I love native alternatives to lawns, but OP, I feel like it'd be more environmentally friendly if you didn't trap the birds who visit your yard inside white void spheres. Please let them out. They don't deserve this fate.
this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2025
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How else are they supposed to show people all the birds that come to their yard?
It's only one of each, there are plenty more to come.
I've been breaking my back over something closer to the bottom image for about 10 years. It's not less work. It's real easy to just drown a yard in water, crossbow, and fertilizer and mow once a week. I don't want to do that, so that's why I put the effort in.
I think it's dependent on where you live to be honest. Lawns aren't native in my area, and are easily overtaken by other non-native plants. If you xeriscape or create a native garden it can be easier, or at least the same amount of work to maintain after it gets established.
Where I'm at, lawns quickly get overtaken with numerous types of (non-native) weeds and blackberries - it's a constant fight to maintain a lawn. Sprinkler systems are also not common here, so you typically have to manually water an entire lawn by hand as opposed to specific plants with drip lines.
I do no work at all to my property, other than a small area around the house that we walk. I have a family of deer that spends most of their day relaxing in my yard.
You have what looks like a mature, stabilized woods. You're lucky. My yard was just disturbed bare clay and weed seeds when I got to it. I left it alone for a few months and ended up with wall to wall invasive weeds, 8 feet tall. I didn't have a few hundred years to let it stabilize itself.
Agree. If you let nature take care of your yard, it definitely won't look like the bottom pic.
Is...is the crossbow for the snakes?
It's a selective herbicide
I planted some rosemary, thyme and sage. Seems pretty low effort to me and they make food.
Much prettier and I love birds, but on what planet is the bottom one less work? Every one of those plants requires maintenance.
damn you're lucky if it's that easy to keep a lawn that lush and full in your area
keeping a shitty grass lawn is easy, keeping one perfectly manicured is not
I've been told they're very low maintenance as long as you have some clovers in there. I've never maintained a lawn myself though, so no experience to draw on.
Definitely not less work if you want it looking like that lol
Came here to ask what plants grow like that with less work
I wouldn't say it's less work, but it's well worth it.
Live in one of those "rural suburbs" (line of houses surrounded by fields) in Louisiana.
Was smokin a bowl outside last night. Saw the mosquito truck come down the road, spraying a fog of insecticides to keep the population down and all I can think is "if we didn't flatten everything for miles around with empty lawns and mono crops, we'd still have enough dragonflies to eat the mosquitoes instead of spraying chemicals into our air that kill the dragonflies too"
The mosquito truck?? Far out
Yea, that's what we call it around here. Just a regular truck with an IBC of insecticides and a low-pressure sprayer that drives around once a week to kill the swarms of mosquitoes along with every other insect in the area.
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Bottom is really good. But some of the plants are too close to the path
Amount of work depends on if you're trying to live in a naturally hostile environment (a desert) or a more temperate climate.
If the plants are native, the environment isn't hostile.
If your environment has native plants, it isn't hostile to... YOU? Or the native plants?
Because constructing a society in a hostile environment and living successfully doesn't change the natural environment from being hostile to humans.
I like to think of it this way: if you got lost away from society in that climate/environment, how much would it suck to try to survive, from scratch, for a year?
I'm not sure what you mean. If I die of thirst in the desert or cold in the far north, the cactus and conifer will continue living happily without my interference.
I'd rather some more of it be human food, but maybe that's out back. I'm slowly turning areas around the house I just bought into native stuff and food. It is, however, a constant battle against kudzu strangling and bamboo encroaching. I generally avoid having anything that tall and unkept (as some areas look to be) due to venomous snakes that can bite when surprised :/
Is it bamboo or knotweed?
Kudzu is hell. That is a battle you canβt win without fighting every day for quite a while.
An old buddy of mine spent 30 years fighting it back up the mountain behind his house. He died in 2020 and his house is draped in kudzu today.
It's bamboo common here in rural Japan. We have two types, one of which has edible shoots in the spring so there's that at least. It does hold the ground together along the riverbank so I never plan on fully ripping it up; last thing I need is for a chunk of my property to slide off in the next big quake.
HOAs are responsible for this. Fuck HOAs. All my homies hate HOAs. 
Less work? π€£
I had a garden with wild flowers, it was planted by the previous owner. An horticulturist.
It was beautiful but required a lot of work. Way more than mowing a couple of days a week.
I still tried to keep up, though.
I started having the guy who mows my grass leave one small back section of the property untouched so I could hopefully attract more native birds and insects. It's a part of my yard that I don't go into and neither do my dogs, so I figured it was as good a spot as any for the experiment. After a couple months, it worked to bring in birds. I have a pair of bluejays with a nest in my tree. I hadn't seen bluejays anywhere around before now, and I've lived in my house for 3 years.
Hey, maybe I like getting sweaty and triggering my allergies with cut grass every weekend. Did you ever think I might like being miserable?
I hated cutting my parents' lawn so much as a teen. Absolutely awful experience.
I prob have something similiar to bottom pic, and I would say it is much easier to maintain than a grasslawndessert. I have some garden paths and spots that I trim down, and cut down bushes when they get to big once a year, but never use a lawnmower or bother about weeds. Mosquitos are less now that I have more birds, a tawny owl is living in a hollow tree close to my compost and takes care of rodents. Dug a pond and got lots of frogs that also eats insects.
I'm from the sticks. For me, a carpet of grass is a nice luxury once in a while, as a treat.
Agreed. I live on 6 acres of land out in the forested countryside. There are untouched, natural fields and forests all around me. There are literally 40 acres of natural preserve right next to my property, where no development of any kind is allowed to happen.
I like having a clean, mowed patch of land in the middle of it all. When I go adventuring in the forest, I always come home covered in ticks, mosquito bites, and sticky plant pods. It's nice to not experience that just walking through my own backyard.
Not to mention, natural habitats invite snakes, mice, rabbits, possums, skunks, etc. into my home. I currently have field mice living in my garage and I can't keep them away because the forest grows right up to my garage. I keep having to bring my cars to the shop because mice and squirrels keep building nests in them and chewing through cables.
I also have moles tearing up my backyard in the un-mown field out back. Maintaining a patch of lawn helps to keep them away from my house and makes my life more comfortable here.
People who fantasize about natural gardens instead of mowed lawns live in the cities or suburbs. If you actually live in the countryside, it's much nicer to have a freshly mowed lawn around the house, to keep the wilderness at bay.
Otherwise, nature will just swallow up your home. I actually need to cut down a tree behind my garage because it's gonna crack through the foundation of the garage if it gets any bigger. And I need to re-side my garage as well, because vines and other plants have started working their way into the siding. That's probably how the mice keep getting in.
It's a multi-year project for me to cut back the wilderness trying to encroach on my home, and it's a very expensive lesson to learn. I'd much rather just mow a chunk of land around my home and call it a day.
I can tell you live on 6 acres by the way you write.
This post brought to you by the anti Robin gang.
Gotta watch out for Lyme disease though. π’
I would use the lawn mower width for a path and border on the property line. Of course and I would sprinkle a shit ton of clover seed on the path to mow less.
Yay more animals for my dog to terrorize! /s
I live on the side of a hill so we have lots of wild plants, trees, shrubs, etc. So many birds and little creatures here. Occasionally a bobcat will stroll through. Owls, cranes, and quails are fun to see. There are mountain lions in the area but thankfully we have not seen any on our cameras. I love the ecosystem around my house. The sound of the coyotes howling in the night or the birds starting to chirp as the sun starts to rise...so blissful.
Totally true! π So much prettier! π₯°
plus you can go birding from your living room (out the window)
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