How We Replaced Our Front Lawn with a Native Plant Garden…
How We Replaced Our Front Lawn with a Native Plant Garden…
and stayed out of trouble with the city bylaw officer and neighbours
By Lisa Renner, Master Gardener
Full disclosure: I am a native plant gardener. I started out small, adding a native plant here and there into empty spaces of an old garden with overgrown shrubs and beautiful hemlock and Japanese bloodgood maple. Within a year, butterflies and other pollinators discovered the changes and visited my garden. Then I attended a lecture by Douglas W. Tallamy, author of Bringing Nature Home. As a lecturer he was visiting Toronto, where I lived at that time. His presentation opened my eyes to the crucial role gardeners play to counteract, by planting native plants, the fragmentation of habitat and the loss of biodiversity in our environment. This is obvious in our cities, but holds equally true for our monoculture-dominated agricultural spaces. Since plants, with the ability to photosynthesize, are at the bottom of the trophic pyramid, any loss of biodiversity in plants will profoundly affect insects, birds, and mammals, including humans. Tallamy’s talk set me on the path to convert our entire front lawn into a native plant garden.
Fast forward ten years. While writing this article I am looking out at our front yard here in Winnipeg. I enjoy seeing the last blooms of black-eyed Susan and the purple dots of meadow blazing star between little bluestem grasses. In front of the ninebarks planted along the property line, I can see pollinators visiting the fading blooms of giant hyssop and the New England asters that have just come into bloom. This garden is now five years old. I sometimes get asked: How do your neighbours react to your garden? Did you ever have problems with the city bylaw officer? I receive many positive comments about my garden from neighbours and passers-by. And no, no complaints have come to my attention so far. Most likely for multiple reasons.
Much has changed since I moved to Winnipeg in 2016. Organizations like the David Suzuki Foundation’s Butterflyway Project and Bee Better Manitoba have become active in the province and city. The Winnipeg Wildflower Project was established in 2019. Several Master Gardener projects in public spaces have created native plant gardens. The visibility of these organizations and their engagement to encourage native plant gardening doesn’t go unnoticed with the interested public. They seem to help the public embrace the new aesthetic of wilder gardens.
Yet still, reports of conflicts between native plant gardeners and a neighbour or bylaw officer keep popping up in the press. They often leave gardeners discouraged and frustrated and, at worst, with a fine, sometimes even a lawsuit. So, what has kept me out of trouble?
Complying with city guidelines
It was our choice to adhere to the city’s guidelines for Non-standard Boulevard Treatment and not to apply for a permit for a planting plan outside those guidelines. However, proof that such permits are granted is the report of a street in a Winnipeg neighbourhood where all the residents teamed together and applied for a permit to create boulevard gardens along their entire street.
I recommend paying attention to the guideline that nothing but sod can be planted within one metre of the curb and within 0.5 metre of the sidewalk. Vegetation planted in the rest of the boulevard section of a property should not grow higher than one metre. On a property without a sidewalk, the information of the depth of the city-owned boulevard depends on the width of the street. This information can be difficult to find; if a property survey is available, it contains the information. Otherwise, it is helpful to know that the property line typically runs within about a foot of the water valve of your property or a fire hydrant. Within the property line, planting height is no longer restricted although the obligation to Click Before You Dig [https://clickbeforeyoudigmb.com] to obtain clearance for the utility lines remains.
Being compliant with city guidelines regarding boulevard planting or applying for a permit should one choose not to be compliant is one way to stay out of trouble; the other way, depending on the neighbourhood one lives in, is to avoid the common stereotype that native plant gardens are unkempt and weedy and risk a neighbour calling on you to enforce section 1.8 (1) of the Neighbourhood Livability By-Law which vaguely states that “Plants and vegetation must be kept trimmed so as not to become unsightly”. How can we avoid this stereotype without compromising our goal to create a habitat garden?
Informing our neighbours of our intention to create a habitat garden with native plants, and as soon as our garden plan was available for visualization sharing the plan, took the guess work out for them of what was going to happen next door and if they would be affected by it.
PHOTO: by Lindsay Mamchur
The garden looks intended and planned. In our garden we kept the one-metre wide lawn strip along the curb in accordance with city guidelines and purposefully delineated the beginning of the garden with an undulating clean edge running parallel to the lawn strip. This gives the garden a pretty conventional look, not out of line with the traditional neighbourhood we live in. Again complying with city guidelines, only plants growing one metre or less were chosen to fill the space between the edge of the garden bed and the property line. These plantings don’t convey wildness even though the plant choices—wild ginger, Canada anemone, long-fruited anemone, golden Alexander, early blue violet, and blue-eyed grass growing in shade to part-shade—are all native plants. Paths laid out for maintenance, access to a bench and a seating area, roughly defining the shade, part shade, and sunny areas of our garden, show intention and planning. In a very small garden, a strategically placed garden bed, a mulch path to a nook with a single chair, a birdbath, or a quirky piece of art as a focal point can achieve the same goal. Putting up a sign with information which pollinators your plants support shows the intention of creating a habitat garden and encourages conversations with neighbours and passers-by alike.
Interest is created for all seasons to defy weediness. Saskatoon shrubs and a plum tree start flowering early as do three-flowered avens, bloodroot, and early blue violet. Asters, recently added stiff goldenrod, and the grasses hold the show at the end of the season. No plant is cut down in fall, and in winter the grasses and dried seedheads poke through a good layer of snow.
PHOTO by Lindsay Mamchur: meadow blazing star, prairie cone flower, and switch grass
Plants are chosen carefully. As in a traditional garden, light, moisture, and soil conditions help make the plant choices. Paying attention to bloom times particularly at the beginning and the end of the season is crucial for creating habitat. Plant communities have to be chosen carefully, so plants have similar tendencies to self-seed and spread and no single species runs the risk of overtaking the entire garden as this may be perceived as weedy. Giant hyssop is one of those profuse self-seeders in my front garden as is blue vervain in my back garden. Where the soil is richer, its seedlings pop up in every nook and cranny. It is also noteworthy that some native plants grow taller in a garden environment and may flop over, giving the garden an unkempt look. This is due to a richer soil and less competition than in their natural environment. Joe Pye weed, blue vervain, and golden Alexander show this tendency in my back garden where four-way mix was added to the garden beds. In the front, where top soil mixed with sand was added after removal of the lawn, the same plants grow shorter and stay upright. Lastly, we avoided planting the stately and beautiful common milkweed which is listed in the Declaration of Noxious Weeds in Manitoba and planted swamp milkweed instead.
More traditional design principles and maintenance help keep wildness at bay. Examples are planting taller plants in the back, or in the middle of a bed and grouping lower growing plants in front and around them. Planting in drifts and blocks and creating cohesion with repetition are options too. Our garden shows elements of all three principles. A very formal design would be enclosing native plantings with low growing shrubs suitable for a hedge, like a dwarf chokeberry or bush honeysuckle cultivar.
Our garden was planted with a mix of plugs and plants in four-inch pots. Weeding in the first two years was crucial and time consuming. But as plants grew in there was less and less uncovered soil to give weeds a chance. While weeding, I learned more about the different conditions of my site. I also learned to identify the little seedlings of the plants I was growing (grasses I find the most difficult) and where they had the tendency to move. I noticed which plants expanded quickly beyond their assigned space and made me ponder how much I should let things go and where eventually some editing would be needed. As much as I like to let my garden show me its way, I observe it closely and remove seedlings here and there. I also cut back plants that flop onto the driveway, like prairie sage, and sometimes chop and drop the spent flower stalks of three-flowered avens along a path once they are completely dried up and all seeds are gone to keep a tidy appearance. There are some bare patches where deer and rabbit have grazed too extensively; they need to be replanted.
It gives me hope that since Doug Tallamy’s first book was published, native plants and native plant gardening gained increasing public attention. The recent signing of the Montreal pledge by the City of Winnipeg indicates that the need for rewilding our city is officially recognized as crucial.
Latin names of plants mentioned in the article:
black-eyed Susan – Rudbeckia hirta; bloodroot – Sanguinaria canadensis; blue-eyed grass – Sisyrinchium montanum; blue vervain – Verbena hastata; bush honeysuckle – Diervilla lonicera; Canada anemone – Anemone canadensis; chokeberry – Aronia melanocarpa; common milkweed – Asclepias syriaca; early blue violet – Viola adunca; giant hyssop – Agastache foeniculum; golden Alexander – Zizia aurea; Joe Pye weed– Eutrochium maculatum; little blue stem – Schizachyrium scoparium; long-fruited anemone – Anemone cylindrica; meadow blazing star – Liatris ligulistylis; New England aster – Symphiotrichum Nova Angliae; ninebark – Physocarpus opulifolius; prairie sage – Artemisia ludoviciana; purple clover – Dalea purpurea; Saskatoon – Amelanchier alnifolia; stiff goldenrod – Oligoneurum rigidum; swamp milkweed – Asclepias incarnata; three-flowered Avens – Geum triflorum; wild ginger – Asarum canadense; yarrow – Achillea millefolium
Acknowledgement:
For this article I drew from my experience of working with John Harper, Landscape Architect, Studio 169, to create my garden, from observing and maintaining my own gardens, and from perusing the resources listed below over and over again.
Resources:
Darke, Rick and Tallamy, Douglas W., The Living Landscape, Timber Press 2014
Tallamy, Douglas W., Bringing Nature Home, Timber Press Inc., 2009
Tallamy, Douglas W., Nature’s Best Hope, Timber Press 2019
Vogt, Benjamin, Prairie Up, Three Fields Books, University of Illinois Press, 2023
Wasowski, Sally, Gardening with Prairie Plants, University of Minnesota Press, 2002
Find more native plant resources under Sustainable Gardening Resources on our website and inspiration in our newsletter.
FEATURED PHOTO:
by Lindsay Mamchur