I really don't care what it is, as long as it's green. One of the prettiness sights I ever saw at my other house was a multitude of bright yellow dandelions mixed in with a sea of blooming violets. It's almost criminal that John Q Suburbia is seemingly oblivious to the stunning beauty of a scene like this, doesn't care about the host of beneficial insects that lawn "weeds" support and wants to chemically nuke it all into oblivion.

Anyway, I've got all sorts of stuff growing out in the pasture mixed in with the grass. but from a distance it all looks like lawn but with some added prettiness of small blooming flowers scattered about here and there. I really don't know what most of them are other than clover, dandelions, and violets -- though I should since I have a book on Michigan wildflowers LOL!

ETA: You could check out Prairie Moon's website for some ideas: Prairie Moon Nursery

so my long winded question is are there any acceptable lawn weeds?

==>>> took me a while to find it.. lol ...

your base question is.. what is a weed ... there are many definitions ... e.g. you didnt plant it there.. its a weed ... you dont want it.. its a weed ... you hate it.. its a weed... i could go on and on and on .. lol .. its subjective.. and based on what you think ...

in suburbia .. i was a lawn warrior ... if it wasnt kentucky blue.. it was a weed.. and had to be eradicated from the face of the earth .. or at least my lawn ...

moved to 5 acres rural .. former horse pasture ... i mowed it like a lawn .. and called it a lawn.. but frankly it was about 50% grass .. and who cared .. it wasnt like i was going to buy 100 bags of weed-be-gone.. 3 times a year to put it on ...

i have at least 8 feet of sand under it.. by mid july.. EVERYTHING mown is brown.. thru about mid september.. except for.. wait for it .. the weeds .. it was at this point.. that i reset my idea of a lawn weed.. and came to accept the things that stayed green out there ...

mx also moved to 5 acres of horse pasture.. and she is telling you the same thing ...

and lets get this straight.. short of having a junk pile on your front lawn ... who the heck cares what the neighbors think.. and feel free to tell them to keep it to themselves .. i am not going to be guilted into submission... besides.. can you not look at the rest of the gardens.. and see the beauty you cranky old witch .. or warlock .. lol .. yeah.. ive been there .. the things i said in my head.. but never let past my lips.. lol ...

feel free to come here and complain .. weve probably all lived it ... and its probably better to get it off your chest.. then start screaming at the old hag .. lol ...

ken

I have never been a lawn purist - it's a ridiculous and ecologically unsound pretension - and I'll tolerate most anything that grows in my lawn. Currently, it is populated by lawn daisies, clover, violets, veronica, wild strawberries, a native erodium, a few dandelions, some patches of ajuga and creeping Charlie and even a clump or 2 of hardy cyclamen. And crocuses earlier in the year. Also moss, which is omnipresent in my climate :-)

I draw the line at blackberry and English ivy, which try to invade from the adjacent green belt, tree seedlings (some spontaneous, some planted by the squirrels) and taprooted thugs like plantain and dock. I also try to pull the worst of the spring annuals - shot weed, purple lamium, Geranium robertianum, fireweed. The last two pop up nearly year round here but are at their worst in spring. I never get them all so ensure weeding job security :-)

It's a rural enough area that no one complains. That's usually relegated to neighborhoods with an HOA but then they complain about everything.

"mx also moved to 5 acres of horse pasture.. and she is telling you the same thing ..."

Oh, I wish. It's only 3... ;op

I too am not a lawn purist. My "lawn" - and I call it that very loosely! - consists of a bit of grass, (and weedy grass at that) violets, bluets, broadleaf plantain, something that looks like strawberries without the berries, pink clover, tons of canadian mayflower, moss, lichen on the moss, and a WONDERFUL haircap moss. I love this stuff. I have huge swaths of it, and it never needs mowing, is like walking on cotton pillows, and it's green. The only bad thing about it is when it's really drought-like it does turn brown, but otherwise I do love it. And I have some spots of ajuga - it's no longer where I planted it in the garden, lol, but it has popped up in other places and I leave it. And I too have crocuses in my lawn, purposely planted, and this year I noticed a few stray chionodoxa and grape hyacinths out in the lawn, which must have reseeded there.

I also am finding increasing amounts of creeping charlie. And I'm starting to find what I think is wild sorrel out in the lawn, because apparently there's not enough of that darn stuff in my garden beds. I'm sure there's more, good and bad, out there, but that's all I can think of off the top of my head. I actually want to add white clover to it but never seem to get around to it - my attention always goes to the gardens first.

My neighbor on one side IS a lawn purist. He's out on his lawn tractor every other day (my husband says he must drive it to get out of the house lol) However, despite the fact I know my "lawn" drives him crazy, he has never said anything, and I don't expect he ever will, and if he were to I wouldn't care.

There are two lawns around here that I always make a point of driving by each spring. One has in almost the whole front yard a huge swath of ajuga that is gorgeous in bloom. Unfortunately I think the second house must have changed hands. It had a whole front lawn of purple and white violets and was absolutely stunning. I drove by once or twice so far this year and so far only see green. Since this carpet of violets has been there for 20+ years, it makes me wonder if there are new owners who ripped out the violets and planted grass. Such a shame.

:)

Dee

Ooh, I forgot buttercups. Have 'em and love 'em! My husband mows around the big patch of them and my son used to always pick them for me daily when he was a tiny tot!

:)

Dee

Hawkweeds might be easy to control, but dandelions are everywhere, and its ridiculous to blame the neighbor's yard for your own dandelion population. There are so many seeds in the air coming from all sorts of places, especially waste places. The majority of yards in my subdivision are filled with dandelions, except for one or two people who use a lawn service, and their yards look quite dead and sterile, with no visits from any wildlife. People think that killing all the violets and spring beauties in there lawns is progress? A big lie told by big lawn 'care' industry. They make billions off of the fear of dandelions and creeping Charlie.

in Europe Prunella vulgaris is quite resilient and ducks under the mower (not sure whether invasive or not)

and to my amazement Oreganum vulgaris (probably) is taking over parts of my garden and lawn, you can mow it, the flowers grow back and flower on shorter stalks, it is almost too enthusiastically spreading for my taste

Lol I hope no one is under the impression I’m on the fence with calling Scott’s in to poison off all the weeds! Not even close. I might try and reign in the creeping Charlie and violets but there’s zero chance I want a carpet of roundup ready bluegrass! ( there’s an interesting story btw, roundup resistant turf grass that was developed and has now escaped and is being hunted down)...

GG- I wish lawn daisies did well here but they melt in the summer if it’s bellis your referring to, but I need to find some Veronica again! A sky blue patch creeping through the grass would be perfect. Actually your whole lawn sounds perfect. Purple lamium must be tamer out here, it’s one of my favorite weeds but better in the beds than lawn.

flora- you’re right, although I don’t really care what anyone thinks, I guess I don’t intentionally want to make problems. I’ve noticed the hawkweed rarely shows up next door but the dandelions do, but I think lawn fertilizer is the reason and hawkweed prefers poorer soil. Buttercups sound good. I had them at the last house but none here.

dee- you’re my hero, you have bluets! I love them. Last spring I found a roadside with bunches and bunches and was seriously considering plant theft. This spring I’m devastated to see they sprayed the whole bank and they’re all dead. My honor is intact but I don’t know if I made the right call. I do have some moss doing well, but the grass is still too thick. Give me a few more years though, I think I’ll be shade gardening soon enough as all the stuff here grows!

jay I do need spring beauties.

thanks for the ideas so far!

It's a tough call, between having a huge yard and gardens, taking care of a household and being a caregiver, I have very little energy remaining at the end of the day to be having to dig out endless amounts of dandelions from my plantings and I mean they can seed out as thick as hair on a dogs back, tens of thousands of them! Yes, mulch is vitally important in this land of the dandelion where they grow in such headshaking vastness! I dislike spraying, but if not, then I'd be forced to mow my large acreage lawn every few days for 6 weeks on end just to prevent dandelions from seedling out, they also have a tendency to duck their heads when the blades are whirling above them, lol. I grew up on a very large grain farm, having a clean weed free lawn is of course not a necessary matter, though if not for chemical and fertilizer usage, crop production would truly be scant and making it impossible to feed the world's population ... but, then again we're talking of lawns and not food production. Now that my lawn has been sprayed, my plan is to maintain it as healthy and full as possible to prevent as many new dandelion seedlings from appearing as possible and in turn reducing the amount of spray required.

Katob, the lawn daisies melt here in summer as well (yes, Bellis perennis). I originally thought they might be spring ephemerals but the leaves do persist. They just stop flowering in hot weather and our dry summers. But they sure make up for it with their extravagant bloom season now!

Frozebudd- wow. Yes you had quite a few! Weeding all those seedlings out of your beds must surely have been a pain, and I bet the perfect turf afterwards sets your plantings off much better than a competing field of yellow. I don't know. I talk big about how nice all the dandelions look here, but if they were that thick even I might think twice when all the seeds are drifting over into my flower beds. That's becoming my opinion towards creeping charlie. It looks great with the dandelions but it is doing a little too well in spots, and when it creeps into the chaos of the flower beds I swear it gets everywhere in just a few days. As for the dandelions I do mow just to get rid of the seed heads. It's a pain to cut every few days but I like watching the finches and sparrows picking through the seeds in the morning and then chopping them all down in the afternoon. Plus it keeps my MIL happier and she still calls me over when there's eggplant parm in the oven.

Linaria- I do have some prunella but it really doesn't spread far beyond the one spot. It's nice enough though. Oregano though... I love that idea. I have two creeping forms but I think the golden one might be a little too distracting in the lawn. The green would be cool to smell as you walk through, and would probably do better than thyme which rots out here and there in the summer.

GG- I looked next door where there were some lawn daisies planted on purpose in the beds and they didn't make it from last year. They must not like hot and humid or the "weed" type is a stronger grower.

Katob, that was kind and understanding of you to say, when I posted, it truly was not intension to imply that we all must rid ourselves of dandelions. In the UK, folks are generally much more ecologically minded and proudly show of their lawns sprinkled with dandies and of the value for insect life. I was prepared for backlash when tweeting these same photos, though one fella commented "Yes, we value our dandelions, but the amount you have there is disgusting, they surely can become a noxious weed!"

In my more than 40 years of gardening, last year was the first time I've had the lawn sprayed and certainly would not have done so if not for the phenomenal amount of dandelions! And, yes, after the weed clean up and some fertilizer, the lawn looks outstanding and the garden and all plantings now finally being nearly completely weed free.

Friends have a beautiful yard tucked in a forest of tall trees, they do little lawn care, it's all thin and patchy, but with large swaths of dianthus and some type of blue creeping flower blanketing the ground, looks very nice!

Funny, I never even considered you were suggesting that we all get rid of dandelions. Every garden by definition involves choices on what to grow and what to edit out and I think just by being gardeners we're on the plus side of making the world a better place with all our plant diversity. I know your garden still offers a ton of pollinator options.

Crownvetch is long blooming and I'm sure pollinators love it... but I don't. i spent part of the afternoon spraying for it around the edges of the yard, plus spraying for mugwort which in my opinion has zero redeeming qualities.

I'd prefer to not spray but we can all make our own decisions.

Crabgrass and dandelions are the villains in our yard ... crabgrass because it's an annual that chokes out the grass and then dies (and the bright green is not really preferable either), and dandelions because of the waving white tufts (seed heads) they form. Violets and buttercups are welcome if not encouraged, and if other things are green and play nice with others, they can stay. Moss has become a bit of a problem child lately, as some of it makes these hardened masses that are a bit raised ... we don't care about perfectly smooth, but rising up and smothering others is no good. Tree seedlings are almost never where you want them, so out they yank. Undesirables are removed manually, not chemically.

As for the neighbors, one side required a root barrier to stop the bamboo invasion (our barrier, their bamboo), and the other needs to stop reaching over the property line with a saw ... I don't think either cares about some flowers in our yard. I know the bamboo side once praised dandelions (don't know their current opinion) ... we just keep digging the ones in our yard, which is down to a handful of dandelions each year. The other side mows their lawn to death, so unlikely they'd know if anything could bloom.

"It's almost criminal that John Q Suburbia is seemingly oblivious to the stunning beauty of a scene like this,"

What's criminal is assuming your standard of beauty is more valid or authentic than anyone else's.

I don't even have time to wade through this thread, so I'm just going to say...there are questions of beauty and then there are questions of what actually makes ecological sense. Fortunately, those latter ones have answers.

The United States before European settlers?

East coast and eastern midwest was forests.

Midwest and high plants were grasslands.

Intermountain region varied from desert to forests depending on elevation, which is true of the west generally with the exception of the coastal strip of CA and the PNW which of course was forests.

If you own property, your goal is to decide for what purpose you are owning it. If your goal is "doing the best for the environment" as nebulous as that is, then I'm fine with you logically saying it's returning it to what was there before the horror and malevolence of European settlement. If your goal is to have a soccer field for your kid, you should maintain it to those standards. If your goals is to have a garden, you should maintain it to those standards. I've traveled enough of the world to see that the good ole US of A is a place where unfortunately, people can take cheap and plentiful land and suburban sprawl for granted, leading to an unacceptable option: your yard being an ugly shitbox of dead trees, overgrown shrubbery, weeds benign and invasive, and really bad design decisions. Not because of a disagreement about what I or anyone else considers 'beauty' but an obvious inability to care for what was implemented. If there's literally been a dead blue spruce in your garden for 5 years, you've made some kind of mistake. A dead tree sitting there becoming a snag is a safety hazard if nothing else, whether you think it's beautiful or not. So...sorry folks...the fact is...the people who let dandelions and other lawn weeds go wild are ALSO more likely to allow environmentally damaging invasives like Celastrus and Microstegium take over their yard. My garden, even with its dastardly non-natives, still supports a teaming array of life meanwhile NOT permitting anything invasive to take hold and produce copious seeds like the gardens of my hayseed (no pun intended) neighbors. Native bumblebees are just as happy pollinating my Euphorbias as they would be pollinating invasive dandelions. So...I guess my point is...just take your stewardship of your land and environmental responsibilities seriously and do something that either meets an abstract ecological goal (restoring your yard to whatever was truly 'natively' there before) or maintains the property in a way that is civic minded. So yeah, if you're in a neighborhood where some people are trying to maintain proper lawns, yes, it is actually unfriendly to have huge patches of weeds; just as it would be plant a spreading bamboo along the property line.

There is are so many ridiculously bad assumptions around here, attacking them is like spraying broadleaf weeds in my lawn LOL.

"The majority of yards in my subdivision are filled with dandelions, except for one or two people who use a lawn service, and their yards look quite dead and sterile, with no visits from any wildlife"

My neighbors have scalped crabgrass and microstegium filled with what weeds can scrape by on the meagre, concrete-like "topsoil" in their yards, I have deep, properly cut fescue that is free of weeds. Hhhhmmmmmm...which lawn can I walk at night in summer with a flashlight and literally see 10 to 20 toads hopping around when I walk down to my rhododendron patch? Which garden sometimes has a tree frog in every tree? (and probably 20 or 30 in the big ones?) Which garden has a big swarm of fireflies most summers, that I don't see as much elsewhere on the street?

Interestingly I am beginning to suspect that a reason I have very little deer damage is not only do I never cut my lawn at less than 4 inches, there are areas of my property where I leave high grass up all winter. The deer would rather eat that than, say, (mildly) poisonous rhododendrons...because most people in suburbia scalp their lawns leaving very little grass to eat! (but, hurray, have those beautiful "life giving" dandelions LMAO - the sweet nectar of suburban life! All praise the dandelion!!!) So of course the deer would rather eat the shrubbery in typical American suburbia! Some of the few times I've seen the bloody things in my yard, they are just eating the grass like any other ruminant would! Once in a while they will browse something but very seldom enough to worry me or severely set it back. For example this winter they took maybe 25%-30% of the leaves of a Camellia sinensis, but it will be ok. And yes, I'm aware of studies showing deer tend to forage primarily non-grasses...but those studies aren't asking the deer what they would LIKE to eat, they are studying what the things are they HAVE to eat - it might just be they seldom have the option of getting as much of their diet from grass as they would like. Being out in the open - where grass tends to grow LOL - makes them more susceptible to predators. Mostly humans at this point...and of course the fact I'm in a rural area where there's more hunting than inner suburbs is of course another reason I don't have as much of a problem with the damn things.

But, back to the original question LOL - the only weed I do not spray in my lawn is clover. In properly cut cool season lawn grasses, it just never achieves a density that makes it very noticeable. It's potential to invade my beds is the lowest of any common lawn "weed". It also fixes nitrogen and gives bees some nectar when it blooms. So I don't sweat it. (I have a lot of interfaces between beds and lawn, and eventually lawn will comprise < 50% of my property, even though it's almost 3 acres) It would get killed off if I ever had to do broadcast spraying with my tractor, but I haven't had to do that in years and the last time I did it was just to get crabgrass. I don't expect to ever need to. 12 years ago I did a couple years of broadcast spraying because this yard had been full of onion, charlie, dandelion, violet, etc. The usual suspects. If you cut correctly, don't under or over fertilize, you can spot treat the weeds that do, yes, blow in from your neighbors. Have forests on 2 sides and trust me no dandelions are blowing in from there.

Violets might look sweet and innocent but at least in my climate and soils their ability to invade beds is near the top of the list! They are absolutely monstrous!

Bittersweet is one of the few things that rates poisonable in our yard ... it gets yanked to an extent and painted where it can't be yanked (too deep, too big, too high, through perennials). Not sure if we have stiltgrass, but googling it, it looks like something we'd pull ... if it resembles bamboo, it dies. (Sorry all you bamboo lovers out there ... bad experiences means none for us.)

Ha! You just must not have the same deer ... The deer here prefer hostas, phlox, daylily flowers, and then the yew, cedar, mountain laurel, and azalea in the winter. Heuchera and blueberry bushes are on the menu, too, if I don't keep them caged. Yup, they trod right through the snow to the bushes against the house, and mama keeps teaching her twins (and yes, it's always twins) which are my favorite daylilies to eat the flowers off of just as the buds are ready to open ... They eat the grass, too, but perennials must be dessert or something. They sleep under the pines a lot and are hanging in the back yard at least once every few days, so I suspect they live nearby. Deer would like to eat everything ... books lie: there is no such thing as deer resistant except maybe daffodils; they can tell you which are the true delicacies and require special protection. As for predators, I think their main predators around here would be the coyotes, coywolf (there might be a wolf, too), bobcat, and maybe the fox for the little ones. Same goes for bunnies ... except then you can add every tulip to their menu and birds of prey to their predator list (hawk, eagle, falcon). They'll eat the grass and clover, but they'd rather lounge under the cedar and tuck in to the garden for a meal.

Clover spreads like mad here. As for violets, well ... they're allowed in the beds, too. I agree with "spot treating," though we do it with hand tool. We could take out the violets if we wanted to wage war against them like we did the dandelions; we just happen to like the violets. (We know they're seed shooters and keep them anyways.) The grape hyacinths, croci, and rogue daffodils get to stay, too.

Thanks for the level headed post. I'm not an true expert on lawns other than keeping mine the way I want it to look, but I wonder if clover spreading is a sign it has some advantage in terms of being able to fix nitrogen, so it can spread and outcompete better in low nitrogen soils? In fairness, my soil is a pretty good clay loam, most of it brown not red, and maybe that favors the balance towards fescue instead of weeds too. It's also possible I just have more 'benign' strain of it I suppose.

I do have a weed free TTT Fescue front lawn, for ease of maintenance overall (no weeds spreading into flowerbeds or pavement cracks), and also with a thought to rapid sale of the property if needed (suburban "starter home" neighborhood). This I achieve without a yard service or chemicals, only corn gluten meal and hand pulling here and there. My one neighbor has a lawn that is 75% creeping bentgrass and that is the one weed that I will go full bore on keeping out of mine because it just looks tatty and spreads so rapidly - and here is it almost May and the stuff is still brown in his yard.

The other side has a lot of violets, clover, and creeping charlie, which I do pull when they "cross the line" but I don't care if they have them. I do wish they would mulch their unused front garden bed though, because it is full of bittercress that is going to seed prolifically as I type this.

My back yard is all gardens, pots and leaf mulch, so I don't have to mow and also don't have much weeds. The mulch gradually is improving the water absorbency back there also (I hope).

I'm in total Deerville both summer and winter! Ironically, seems something has spooked them of late, don't know what it is, but their usual casual strolling through the grounds has been replaced by mad dashing as if wolves are on their tails, really I can't figure that out! This winter, there had been a deer death / kill within the forest just a few hundred feet from the house, only bits of hide and a large fur pile remain ... from what I've read, such should not be a factor in scaring them off.

I don't have anywhere near the number of dandelions in FrozeBud's photo, just a spattering here and there - so far. Nothing compared to neighbors up and down my road. I'm thinking we all mowed early and very short this Spring and continue to do so, thus the dandelions don't grow high enough to get their heads cut off.

Also had a very small clump of white flowers under the crabapple tree down front that I had babied and mowed around for the past three maybe even four years. I didn't realize until this Spring that they were Spring Beauties! They bloomed pink instead of white this year, and the clump was bigger.

I wanted to keep them there but I worried they would start to spread now and become a problem because I wouldn't want to mow them (and give neighbors more anxiety). So I decided to dig the clump up and transplant it to the orchard. Two days later I go to check on them - all the blossoms had been eaten off! Then the next time I checked the entire clump had been dug up and thrown a few feet away. Aw, man. I was so sad. All those years I coveted that little clump of flowers. Perhaps they wouldn't have grown there anyway and preferred my front lawn.

Schoolhouse I bet you'll see another one of two spring beauty come up in the original spot. They seed out fairly well and are pretty tough. If you can still find the tuber and replant it (one more time) I'm sure it will have a good chance of coming back next year.

Frozebudd - very cute, but all those deer tracks are a little scary! I drive through gamelands to and from work, and as I come closer to the protected (from hunting) areas vs the protected (for hunting) areas the entire woodland loses the bottom 6 feet of vegetation from deer browsing. Here we are still relatively deer-free, but two years ago nearby development pushed them around for a while and a few kept showing up in the neighborhood, but they've moved on since.

I bet you'll know soon enough if coyotes or coywolfs have moved in. I know the first can be pretty vocal, I don't know about the second.

BBcake- bamboo... yikes... and bittersweet is almost worse since it practically seeds in endlessly once it gains a foothold in a neighborhood, and you just have to miss a seedling for a year or two before it shows it's head at the top of some prized shrub!

raee- Sounds like my front lawn, except my grass is more of a mix. I do fertilize every now and then to keep the grass thick and the crabgrass shaded out, but there's always a couple odd weeds showing up. Stupid me has common milkweed in the flower beds and the shoots come up well into the lawn, so that's all me but bittercress is another one for the zero tolerance list and like you said, mulching is the best control.

Davidrt- I'm halfway tempted to say I didn't even have the time to wade through your posts but then figured you maybe didn't mean it the way I took it. Thanks for finding the time to respond though. Although there was some mention of favoring native plants I'd rather this didn't turn into a native-nazi vs I'll plant as many callery pears as I want argument. Natives in general host significantly more species of insect and animal than completely unrelated introduced species, but both are better than astro turf and blacktop so I don't see the argument. Not everyone wants a chewed up milkweed at their doorstep, so there's always dianthus and distylium and that looks great and brings in a couple bees and butterflies.

Thanks for the discussion everyone.

I like violets, they're the state flower of NJ. "they are the host plant for a wide range of butterflies known as fritillaries. Like monarchs, whose caterpillars only feed on milkweed, the fourteen species of greater fritillaries (genus Speyeria) and sixteen lesser fritillaries (genus Bolloria) will only lay their eggs where there are violets for their larva to feed upon." https://www.xerces.org/blog/plants-for-pollinators-violets#:~:text=Viola%20sororia,of%20butterflies%20known%20as%20fritillaries.

Instead of wood mulch or compost I use violets as a living mulch. I weed grasses out of the violets, leaving only deer tongue grass, fox sedge, asters or any other interesting volunteers. I have Staphylea trifoliata, Vernonia novaborascensis and Lysimachia ciliata planted in here that will elevate the height of the vegetation later in the season. I generally rake leaves into these areas in the fall as well.

Sedum ternatum and Sceptridium dissectum growing in a shady lawn spot near a fence.
I have Salix discolor, Helenium autumnale, Spiraea latifolia and Doellingeria umbellata planted in here, more native plants with host-specialist relationships.

I renovated where I actually want lawn last fall with fine fescue turf grasses that rated highly in NTEP trials. Maintenance will come in the fall with core aeration and overseeding. I'm actively encouraging Prunella vulgaris, Potentilla canadensis, Claytonia virginica and Houstonia caerulea to get them going in the lawn, leaving less space for weeds.

In the wood mulched bed I had too much grass to selectively ignore and used the mulch to kill it. I have running serviceberry and elderberry planted, both will combine to form a weed smothering ground cover and provide me with food.

I manually weed out wild garlic, dandelions, creeping charlie, japanese honey suckle, garlic mustard, bittersweet, stiltgrass, etc because I personally don't want them around. It's a continuous chore though as the plants grow abundantly on public and private roadsides on my street. Its also not worth going out and spraying every one of them with 2,4-D either. I inherited a lot of weed and ill-sited tree problems with this property, some things are a problem and need to be addressed, some things can wait.

Sceptridium dissectum occurs wild on parts of my property too. It's an interesting looking fern.

I admire anyone willing to put the time into primarily manual control of weeds. I simply don't have the time. That being said I pull plenty of things when pulling is the last resort, like bittercresses that are just about to pop their seeds. If you can see the rows of seed bulges it's too late to spray them with herbicide, they might still pop the next day. I will sometimes hit those with the weed torch if there is a group of them I want to inactivate.

Skip your violets are absolutely lovely!

:)

Dee

One more picture from my patch of 'death and sterility'. Since I haven't drained the lowest wetland-like part of my property - as someone who wanted a 3 acre putt-putt golf course of scalped weed grasses and dandelions might have done - I have these. I would not have even known they were found in the Piedmont of the mid-Atlantic, away from flowing water until a few years ago when I noticed them.

Anyone know what it is? There is a little brook about 50 feet away but they are just in a permanently damp spot. I've never seen one, apparently I would have to go out late at night.

Skip that's looking great! How long have you been there? It looks like there was some major neglect going on but you know where you're going and it's coming together, and it also doesn't sound like this is your first garden?

I had stilt grass show up a couple years ago and am not sure how I'm going to deal. It's easy to pull, but when it's hiding in the lawn or infesting the neighbor's yard it seems like it's overwhelming and here to stay. Stilt grass, garlic mustard, and queen anne's lace are probably the three which I spend the most time pulling, but at least the last two are easy to get at when they're in bloom, plus at that time you don't even need to bend :)

Good luck with the bluets. Will your lawn be thin enough? Here they do best in bare lawns with mossy areas or low nutrient, short grass areas.

I have a spot of 'lawn' out back which I don't mow until August. The grass goes to seed and all kinds of wildflowers have filled in on their own or with a little help over the years. It's one of my favorite spots but gets smaller every time I carve out a new bed or plant one more tree, so it's close to disappearing.

This is my first garden. The property was foreclosed on some time after the 2008 housing market collapse, then some investors bought it in 2014 and fixed up the house but didn't do much with the land, and we bought it and moved in late 2015. That earlier owner was ill and couldn't take care of it and it was neglected for about a decade according to the neighbor. It was ill managed for much longer than that based on the size of weed trees that were growing just feet from the house. I have to take it on little by little, and a landscaper's special type landscape isn't really appealing to me, I like a more bucolic aesthetic and it fits the agricultural heritage of my town.

The stilt grass is awful. The best I can do is try to grow a thick lawn to crowd it out and pull it out or mow it in non-lawn areas. Penn state has a fact sheet that admits stilt grass isn't going anywhere, and even on restorations it will have to be tolerated as a component after initial control.

I do have a mossy area between some silver maple trees that might work for the bluets. I read about applying sulfur to create infertile areas which I am thinking about.

Your "lawn" sounds interesting. Do the late summer and fall flowering perennials still come through after that mowing?

@UpperBayGardener (zone 7)-those are crayfish holes. We call them mud volcanos. We have them in our yard too, and we have a creek about 50 ft away. When the water table gets really high, water sprays out like a geyser. I occasionally find the crayfish crawling around near the holes.

Well Skip it looks like you're a natural at this, you're making great progress and it sounds like a lot of research goes into each step.

I make a (very under-appreciated) hobby out of looking around in town and deciding what trees were planted and which are just weed trees that never got the axe.. or hoe when they were small. A ratty privet hedge with a couple Norway maples or black cherries coming up along the property line is usually a dead giveaway... fortunately some weed trees turn into pretty nice assets after a few decades!

That's not very hopeful on the stilt grass. I guess I kind of figured that would be the case based on how easily it blankets huge swathes of woodland, so I'll just keep at it.

My lawn/meadow goes from crocus to tulips to creeping phlox to oxeye daisies to blackeyed susans and butterfly weed. Then I usually get tired of the long grass and start mowing it again until the colchicum start flowering. From then on I usually mow it regularly until winter settles in. Sometimes I mow around a few aster or goldenrod clumps, but I'm not the biggest fan of goldenrod so that's rare. Even after an August mowing those small white asters (mostly calico asters) manage to sprout up one more time and bloom, which is a nice ending to the year.

This is almost mowing time. It used to be bigger and sunnier, but I've let aspen suckers grow into weed trees just because I like them (for now).

This is about a month later with the colchicum in bloom. From the swing set back is usually meadow.

I tried creeping phlox in the lawn but it doesn't compete well. If my lawn were thinner though I'd absolutely try this (minus the stones of course)

I don't know kato... adding the stones would sure give the neighbors something to talk about lol. Besides your nonconventional lawn, that is! Your meadow is lovely.

There's a house I drive by each day on the way to and from work, and there is a huge swath of ajuga in it. Almost the whole front lawn, which includes a slope down to the street. Gorgeous. I have been very much enjoying it and was horrified two day ago on my way home to see that the homeowner had mowed the lawn! Ack! Really? He couldn't wait another week or so? I was soooo disappointed.

:)
Dee

Well that stinks! But at least they didn't put down weed and feed, so next spring there should be another show. I wonder if the ajuga was originally planted to cover the slope and over the years the edge between lawn and ajuga has just faded away.

I just cut the grass today after work. So much has been converted to flower beds but it's still such a dull waste of time to mow what's left.

At least you cut yours. Mine is a mess. Our lawn mower needs repair and we haven't gotten to it yet. I keep telling myself we can say we're participating in No Mow May for the sake of pollinators. I should get a sign for the lawn lol. Honestly, while it's a bit messy I'm really not overly worried and DO like that there's so much out there right now for the early pollinators. That's more important than what my neighbors think.

:)
Dee

P.S. kato I keep going back to that photo of the phlox. It's so beautiful. I don't seem to have much luck with phlox but I do have a very small patch of it (remnants of a larger swath) and this patch is a few feet removed from the bed, and is in the middle of the lawn now. I do so enjoy my little patch, even though I have phlox envy from all the phlox I see hanging gorgeously from many many walls on my daily drive, mocking me and my attempts to grow it...