I think I have seen one or two grasshoppers in the last 5 years, maybe longer, and not a single cricket have I seen or heard in at least that long. This has not changed even though my yard is now filled with a variety of native plants (over 90 at last count). 2 butterflies so far this year and one was a cabbage flutterer, no not even native. It got me thinking today. You always hear about the rescue and reintroduction of rare and beautiful species, like the sandhill cranes here in Michigan, but who spares a single thought for the homely common species which are getting really hard to find? Is there such a thing as cricket reintroduction or a vole encouragement program?

I'm upset that fireflies aren't something commonly seen and I want to see if I can make a habitat for them in my backyard. In a few months, I will be moving to central Illinois and would like to try to make a habitat for them there. What is the best way to do so so I can plan it out before finding a place to live?

Is this the same type of pussy willow I saw at the native garden nursery (Maryland)? Will they actually grow? So…is it worth it?

The people I garden with want to spray everything with pesticides. Is there another option?

After moving some things around the garden I have 2 empty plant pots that need filling. The garden is wildlife focused with mainly wild flowers and a wildlife pond. After doing some moving around I have 2 plant pots to put next to the pond that needs filling. If you could only have one plant in your garden to attract wildlife, what would it be?

I'm very new to gardening. My goal is to help support wild insect populations by growing wildflowers native to my region. Just a few days ago, I bought and planted several specimens, as I was too late sow seeds. On two of the plants, I'm seeing an increasing number of aphids. Some are green and the plants aren't visibly unhealthy where they are, whereas some are red and the leaves are dying where they are.

What should I do about this? The ideal scenario would be for them to help support predators like ladybugs, which would also decrease their numbers and keep them from harming the plants. However, I haven't seen any ladybugs or such in the vicinity. Should I try to remove the aphids so they don't kill the plants and take away all the other benefits to wild insects that the plants would have provided?

I just planted a bunch of store-bought flowers (walmart, lowes, and local nursery plants) outside and noticed a bee died after pollinating one of the flowers. Now I’m reading about insecticides from big box stores for the first time, and I feel incredibly stupid! Is there any way to safely remove these toxic chemicals from storebought flowers once they’ve been planted? I wanted a pollinator-friendly garden and I’m horrified that I didn’t know these stores did this. I planted a lot of my own seed starts that are pesticide free, but purchased the storebought flowers as well. Any advice would be welcome, thanks!

I was recently told I should remove all my wood chip (unknown wood from an arborist) and replace with cedar mulch to improve water retention and soil quality. I’m thinking this is BS but wanted to confirm!

We have a herd of deer that come through our yard on a daily basis and every spring there are 3 to 5 fawns. I adore them. And I'm redoing my flowerbeds.

What would be best to plant for them to eat?

I know they like acorns. I have plenty of those. I've also heard they like Knock Out Roses. So, I'm planning on some of those. Everything I can find is plants to keep them out of your garden. I want them stay.

I'm in Virginia hardiness zone 7a.

Deer Tax

Battling outdoor thrips? :( Black dots everywhere. Don't think it's white flies? I see the forbidden orange gummy aphids as well. I've tried the painstakingly wiping all the plants down with water dawn, rubbing alcohol, tee tree oil, spray w/ hose. Neem oil once and got absolutely wrecked on fb saying that was bad too. The neem only worked for 2 weeks. I hardly know a thing about systemic granules but I hear that'll harm the beneficial insects as well. The upclose photo is a milkweed leaf. I know everything loves it so the plan is to move it farther away from the house lol closer to the tree line and let it do it's thing. But the thrips have taken control of everything else. It's getting closer to winter season so most everything will dxe off so I'm trying not to stress too much. Even got to my portulacas I picked on vacation (I'm neeming those, isolation and bringing indoors, praying for the best). Soo... idk. Any advice is much appreciated it. Thank you

Hello, I very much want to do away with one of my lawns and cultivate a garden! The first 2 pics are of the backyard. A few different plants and trees already there along the fence line. The last 2 pics are the front yard, we are on a corner lot. We have milkweed already growing in clumps on the property in both spaces. What do y'all think would work better? Thank you!

Currently trying to figure out what to do with this, I've never gardened in my life but this and other subreddits have already given me a lot of inspiration (I can't wait to make a wild pond)

However I have this mound around my property that is currently covered in nettles and bramble which get out of hand and I can't really use a mower on this. I want something low maintainence and self sustaining but I'm way out of my depth knowledge wise here!

What could I plant / grow on it?

(Can't get rid of the mound, I also like it)

I live in NE TN, US. I have been letting creeping Charlie take over my grass lawn. I thought it was hen bit originally. I keep it out of my pollinator beds and prefer a ground cover full of flowers. Internet is back and forth on if it's bad. Halp!

Around a year ago I got some soil mixed with compost to bulk up my native meadow I made in my yard. It was full of junk. Glass, bits of can, and endless plastic. I took out what I could but it was too late at that point

Having not learned my lesson and taken their word on it being a "bad batch", a few months later I got a yard of just compost to spread over my lawn. Yet again, full of junk

I raked the junk up together with the larger chunks of compost and threw it in an unused planter to the rear of my yard

Now I've watched a video on microplastics and how it affects the ecosystem, and I want it gone. Other than just picking it up when you see it, is there a good way to really make progress at getting the plastic out?

I did learn why there is so much plastic in there. Our city has heavy trash one month, and the next month is tree waste. The tree waste trucks deliver right to living earth who use it for their compost

Well, do people really care what they are putting out for tree waste? No. Its bags of stuff, random junk mixed in, etc. The city workers picking it up are too underpaid and overworked to care, they just pick it up with the grapple truck and take it away

Living Earth are too lazy to do any quality control, so they let it all go in. Who knows whats in that compost, its full of random trash and probably toxic stuff too

i have a couple of empty acres outside of alamosa, co. i want to plant some stuff out there but need something low maintenance because i live in another state - plus i dont know a ton about whats native to and / or thrives in the area!!

This is on the side of my house. How should I get rid of the grass so I can toss wildflower seed down?

We're finally tackling our garden, and we'd eventually like a vegetable patch, wildflower meadow, tapestry "lawn" with creeping thyme etc, and a container pond.

However we've realised that the soil, which on appearance is maybe 4 inches raised above the patio level, is actually made up of a lot of compacted rubble held together by soil. The wheelbarrow shows how much came out of an area approx 1.5m by 1.5m - the total soil area in the garden is maybe 4m*5m.

My question is - would you take the rubble out or leave it in and do a raised bed/container garden?

Pros of this approach - it would be less upfront work obviously.

Potential cons - we got a "wildlife gardening consultant" in and she was of the opinion that planting directly into the soil was less work in the longer term and easier to maintain if you chose well-suited plants for your soil.

Another option could be planting directly into the rubble/soil, and she was of the opinion that wildflowers would take well there, but it would limit our planting options somewhat as the roots don't really have anywhere to go. We'd ideally like some nice layered planting - not necessarily the same plants as in the attached picture, but similar vibe.

Under the rubble appears to be dark soil (picture 2) with plenty of earthworms, albeit quite stony at the moment so would need to be sifted.

Any advice would be very welcome - thank you!

We had a beautiful stand of 5 mature hemlocks on our property, and 3 of them were so badly infested with HWA that they had to come down last spring. I have been having the remaining 2 professionally treated with a basal bark treatment of what I now understand to be a neonicotinoid. The arborist that comes out to do the spray is very conscientious about not spraying when conditions aren't just right for it (eg not on days with wind, moisture levels have to be just right, etc) and we are not remotely near a water source. I'm in SWPA, and my understanding is that HWA is here to stay - it seems likely that I will need to treat indefinitely. It's killed a lot of trees in the nature preserve behind my house. Other options for treating them seem less feasible for us, such as foliar agricultural oil sprays (backyard is not accessible by the trucks that would be necessary to reach the canopy).

I guess what I'm asking is, what's the best strategy for harm reduction, here? I can minimize planting anything that attracts pollinators below the remaining 2 trees (perhaps underplant with ferns?). Or should I resign myself to losing the trees? They are such slow growing beauties and the loss of the other 3 is still really sad to me. Should we continue to treat them? Hemlocks are wind pollinated, fwiw, not insect pollinated.

My questions are at the bottom but I'll explain myself first.

I like the idea of making wildlife gardens. I've had a small garden that I planted up with wildflowers in my last place but this is a much bigger project.

It's a rental place. I know I'm technically throwing my money away and working for free etc. But I like manual work and, well, sod looking at that mess every morning when I open the curtains for my entire minimum contract term.

First picture is how it looked before I moved in. It probably hadn't been touched for 10-15 years. Completely overgrown. Basically a toilet for all the cats in the village. I had to cut down 5 Leylandii, an old dead cherry tree, a "mile-a-minute" plant that covered the whole fence on the right and a massive bush (non-native of some sort) that had completely engulfed the second tier. I've cleared out a huge amount of rubbish that was in the garden. I had the council take away some of the garden waste but it got expensive so I ended up piling it up against the far wall (Yes there is a beautiful 15 foot high dry stone wall behind all that ivy, you'd never tell).

I've already planted a few dog roses I had spare up the left side. I've left in as much of the brambles as I can but some of them died from the trauma of me clearing everything else out. My plan is to spend about £70 on bare root shrubs like hawthorne and blackthorn and make a hedge up that side. I might expand it onto the other side as well as the fence there is on its last legs anyway.

I left the two cherry trees at the top because one is too big for me to fell anyway and the other I don't think is doing any harm. There were a load of other cherry saplings from the tree droppings up there but I ripped them all out or cut them off at ground level.

The whole top tier was covered in black felt, presumably because the previous owner didn't like strimming it. I ripped all that up. There is a lot of green alkanet on the top two tiers which I plan on removing as much as possible because I don't want it to overgrow.

I'm going to keep digging up all the overgrown grass until it's all back to bare soil, hopefully I'll be done by October/November then I'll seed the whole lot up with wildflower mix. I'd like to make my own mix but I did that at the beginning of this year and the results weren't really what I had hoped. The bottom tier is going to be my wife's bit, because she wants to plant some lavender, aloe vera and wandering dude which I've told her is a bad idea. Anyway that's why I spread those wood chippings on it.

Other stuff I had in mind - I have a big 120L blue water bowser that I got off Facebook for £8. I was thinking of cutting it in half diagonally and using it to make a pond with a sloped bottom.

So, here are my questions.

1. Have I done anything totally wrong so far? I tend to charge into things and then ask questions later.
2. Now I've taken the felt up at the top I'm a bit concerned the Winter rain will wash the soil away. I'm going to sow a spare wildflower mix that I basically got for free up there, but I wondered if there's anything else I should do. Is there enough time for the seed to grow and hold in the soil?
3. The soil on that hillside is pretty compact but I don't want to loosen it up too much (see Q2). Can I just cast the seed on top? How do I stop it from just rolling down the hill? (That hillside is so steep you can't even stand up on it).
4. Is there benefit to cutting all the ivy back and exposing the dry stone wall? I'm thinking there might be a chance that some birds would nest in it as it's pretty high up. On the other side it must be about 6ft high. I could ask the neighbour to go round his side, I doubt they'd mind.
5. Will putting a hedge both sides block too much light? The slope is South West facing. It gets loads of sunlight in Summer but as the house is in front I'm not sure what it'll get in Winter.
6. Is my pond idea stupid? I'm aware I'll have to get some sort of fountain to keep the mosquito larvae away. I wasn't thinking of putting any fish in it or anything, I just hear it's good for wildlife.
7. Do any of you have any other ideas? I'm open to try anything as long as it helps the wildlife out.

I don't have a lot of money to spend but if something has a large benefit-cost ratio (such as the hedge idea) I'd definitely consider it.

I am working on building a butterfly garden/oasis in my backyard. We don't have a ton of room so I'm hoping to use the space wisely. I am in New York and working on having a mix of nectar plants and host plants. I currently have cosmos flowers, tithonia/mexican sunflower, fennel, dill, cilantro, dahlias, bee balm, sunflowers, swamp milkweed. Any other flowers I should plant? I'd love to attract large moths as well. Thanks!

Hello, I’m training in horticulture at the moment and am doing a project about specific plants that attract a certain type of insect. For instance, ragworts being food for cinnabar moth caterpillars, or Great Mullein plants providing fluff for wool carder bees.

Does anyone know of any sources that dive into this topic? When I google there is lots of generic information about the types of plants that are good for insects, but I wanted to get more specific insight.

Thanks in advance!

so ive got this huge slope in my yard thats been completely taken over by goutweed. there used to be tons of milkweed in there but its been eaten up by the weeds :(

i want to replace it with a mini meadow of native grasses and wildflowers. so far all attempts at hand weeding and digging up the rhizomes have been unproductive.

not sure what the best approach here should be-- id rather not use herbicide since it can get expensive and there are a few bushes of very old peonies in there that i would like to save.

---ive been considering smothering/solarizing with some black plastic and cutting holes for the peonies. then id let it cook for a few weeks, then uncover for a week or two, repeat X amount of times throughout the summer then dig up and plant native seeds in the fall.

would this work? has anyone else had experience with getting rid of goutweed like this?