So I bought my first house, with my first garden, a few months back. It's a third of an acre, which didn't sound like much, but has turned out to be an exhaustingly large space. The backyard is a sort of woodland garden that backs onto a local greenway, which was extensively landscaped a few years back, then allowed to fall into disarray for several years. It's made of large "grassy" areas (mostly bugleweed, indian strawberry, and random grasses) surrounded by woodland beds that sort of bleed into the forest.

I was very excited to finally have my own garden, and I've mostly been enjoying it. There's some good bones there, but it's overrun with invasives. (Some of them deliberate. The last owner had a fondness for gooseneck loosestrife and liriope.) But I fought the ivy, I fought the wisteria, I fought the bindweed and the honeysuckle. (I also fought the poison ivy, but the less said about that, the better.) I didn't win any of the fights, but at least I beat back the foe.

And then the stiltgrass grew in, and it's got me beat.

We've mowed it down as much as possible and weedwhacked more--I was reading that if you mow before it seeds, in late summer, you can eventually fight it under control--but it's completely worked through the property, and the neighbor's yard and the greenway is full of it too. So I can't hope to eradicate it.

I'm big into wildlife gardening, so I'm hoping to avoid pesticides as much as possible. And frankly, I'm a wuss, and a wuss with a job, so I don't do as much weeding as I undoubtedly should, and as much weeding as I try to do by hand, I feel like it's a drop in the bucket.

Is there anything I can plant in the main grassy areas that will keep it from forming these monocultural stands? I'd really, really like to grow natives if possible, but at this point, I'll settle for something inoffensive that won't get madly overrun. The stiltgrass didn't show up until mid-summer, and stuff was establishing nicely before that, but then it just roared in and turned the place into green drifts.

The areas I'm hoping to keep clear vary between dappled shade and part shade, surprisingly well drained for being on clay soil, somewhat acid. Any suggestions that anyone has for something that would crowd it out, I would be very grateful!