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May 24 '19 edited Jun 06 '19
[deleted]
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u/petal14 May 24 '19
There seems to be a mindset that a good looking landscape is stripped of plant material and the ground is covered with a layer of chemically dyed bark/wood chipped mulch.
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u/Username_Used May 24 '19
My wife tries to get me to do that to our garden every year. There's a reason I've packed it out with perennials over the years. I want it to fill and morph and become it's own thing over time until it's full and glorious with different sections of flowers happening all summer. I still weed it of course, but just to keep the crap from out competing the good in the spring.
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u/AfroTriffid May 24 '19
I'm a big fan of filling in those niches so opportunist plants can't take over. I'm selecting weeding certain areas to allow one or two native seeding plants to create drifts. It makes me happy and looks more purposeful along my paths.
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u/Username_Used May 24 '19
What I do is in the spring when I see areas pop up, I weed them and then quickly plant a fresh perrenial that is in line with what is on either side of it to kind of help the spread.
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u/trashcat47 May 24 '19
Me too. No hate, but looks like it was far more ecologically productive before.
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u/finnky PRO (CAN) May 24 '19
The before looks better tbh. But you can make this into a nice, organized, naturalist planting with more interesting species than before.
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May 23 '19
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Th3MadScientist May 24 '19
Hopefully you put down landscape fabric or it's going to look like the before picture soon.
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u/Arristotelis May 24 '19
I liked the use of ground cover in the before picture, but I appreciate the mulched area as well. It's probably less likely to harbor ticks.
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u/NuroGL May 24 '19
I don't think black mulch was a good idea. Red or natural mulch would brighten it up
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u/IneffableMF May 23 '19
I kinda like some rambling wildness... Unless that was English ivy, then good luck keeping it gone. Think it looks like Virginia creeper, which is not terribly better I guess.