Starting out planting any type of garden can feel daunting and overwhelming, leaving you doubting if your efforts will lead to anything. One Redditor has shared their progress, and it just might keep you inspired.
Reddit is a great place to go for advice and support for your gardening projects. Folks have learned everything from how to deal with rude neighbors to the best ways to get rid of invasive plants. One gardener took to r/NativePlantGardening to show off how far their garden has come over the past year. The post shows a short video of a lush garden featuring several native plants.
Year two in the shade garden, worth the wait.
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The poster shares: "Year two in the shade garden, worth the wait. Started everything in milk jugs in early 2023, and volunteer Jewelweed and Wild Cucumber from my woods joining the party. The garden gets 1.5 - 2 hours of direct sunlight at the noon hour and then tree shade from box elder trees for the rest. All native!"
It's inspiring to see folks succeeding at growing native plants in just their second year. There has been a movement in recent years toward including more native plants in gardens. The National Gardening Survey conducted by the National Wildlife Federation and the National Gardening Association found that "the number of people planning to transform a portion of their lawn to wildflower native landscape has doubled from 9% in 2019 to 19% in 2021."
Rewilding your lawn with native plants is a great way to be friendlier to your local ecosystem, save money, and increase biodiversity. Business Insider cited a published study that "40 million acres of land in the continental U.S. has some form of lawn on it" and "Americans spend about $30 billion on lawn care every year."
Converting all of that land to beneficial native plants could have a massive impact on the health of our planet, saving money and water as well as increasing the biodiversity of so many ecosystems. Plus, the average person could save hundreds of dollars a year on lawn care.
Commenters on this post were impressed with this beautiful garden. One person wrote: "I have a dry shade garden along a fence and totally using this as inspiration."
Someone else said: "This is really beautiful and lush! Amazing job here!"
Another commenter lamented about their garden and wrote: "That's awesome! I have tons of shade ... I can hardly get anything to grow."
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