We take pride in our work.
This is our footprint.
A steep slope, formerly a weedy, dry space with erosion trouble. Native wild strawberries, little bluestem grass and narrow-leaved mountain mint form a living mesh to hold the slope's soil in place while the gradually-stepped gravel path winds up through aromatic asters, amsonia, butterfly milkweed, fruit trees, low-growing junipers and upright arborvitae evocative of a Turkish garden.
A second- and third-year sloped meadow planting with perennial plugs. First year was a swath of ragweed with a few flowers poking out - exactly what we wanted! Ragweed is an excellent native cover crop that, while causing allergies one or two weeks out of the year, shades the more vulnerable perennials from the intense sunlight after planting. In following years it bows out to other attractive annuals like three-seed mercury and daisy fleabane, while more robust and longer-lived perennials like black-eye susans, purple coneflower, joepye weed, false indigo, etc. develop in vigor and number. As an added benefit, ragweed produces innumerable nutrient-dense seeds for both overwintering and migratory birds.
An elongated rain garden at the base of a slope to slow down, retain and drain runoff into the soil. Native blue flag iris, blue lobelia, purple joepye, Gray's sedge, path rush, Spiraea alba, wetland rose, buttonbush and the ever-adaptable narrow-leaved mountain mint thrive on the extra moisture and help the excess drain and evaporate.
A previously-planted and overgrown prairie garden, cleaned up and looking full to the brim with blue juniper, asters, coneflowers, amsonia, dropseed grass, and wild petunias.
A sunny farmhouse planting of mixed yarrow, coreopsis, blue-eyed grass, turtlehead, aromatic aster and lyreleaf sage surrounding creeping juniper, switchgrass and a red ninebark.
Late afternoon sun on culvers root, right, and false sunflower, left.
My old apartment garden - slowly turned a long forgotten side yard into a small meadow of 30+ species of native sedges, grasses, wildflowers and shrubs that hosted a well-fed 5-lined skink, multiple ringneck and garter snakes, mourning dove fledglings, and countless butterflies, bees and other beneficial insects.
Penstemon 'Husker Red' and heath aster 'Snow Flurry' filling the narrow, dry space between a sunny wall and a concrete walkway.
A row of little-leaf ninebark fronted by masses of catmint, red yarrow, black-eye susan, lavender, little bluestem grass, and coreopsis.
Flowering Amsonia tabernaemontana in full sun and rich soil.
A drainage ditch cleared out and refilled with zones of wetland to dry/mesic perennial flowers and grasses - including switchgrass, prairie dropseed, obedient plant, coneflower, black-eye susan, wild onion, joepye, culvers root, blue flag iris, wild quinine, scarlet beebalm, narrowleaved mountain mint, and more.
A comfortably enclosed, yet open border of penstemon, Ozark bluestar, catmint, whorled coreopsis, black-eye susans, purple coneflower, pink muhly grass, pasture rose, fragrant sumac and an 'Autumn Brilliance' serviceberry tree.
A third-year meadow planting along a front walkway, planted with plugs. This spring, there were hundreds of seedlings from these perennials filling in!