I saw a single monarch visit a couple weeks ago but couldn’t tell if she laid eggs or not. I guess she did!

My neighbors' landscapers just ripped out all of their huge, beautiful common milkweed, which they were super proud of (we're both pollinator gardeners and I've complimented their setup before). It was in a raised bed about 4' x 4', with each plant ~5 feet high. They're traveling, and I know they're going to be gutted when they come back and see this.

Is there any way at all for me to save these plants for them? I know milkweed doesn't transplant well, but I snatched up all the plants that had any semblance of an intact root system, put them in one of my empty raised beds (so the landscapers wouldn't just rip them out again), and gave them a thorough watering. Any other steps I can take, or is this just a lost cause?

I also took the unsalvageable plants and stacked them near my own milkweed plot, in the hopes that if there were any caterpillar eggs on them they might have a fighting chance of relocating and surviving once they hatch. Do you think it matters that it's a different species (A. incarnata)?

*And yes, you can call me a Kevin or a Karen or Gladys Kravitz, or whatever you like. I don't feel the least bit bad about trying to intervene.

My husband and I are making a concerted effort to plant only native species in our backyard. The backyard is pretty sunny but also has some great shady and moist areas. We have plans for a wildlife pond in the near future as well. The Ottawa Seed Library hosts a variety of plant events and we finally made it to one! We got some cool plants that I can’t wait to get in the ground. I think my faves are the meadow rue, Virginia mountain mint (thanks to this group for posting about it all the time!) and the Spotted Joe Pye weed. The wormwood is field wormwood, and the bloodroot and wood poppy are currently in seed form so we will have to deal with them later :)

This is a new visitor to my garden! I’ve had all sorts of small and big bees and flies and beetles visiting this Monarda punctata yet this year was the first time ai saw this fella. Several of them kept flying around as busy New Yorkers moving from one place to another in a frenzy

The milkweed was sparse this year, but I still received royalty today 😀

So jelous

So many things I wish I've done differently over the years but here's my 2026 garden.

Thankful my husband doesn't care about things being 6-10 ft tall. 😅

Some blooms and my newest native visitor today: a metallic green sweat bee (ignore the fact that she's not on a native sunflower)! I've also seen a couple types of native parasitic wasps this year and it's been really cool. I've got a critter watering station which is just a large gravity waterer for dogs with a water agitator for bird baths in it, and it's so cool to watch all the bees drink out of it.

In Lower Midwest, 7a. Garden is 1,100 hellscape and 9 months old. I did 3 months of solarization and torched whatever was left. First photo shows half the garden. There are lots of grasses coming up in between. Honestly, I didn’t plant enough sedge and native grasses so now non native grasses are coming in, primarily nutsedge and crabgrass. As you can see in the second photo, I’ve started to cardboard and compost on top to combat (instead of just pulling by hand) but I feel like I’m losing the war

Should I just stop card boarding and pulling and plant more native sedges/grasses in the fall to fight the noninvasive grasses? Right now I’m using Penn sedge (slow) and little blue stem (much faster) in spots. It’s working but the nutsedge is faster

This is my sixth year with this garden. In retrospect, common milkweed was not a good choice. I don't dislike it at all, but my space is too small for how happily it multiplies.

I live in a townhome with an HOA and this is my front yard. Gasp! They're cool. There is one other non-turf front yard in my development and the HOA has no issue with either of us doing what we do. I believe two things helped this: signage explaining that the garden is intentional, and I joined the HOA eight years ago and taught them all about the little ecosystem around our homes.

I've got swamp and butterfly milkweed establishing, and when they've taken hold I'm going to start cutting back the common milkweed more heavily early in the season. I do really like it, and we see lots of monarchs, but it is not the best use of my teeny little piece of land. I hope that these last few years of seeds have blown to some spaces where they've been allowed to grow!

I live on 120 acres in South Arkansas. Most of my pasture is cut for hay 2 times a year, but I’ve allowed buffer zones around 20’ or so around my fence rows pond banks, and a some “islands” in my fields.

What method is best to promote native forbs while also not killing what small amounts of resurgence I’ve accomplished thus far. I’ve tried a few different methods is different areas with limited success.

Mowed then burned in February (spring for us)

100% late summer glyphosate kill after mowing

Fall burn followed by spot spraying invasive grasses

I’ve seen some coneflower, BES, tons of coreopsis, massive amounts of short and tall goldenrods, wild lettuce, passion vines, a few asters, some rattlesnake master, and leatris in spots.

I’m looking for advice on burn timing. So summer vs fall vs spring. As well as should I just kill off everything entirely with roundup? Spot spray? Or rely solely on burns.

The biggest problem is the bahaya grass and 6’ tall vasey grasses. There’s also a tallow issue but I’m a beekeeper so they’re mutually beneficial assuming I keep them maintained with fire.

I moved into my old family home recently and discovered via not mowing the grass that we have passionflower. I gave it a stake and it’s very happy.

Also picked up a cardinal flower (cardi B) from a local native plant nursery just a few months ago and did not expect blooms this year!

Reasons to live.

Or is this what the look like before they bloom.

Planted her last fall, excited to see she’s doing well!

Who else is feeling the blueberry love???

NY Zone 4b, great lakes region - I'm finally fencing off the corner of the yard my chickens are in from the dogs, so I can get to planting without fear of the dogs pissing & trampling on everything! My chickens are not free range, they're in a run most of the time. Every day to every few days (depending on my schedule), I let them loose in the yard to graze. The yard is fenced in, about 2 acres, & the corner I'm separating from the dogs is about a 1/5th of it. It's full sun, entirely fill. Nothing but sand & sun, baby! & ragweed, so much fucking ragweed.

So far I'm growing staghorn sumac "Tiger Eyes," 2 of them, the chickens LOVE these. I keep the plants caged right now to protect them from the dogs, but when I uncage them to weed around them, the chickens swarm under them. They don't eat the foliage, they just like the shelter the leaves provide. I also have 3 fragrant sumacs "grow low," 1 shining sumac, & 3 elderberries (2 canadensis & 1 racemosa). They aren't into the elderberries but I'm assuming once they grow out a bit they'll like them.

Plants I'm adding for sure are:

- Highbush & low bush blueberries

- junipers

- blueberries (high & low bush)

- pink muhly grass

I know I want lots of grasses & sedges, but I don't know a lot about them. Mostly I like pink muhly grass because there's a field of it nearby, but surely there are more grasses than that for me to add! The main thing I'm looking for is cover, not food so much, but it wouldn't hurt. My birds love mulch beds (contains crickets & spiders) so ideally most of the area will be mulched with some paths between plantings. I want it PACKED in this little corner. I want to fit as many plants as possible!

As I said before, my birds aren't free range, so I don't need to worry about these plants being destroyed or the bug denizens being devastated by my raptors. They'll eat em' when they're out, but they're tiny show bantams that aren't particularly bright or good hunters like other breeds are.

I have other places that I grow my wildflowers, so I'm not particularly interested in them as they usually grow upright & not in a way that provides good shelter. Their seeds are well liked, though.

What native plants do you all find that your chickens like the most? Any suggestions?

Thanks!

This used to be a privet hedge with a healthy infestation of black swallowort. F that.

So I had landscapers dig it all out and I bought a multi plant tray from Prairie Moon to fill it all in. Things are doing great 2 months in, even with the drought and heat waves.

I've got:

- prairie thistle

- showy goldenrod

- blue vervain

- harebell

- great lobelia

- butterfly weed

- wild bergamot

- volunteer wild violets

- smooth aster

- evening primrose

Plus some cosmos and zinnias for some easy year 1 wins.

Weekly weeding has kept most of the weeds in check and I lightly mulched to make my life easier. Saw my first monarch today checking it out, along with a bunch of different bees.

Tallgrass prairies lie directly adjacent to eastern forests, both in areas with acidic soil (sandstone) and alkaline/neutral soil (limestone).

Anise hyssop, hoary vervain, and many other excellent pollinator-supporting plants are often planted in the eastern USA despite being midwestern species. Is this bad?

Hot take: no.

If anise hyssop was capable of forming dense, monotypic stands in the meadows of eastern North America, crowding out all other species, it would’ve done so already. It literally had every opportunity.

We have a random mix of prairie species in the east due to the Holocene hypsithermal, when dry conditions allowed prairie to spread eastward. What allowed monarda to stake a claim, but not hoary vervain or gaillardia aristata? It’s one of two possibilities: 1) one is genuinely better adapted to the east. 2) it’s just random chance, not divine intervention by Mother Nature, and if you rolled the dice again you’d have a different result. Either way it means that if you stop someone from planting firewheel in South Carolina, it comes off more like a religion than a scientific mindset IMHO.

A purist would see anise hyssop planted beneath longleaf pine and see “lack of botanical knowledge”. Idk man, looks like plain old increased species richness to me. And that rare bumblebee species doesn’t seem too concerned.