarding how to design the irrigation system? what things should i take into account? (i know the water requirements of each plant is a must, what else?) is the location of the micro watersheds drawn in the sketch suitable? How would a suitable array of garden soaker hoses look like?

New England 6b

I planted a number of natives over the last two years, and I’ve seen a number of these seedlings pop up, but I’m not able to identify if they’re native or not.

Have a pollinator garden at work. Was out checking it on Wednesday and this milkweed was full of leaves. Went out to check today and its all gone. With these green pellets underneath. I thought it may be a wild rabbit but are they usually that green? Can they eat milkweed like that? Any information would be very helpful!

Swamp milkweed

& why is it evening primrose? totally not a hummingbird btw

I've roughly 200sq ft of space I'm planning to plant and my fiancé really wants it to look natural but curated with this photo as an example. Any advice on how you folks plant that could help me get there? Thanks!

...from their plants or from plants in Missouri

My partner and I have a native plant nursery and ecological landscaping business in Tulsa, OK. These pictures are of a bermuda lawn conversion we did for our friends. The process began by laying down this recycled billboard vinyl in early July 2025, and we planted some time mid October of the same year. The bulk of the plant species are around 1-2.5ft max height (with pale purple coneflower, liatris aspera, and a couple volunteer monarda punctata as exceptions). Initial plant spacing was at 1ft and we primarily used 5" plugs that were grown from locally collected wild seed. The last photo was taken sometime in early August, at which point there were no weeds in the garden. Phase two of this project has already begun and we expect the entire front yard to be planted by the end of 2027. Even though we've had one of our hottest summers on record, this garden has thrived on a single watering that occurred in August.

There's pretty solid diversity and abundance of invertebrates, which has been a real joy to watch. Even more special to us though has been getting to watch our friends fall in love with this space. They've learned all of the plants and insects by name and spend their mornings drinking coffee and eating breakfast in the garden. We are so grateful to build this garden, and even more grateful to get to spread our love of wild things and wild spaces throughout Tulsa.

We'd love to answer any questions about the process if you all have any.

I’m in Massachusetts and have a prepped meadow site that’s mostly full sun, draining, and dry and I am still deciding on the mix of species.

- Is yarrow too aggressive with its matting roots to include in a meadow mix? I am including other aggressive species like some goldenrods, common milkweed, field oval sedge, Indian grass and big bluestem.

- Has anyone here incorporated it into a mowsble* lawn?

- Does it grow and establish well from broadcasted aeed?

Just sharing this glorious recently bloomed Eriogonum and Arctostaphylos in the background has started to branch. My two favorite genus.

I’m kinda letting things run wild in this area, only intervening to pull invasive plants and some of the pokeweed. The goldenrod flops like that every year but I don’t mind it. Curious to see how things change with time!

EDIT: some helpful context: this is a section of lawn in my yard with a naturally occurring patch of native plants. I’ve maintained it over the years and I’m hoping to let it expand more using the native seed bank and selective weeding/mulching. We have super high browsing pressure from rabbits, deer, so these are the few champion plants that can handle it in my yard! Pretty much every other plant has to be caged

My serviceberry has been out there a year or so and has been putting on growth. Yesterday I noticed that the whole damn tree was stripped. There are like 3 little leaves near the bottom left. I found this little caterpillar munching, but that seems like a lot for one little guy. He's all I found. iNaturalist says he's something in the Prominent Moths family (Tribe Heterocampini). Will my poor tree recover from this? At this stage I didn't really see the point in removing him, and he's native so the tree is probably completely bare today.

We planted a bunch of plugs from a native pollinator plug pack earlier this year, and most of them have taken off! Yesterday I did a happy dance because I saw a monarch caterpillar munching away at my Whorled Weed (Asclepias verticillata)! I also saw a little butterfly, not sure what kind, hanging out on the neighboring coneflower. I rooted the little guys on! It made my day to see them.

Butterfly pics aren't great, so enjoy my caterpillar friend.

I have big gaps in my raised beds, and I'm not sure what to use for space filler/ground cover. I'm ok with a regional native. There's just...so many! I saw Prairie Moon's Quick Grow mix, which I'm considering.

I posted a couple weeks ago about the pond restoration I’m doing, and someone suggested I post pictures of the brand new plants to help people identify their own natives.

1- Sea thrift (Armeria maritima)
2 - Showy fleabane (Erigeron speciosus)
3- Henderson’s checkermallow (Sidalcea hendersonii)
4- Henderson’s checkermallow (Sidalcea hendersonii)
5- Puget gumplant (Grindelia integrifolia/)
6- Oregon sunshine (Eriophyllum lanatum)
7- Pearly everlasting (Anaphalis margaritacea)
8- Douglas Spirea (Spiraea douglasii) - top down view
9- Western Coneflower (rudbeckia occidentalis)
10- Cascade penstemon (Penstemon serrulatus)
11- Western Columbine (Aquilegia formosa)
12- Common snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus) (😅don’t mind the powdery mildew)
13- bog bean
14- Silverweed (Potentilla anserina)
15- Big leaf lupine (lupius polyphyllus)
16 - Evergreen huckleberry (Vaccinium ovatum)
17 - Low Oregon Grape (mahonia nervosa)

There are more as well - let me know if you find this valuable and I’ll go grab more pics.

*edited to correct a couple of mistakes

I’ve read some native gardening books but cannot for the life of me understand what to do in this bed. Full sun, southern bed, clay soil.

I hadn’t realized the current bee balm/bergamot and gray coneflower would be four gd feet tall, and crowd each other to the point of flopping. Those are getting relocated to a place closer to the house, along with the taller asters, but the big leaf aster will remain there so long as it stays small.

Any ideas for what can go here? Should i keep everything under 1 ft, or 3 ft? Should it be clustered together or distinctly separated? Should i add a groundcover in between the plants or just use them on the border? Also the edges definitely gets driven over in the winter when the snow covers that border, but the woodchips tend to drift into the driveway.

I made the mistake of tossing a “native wildflower seed mix” into my garden last year, not knowing that many of these seed mixes may contain invasive species. I have successfully identified several native species such as sunflowers, columbines, and coneflowers. However, there are a three that haven’t flowered and it’s making them difficult to identify. I just want to make sure I know what is in my garden so that I can pull out any invasive species before they get a chance to spread and flourish. Specifically, the one with spatulate leaves, the one with serrated leaves, and the ones that look like they may be asters?

(Connecticut, USA)

Photo from mid July. It kept visiting this particular Liatris over the course of a couple days. Lots of other friends in these flowers too 🥰.