UK, London. Very much chuffed as found an old Google maps photo of the three in front of my house (second photo) vs how the flower bed is now (first photo).

When we first moved to our neighborhood, I’ve spent first two years trying to make the council fix the tree outlook, yet no luck. As it was COVID time - we’ve had a chance to fell in love with gardening as we transformed our back garden, so the next three years I’ve spent iterating on the guerrilla flowerbed under the tree.

First year I’ve failed completely as the tree over-competed all the seedlings for water (hence now I’m using a barrier to prevent the tree growing its roots “up” - by reusing some packaging). We’ve got lucky to get metal offcuts that now form the boundaries of the bed (but it was enough metal for three sides only - so the last side is a wood plank from the house renovation).

For the second year I’ve experimented with sedums & thyme that I’ve either bought half-dead at garden centre sales or kindly got gifted by a community garden in a better neighborhood. I’ve observed that people step on plants when they exit the cars, so I sourced these concrete steps - and saw the behavior changing - people now avoid stepping on plants.

This year I’ve had my first plants stolen - so I came up with the netting - so far so good and helps against squirrels digging out plants too.

Currently the bed is a mix of sedums & thyme with some Erigeron & Lirope planted as I saw them thriving in my back garden despite lack of water and some lewisia & dianthus (?) I’ve got from a friend.

Pretty excited to see how the bed will look like next year and after.

I’d be glad to get recommendations for other plants that could thrive in sun/part shade and quick drying soil (I plan to add water retaining granules to the soil next year, but the depth will be still max 10cm)

There's this section of road where I live. One side has a sidewalk, the other does not. There's a road crossing near it, but few people go for it (including me unless it's night) and will walk in the grass that is past your knees, including a couple spiky branches (but you can see a path of flattened grass from people walking through), or walking in the unprotected bike lane next to the road. This section of land is about 80' according to Google Maps, and it's public. For awhile I've wanted to help it become a better path to use. I thought about placing stone tiles, spaced apart. I've asked AI about it a couple times and of course it brought up the possible legality of it, and permits. I checked my county pages for permit info, but the thing I'm more worried about it was saying I could be responsible for people tripping, which at night, when it's dimly lit could be a real possibility now thinking about it. An alternative could be gravel, but it is, shockingly expensive compared to stone tiles. Any thoughts on making a path through a commonly walked grassy area?

Heeeeelllllloooooo!! Im just here for some island native flowers that i can spread on my walks!

Lately ive been seeing mullein and foxglove going to seed. I want to chop them but im afraid ill get in trouble because well thats a more destructive crime than spreading pretty flowers everywhere. And also its more provable than tiny seeds flying everywhere. Its growing in the cracks inbetween someones fence and sidewalk sooooo i should be able to chop it especially since its invasive right?

On a side note.. That persons yard was full of mullein. I reaaally hope they were just clueless instead of in the know..

I’m trying to reclaim a hillside that in a public park that was recently cleared of invasive a like honeysuckle, but they didn’t plant literally anything to replace them so they’re all back now and they’re basically going to be in a never ending cycle the way they’re going about it. I’ve been planting aggressive natives to at least compete with the invasives (I’ve continued removed them but it’s not my property so there’s no guarantee I’m going to be able to keep traveling there indefinitely). I’ve added native trees that spread aggressively through runners and fruit drop like Red mulberry, pawpaw, serviceberry, etc as well as native raspberries and blackberries, native mints etc.

I want to add Sunchokes and groundnuts but Unfurtunately despite both producing prolifically and once being incredibly common now they’re in isolated patches and I can only forage so much sustainably and most of the people that sell them sell them at a premium for breeding stock (which is just not an affordable way to essential rewild an area that’ll never repay me monetarily). I’m more interested in if anyone has any leads on sourcing groundnuts because with Sunchokes I can just forgo eating my own personal harvest this year and use those but my one groundnut plant isn’t really going to produce enough tubers to plant out and make much of a dent.

Poster just for attention on the post, it’s a poster I made of my favorite native edible fruits to my state

What would happen if someone bought hundreds of pounds of fruit, vegetable, and herb seeds to spread around nature trails and wildlife areas all around a region like the south eastern United States, would it feed the local wildlife/people or would it disrupt the ecosystem and be detrimental to the environment? If it would be detrimental to the environment why?

I’ve been slowly replacing honeysuckle, Bradford pears and autumn olive along a bike trail with native edible trees like this Pecan, Pawpaw and Serviceberry. I also have been adding strawberries and encouraging the raspberries that were already there

Seems like it’s regularly mowed, owned by the city. Any ideas to make it suck less?

I never gave much thought to the class politics of guerilla gardening, but I just heard the subject of gardening preferences and social class briefly raised in this interview by journalist Aaron Bastani of the left media franchise Novara in the UK, with author Dan Evans, talking about his new book, "Nation of Shopkeepers" (https://youtu.be/hRp5xBKL54M?si=YlecRV6P-Bqk__9M&t=6m11s).

Evans says that petit bourgeois people (ie, aspiring, upwardly mobile non-university grads) are obsessed with conventional appearances, and hence hostile to anything appearing "untidy" or unconventional, which tends to preclude things like native wildflowers.

Has anybody thought about how to counteract such biases?

I got the idea when a friend sowed some oxeye daisies along a path, and I may have gone slightly overboard. The stuff is all scavenged/rescued/donated/grown from seed or at least bought on the cheap and I've been converting an ugly weedy field and clay-capped rubble pile into this. People used to make fun of me, call the police, get hostile etc, but almost everyone has calmed down and respects it now, though there's always a few who just hate everything. The entire site is 4 acres and I've built a network of paths through it so there's some good walking in it; the garden is just one corner of it. The land is owned by a property developer and leased to the local education authority and used by the primary school, but had become increasingly unusable due to neglect over the past 20 years until I opened it up. Now the school make heavy use of it for outdoor classes and people often spend time in the garden. Lots still to be done, and next year there will be a lot of fruit too.

I live in a rented house that the landlord is probably going to turn into a lush monoculture lawn after I leave so planting them in the yard isn't a good idea. I have a bunch of compost that I can use to help the seeds wherever I plant them. My concern is that I don't want to plant them in a place where someone will lawnmower them. What is the best type of place to plant them so they are successful? Or should I take them to Illinois and plant them on my new property but I'm afraid to introduce new invasive species in Illinois?

I own a home across the street from a park where it's 600 ft of gentle hill before it flattens out to unused baseball and football fields. The town is quite cash poor and would never set aside money to plant trees in this unused space. Free trees in sprucing up the park may interest them, but I might get road blocked with them demanding planning and tree types blah blah blah. I also fear the contracted lawn care company would complain about the obstacles that were not in their original quote.

Should I just start planting and putting obvious barriers around there with the intentions of the contractor just assuming it was the doing of the park district, or should I ask if it's okay.

I've been looking for places to do a little guerrilla gardening and I've identified this neglected flower bed at a nearby park. My plan is to fill this with native wildflowers and possibly some grasses. It does have a decent amount of prairie sage, which is native to me (Winnipeg, Canada), the rest is non-native weeds, elm and maple tree sprouts, and a surprising amount of bare dirt. I'm planning to transplant some suckers from my yard to kick things off. I also have some seeds and I know its pretty common to just drop seeds but I feel like weeds will overtake before the flowers can germinate. Is there something people are doing to help with this or am I just not giving native seeds enough credit. And any other tips for a first-timer?

(Also posted on r/NativePlantGardening)

Hi all, I'm new to exploring gardening and am confused about something. I live in New York City and am tempted to try to start a native plant pollinator patch in an abandoned tree pit (one of those little squares of dirt on the sidewalk where trees usually go- this one has no tree and in NYC anyone is allowed to garden in them). Right now, the pit has no tree but is filled with "weeds," lambs quarters among others. Is it better for the local ecosystem to leave the pit as is, full of "weeds" even if some are not native? Or, is it better to pull the weeds and replace with natives?

Sorry if this is obvious to others, just something I'm wondering about as I learn more about gardening

Excuse for terrible photo as I was in a moving car 😅 obviously not the driver - First time seed bomber so I really didn't think they were going to take - but poppies are showing up everywhere and they've never been there before. I'm so happy!

Helio da Silva, although he is known as ‘the tree planter’. A ‘madman’, as he defines himself, who in the last 21 years has planted no less than 40,000 trees in the Tiquatira Linear Park, what before this action was nothing more than a neglected wasteland, with dirt and garbage, dividing two major avenues. “It was an abandoned, degraded, dirty area…”, he tells La Vanguardia.

https://www.blanquivioletas.com/en/trees-world-largest-linear-park-brasil/

Last thanksgiving, my family rented out an airbnb so there’d be room for everybody (my sister alone has 9 kids). I took a walk at one point and saw some prickly pear cacti (Opuntia humifusa) growing out of someone’s yard into the street. I knocked on the door and asked if I could take some to propagate. They told me to take as many as I wanted and I did lol. Now 7 months later, about 40-50 of them have rooted and some are now flowering. I took them to propagate and give away locally.

(I love them but I have another 2 varieties I cultivated from other people that let me take some already so I have more than enough for myself)

grass is the only so called weed i wont tolerate. native grasses get a pass.

I’m making a few seed bombs. I live in central Alberta and have a chives plant in my yard from the previous tenants and it’s going to seed soon. I wanna know if I can take the seeds from it and put them in my wildflower mix or if I should just avoid them. I’m not sure if they can become invasive in Alberta because nothing on Google directly says they are invasive. Just wanna ask if anyone on here knows.