The Little Shovel

At Organic Lawn, we love bees and saving water.  We are constantly looking for creative ideas to help homeowners who share those common goals. Erica at The Little Shovel, a customer and friend who does regenerative, native plant driven landscape design, has a couple of projects we would like to share.

The first one, out with the cookie cutter subdivision shrubs and in with the bee loving perennial beauties!

Before: Two Small Shrubs, Rocks, Plastic Edge

After: Mix of Native & Cultivar Plants, Mulch, Redwood Edge

She replaced the run-of-the mill shrubs with Montana Native Maximillian Sunflowers, Beebalm, and Centaurea. This mix attracts and feeds native pollinators from early spring into fall. The flowers are a beautiful and bold pop of color against the white garage. Happy bees are a happy yard!

A second project was to replace sod with a mini French shrub inspired and flowering perennial garden.  

Pic 1 Before - this sod is a mess! Pic 2 Grass was killed with cardboard & compost laid in fall & left over winter. Pic 3 Check out how rich the soil looks in the Spring (right side) Pic 4 After - looks clean and the bees are loving it too!

Small strips of sod are generally difficult to keep healthy.  As you can see, the edges of this thin strip of lawn were surrounded by cement or stone.  These materials soak up the hot sun and dry out the adjacent soil.  These “hot spots” are notorious for drought stress and inviting noxious weeds like thistle or hoary alyssum.  They also are not large enough to play kickball or host a BBQ, so why not replace them if you can? 

If you want to learn more about adding bees and beauty to your property, click here to contact Erica. Don't wait until spring - according to Erica, fall is the best time for sheet mulching with compost to kill sod, and planning now for next year's garden allows you to pre-order plants so that your top choices are available early next season.