After almost 50 years, this Redditor's front yard is the perfect picture of a wildflower meadow.
Reddit's native gardening and anti-lawn communities are full of incredible transformations, with homeowners taking their yards from useless, high-maintenance grass to easy and eco-friendly landscaping in just a few months or years. However, this Redditor showed off the incredible results you can get from a continuous effort over the years.
"Our front yard," they said in their post. "Half acre of native Texas trees, plants, and wildflowers. No chemicals. Weeds hand pulled and seeds added every year since 1975."
The homeowner also shared several pictures of the gorgeous yard. The first is a wide-angle shot showing dozens of healthy, mature trees with thick, green undergrowth beneath them. Where shadows break into sunlight, that greenery becomes a carpet of wildflowers, their thick growth and incredible variety speaking to a thriving ecosystem.
The other photos are close-ups of various flowers, including Indian blanket, coreopsis, greenthread, lemon mint, and winecups.
According to the original poster, the meadow takes little effort to maintain after so many years of development. "The meadow is so mature and full, all I do now is seed with whatever flower in particular I want to add," they said in a comment. "That meadow is my joy."
Even a new meadow isn't difficult to create, they claimed. "When converting new areas to meadow I don't prep the ground 'properly.' I just scalp it to bare dirt in late spring and let the Texas summer fry whatever greenery dares pop up. Then in November I scatter seeds at two times the recommended coverage. I mix the seeds with clean play sand and sling it like chicken feed, then just walk back and forth over the area. Then I let nature do the rest. No supplemental water, ever. And we mow once a year, in early February."
That approach has benefits for both the owner and the environment. It's inexpensive and low-effort for such beautiful landscaping results; and by minimizing the use of additional water and fertilizer, and choosing native species, the gardener avoids polluting the environment and creates a garden the local wildlife can use for food and shelter.
The beautiful landscape won the approval of commenters. "Nice prairie you got going there," said one user.
"That yard is absolutely gorgeous! A dream of mine," said another Redditor.
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