Hi, thanks for offering your advice! I planted some purple poppy mallow from a local-ish native plant nursery and it’s barely grown at all in months. I have two that are in full sun. Do you have any insight? I am really excited to have them in the garden. Thank you.

My advise, is if it's still alive..just wait till next year. They basically throw a flush of growth in spring, flower in summer, then rest. With transplanting, your two are probably in 'rest' and 'reroot' mode.

Ooh purple poppy mallow! I picked one up earlier this year -- saw it, grabbed it, and ran! Mine is growing quite well, but I started with a good-sized plant (I think it was a 1-gallon container). I do agree with the advice to wait on it -- I remember buying some small starter plants of different plants from a native nursery and didn't expect much but they took off nicely the following year.

I started purple poppy mallow from seed and planted it out a couple years ago when it was little more than a seedling. Second year it pushed a couple flowers but didnt do much. This year it is doing nicely and has been flowering since May. Soil is well drained sandy loam up against a concrete retaining wall.

I have a question for the OP. I have a fenced in yard, but beyond the fence on my neighbors property there are tons of aggresive and invasive species. Japanese honey suckle, multiflora rose, garlic mustard, oriental bittersweet, norway maple, orchard grass, black locust, japanese stilt grass, mile-a-minute vine, and even my lawn is mostly weeds with an abundance of creeping Charlie, violets, and mock strawberry, with more black locust, and silver maple in my lot, you get the picture.

What I would really like to do is kill off the lawn, reseed with fine fescue blend, and within the newly seeded area seed a meadow strip 65'x4' (could go deeper but Im thinking I could weed without stepping into the area at 4'). With all the weeds is this going to be futile or should I try it?

Ive read Larry Weaner's book, and the Claudia West/Thomas Rainer book, as well as other online guides, and have a pretty good idea as to what should be in a mix, what to expect each year, and maintenance.

I actually own 20-30ft into the other side of the fence, and remove as many invasive weeds and leave whatever is native. What has moved in is mostly virginia creeper, poison ivy, dewberry, and pokeweed, with some fox sedge, wood sedge, cinna arundinacea, poison ivy, burnweed, jump seed, and enchanters nightshade, and lots of japanese stiltgrass. Should I just go with this plant community or try to guide it toward more grasses and forbes, something else?

Here along the fence is where Id like to reseed with grass along the fence and a meadow mix.

Looking back the opposite direction

I want to leave about a 4ft wide strip of grass along the fence so I can mow it and prevent the fence from getting eaten by vines. I'm going to move the little beach plum tree thats close to the fence foreground in the second pic somewhere else. The bigger tree in the middle is a sweet birch Betula lenta. Everything gets about 4-5 hours of direct sun starting around noon, sandy loam soil over acidic clay subsoil.