A quiet roadside revolution is boosting wildflowers | Hacker News Reader

A quiet roadside revolution is boosting wildflowers

theguardian.com

253 pointsmontalbano47 comments

When we bought our house it had a lawn in the backyard. I never really liked taking care of it. Last year I worked on getting rid of the bermuda grass in my back yard. This year I put out some wild flower seeds and watched what came up. I still worked on removing the plants I didn't want, but I let a lot of the weeds come up. Most of the seeds I put out didn't take, but that's fine. I got to know the natural plants that come up. Others look at it and see an unkempt yard, but it makes me much happier than my lawn ever did. It's green, it takes less water (zero) and if you watch closely there are more birds, bees, lady bugs, and others than I ever saw with the lawn.

Stories like this one of a more careful management of land make me hopeful. I'm working to get something better going with my little plot of land too.

I've thrown out wildflower seeds many times on my lawn, but nothing took root. So I've been trying simply mowing it once a month to keep the blackberries and scotch broom from taking over, and seeing what happens.

(Blackberries and scotch broom run amok if left alone, and the former creates an impenetrable hedge taller than myself with a dead zone underneath, everything else choked out. It takes repeated mowings over several years to finally kill them.)

You need more prep to get a wildflower meadow going. The Royal Horticultural Society has a good guide here: https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?PID=436

Thank you, but that looks like a lot of work :-( and I have a brown thumb (everything I plant turns brown).

It seems reasonable to me that native plants should grow without intensive assistance (else they would go extinct). Why does this not happen?

My key reading from the article was over-fertility leads to mono-culture, so paradoxically you need to reduce soil fertility to encourage diversity.

Reducing soil fertility probably needs intervention to remove rotting vegetation etc.

I am guessing that at one point in time native plants would have had animals and insects that were eating them and maybe reducing soil fertility.

I think the reduced fertility was because the fields were being used to make hay, rather than being cut and the cuttings allowed to rot in place. The minerals in the hay were removed from the field, gradually depleting the soil.

^This (which is the same thing both the original article and the RHS article said). Grass will out compete wild flowers if the fertility of the soil is too high. Either:

- get rid of the grass

- mow it very short

and then plant wild flowers. Just throwing seeds onto the lawn will do nothing.

To get rid of grass either:

- dig it out (easy in the right soil; very hard in clay which is a lot of the UK)

- cover it with cardboard, cover the cardboard with soil, and plant on top.

I'm currently converting our front lawn to wild flowers. Luckily we don't have clay so I'm able to dig out the grass.

> I have a brown thumb

Definitely could help with that. Send me a mail with some close photos of the weeds in the area, and basic info about the continent and climate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardiness_zone)

You can cut the house or recognisable parts in the photos. I don't care about that and I don't need your exact location. Soil, exposition (sun?, deep shadow?) and climate is much more important.

Of course if your neighbours or administration throw weed killers to the soil or water systematically, nothing will grow, no matter what you try. Nothing except the more badass plants, but then you would have bigger problems than brown thumbs.

Start with pots of perennials instead.

If you’re removing Himalayan blackberries you have to dig the rhizome out. It’s not enough to cut it down. Basically you take an adze or similar and cut in where the shoots are coming out of the ground. Then pull up on the shoots and a little ball will come up with them.

Here in Washington State the Himalayan blackberries are an invasive species which grows all over the place. There are no natural predators here. If they become established then they kill everything around them including some trees. The only reliable way to remove them is by digging out the rhizome after cutting them to the ground. It can take several years to completely eliminate them from an area

If you keep mowing them, they eventually starve and die. They cannot live off of the root ball forever. So far it looks like it takes two years for that to happen. Every time they throw out shoots it consumes the root ball's food. Cutting off the shoots before they can photosynthesize more food will do the trick. It also helps to cut them down after they flower and before their resources get sucked back into the root ball in the fall.

For scotch broom, they'll also grow back if you cut them off at ground level. But I found if you cut them off right after they flower and start going to seed, they don't grow back. Apparently they throw so many resources into the flower they can't recover.

We also have a huge problem with english ivy, which looks nice but kills the trees.

I've got nothing to add but I just wanted to remark that your description sounds incredibly gruesome.

I fully agree that a garden overtaken by brambles isn't a nice thing. But it's also not true that scrubland in general is some kind of death to nature. Plants like blackberries provide protection from predation and browsing heribovores. That means they're good habitats for many species of bird, and also that they're nature's nurseries for woodland, as young trees are protected from passing deer and other animals that would otherwise eat them.

Maybe you can rent a sod remover machine? I've seen those rented out for ~40 USD per day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8Qd33NhflQ

With those machines it's more comfortable then the spade method [0], especially if the area is larger. After the sod is removed (you can put it on the compost with the bottom up to regain good soil for future uses) pour sand onto the area and mix it in. This will remove nutrients from the soil which is what many wildflowers like.

Then throw out your wildflower seeds which you need to press on afterwards (there are tools, but as a cheap method you can just walk over them), so that the wind doesn't blow them away. In the end water them (also for the next 2-4 weeks).

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQuffl5Engo

I have a nice moss carpet in and little plants that bloom purple flowers in the spring. I think perfect grass myth is something that should be done away with, often times if you let the natural plants grow in they keep other weeds like dandelions out. I still mow, but I just let the grass grow where it needs to or places where nothing else is growing. I don't need to fertilize or harm the water drainage either.

I thought that the problem with moss is that if you have a dry spell it just dies away and flakes off leaving bare unprotected earth. Grass dies back but stays physically there for longer, holding the soil together, and then it's ready to recover more quickly afterward.

> I have a nice moss carpet and little plants that bloom purple flowers in the spring

Probably wild violets. Moss gardens are an interesting cultural thing. Begin Japanology has even a chapter dedicated to moss in japanese culture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Up5jKSreGrA

As well as the advice elsewhere in the thread about reducing soil fertility to prevent grasses outcompeting wildflowers, it's worth noting that many species may take more than one year to establish. Annuals like — in the UK — poppies and cornflowers are more likely to grow the first summer after they're planted so can be used as attractive cover whilst perenials are taking seed.

One issue with this in the northeast USA is the increasing prevalence and danger of ticks and tick-borne illnesses like Lyme disease (which I had once and do not want again). I haven't yet figured out how to reconcile my respect for that danger with my hatred of green lawns.

Not sure where you are based but have you considered getting in touch with your local environmental groups or speaking to native plant enthusiasts at plant nurseries, botanical gardens or gardening events? Typically there is a lot of local knowledge with respect to both exotic (eg. classic food producing) and local species and propagation techniques and people are very happy to share experiences. In Australia we have many cross-pollinating communities in this space including growers associations, gardening societies, permaculture, bush care, native plant groups, national parks associations, etc.

Also, check out http://inaturalist.org/ - challenge yourself to spot one new local species of plant, animal or fungi every day. AI and people will help you identify them. It's an awesomely gamified natural nerd-out.

Your comment reminded me of Michael Pollans book: Second nature. Its a really interesting book that talks about gardening, and also starts by talking about lawn care and how we are all made to believe that a trimmed lawn is the American way.

https://www.amazon.com/Second-Nature-Gardeners-Michael-Polla...

Here is a relevant video by the fantastic self-taught botanist Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't

PSA - Kill Your Lawn w/ Silphium terebinthinaceum

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz9I2YwmV8M

(Also related HN discussion on another of his videos: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21041193)

I have to thank you for this link - one of the greatest channels I've ever stumbled upon on YouTube!

Texas has been doing something similar for a while, it's really pretty when things are in bloom.

- https://www.wildflower.org/project/ecological-roadsides

- https://www.wildflower.org/plants-main

- https://texashighways.com/culture/people/a-runner-reflects-o...

- https://texashighways.com/wildflowers/

Texas in the spring is wonderful. Everyone is out taking pictures in the massive fields of bluebonnets and indian paintbrush. Of course, it can also cause traffic issues as people pull over to do the photo op in the medians.

Giant shoulders mean this usually happens by the highway without trouble.

TxDOT has a similar program: https://www.txdot.gov/inside-txdot/division/maintenance/wild...

Where we live ditches that don’t need the full capacity of an open ditch have been filled with gravel and then perennial flowering plants have been seeded. The place was absolut teeming with butterflies, bees and bumble bees.

New Jersey has had a trial program for several years now. In fact, you can buy the seed mix that the Garden State Parkway uses.

https://www.gspwildflowers.com/shop

Oh, neat. The annuals make for a stunning field. See my top-level comment for an album of photos I took in a cloverleaf.

They must be doing the same thing along I-80 as well. For several years, I have been seeing these patches of bright pink/purple flowers here in NJ and been wondering about them as they looked too regular to be entirely natural. I love them and they add some much needed color to the landscape.

Yes! It's a statewide program. There's a specific jughandle at the 78/Turnpike interchange that has a nice patch of flowers every summer. It's funny seeing it amid all the industry and crud of the area.

What a marvelous initiative. We should be doing this everywhere.

In a house where I used to live, I left as much as possible as meadow (because I am lazy and too cheap to water it), cutting it only twice a year to reduce the fire risk. Everybody else installed the golf course style lawns. I had the best looking yard by a mile :-) and was very happy with it.

The NJ Turnpike has been planting lots of wildflowers, which make an attractive subject for photography.

One cloverleaf near me had cosmos:

https://flic.kr/s/aHsmG1mX94

Those are some very attractive photos, thank you.

Though for my own information, and forgive my ignorance... is that the kind of pseudo-bokeh you get from a camera phone? Or was that you being very artistic? Either way the shots are nicely composed.

That's real bokeh from a 36×24mm sensor and either moderately fast apertures or long focal lengths.

I love this story. I don’t see why they need to reinvent the wheel with the sucking machine and taking the clippings to an anaerobic digestion facility though. A method for removing clippings and doing something useful with them has been around for centuries, it is called baling hay.

Even better, farmers will sometimes come do it for free!

If anyone is so inclined, I would encourage you to do a web search for "how to make seed bombs".

Essentially a ball of clay, seeds, and a small quantity of organic matter to facilitate distribution of seeds and reduce bird predation.

Please, please research native species if you decide to go this route.

Have you ever seen them work, or seen data on them? I've never had them work, and they don't seem like they would either - bunch of seeds landing in a ball together would lead to too much competition, right? That is, if they didn't sprout while the ball initially dried.

I think the temptation is to put too many seeds into the mix, creating the problem you identified. When you broadcast seeds you want a certain number of pounds per thousand square feet and instead you have a ball that will cover a few square inches. You aren’t trying to fill an empty lot, you’re trying to get a few self-seeding plants established.

I did some in a couple places where I no longer went, so I have no idea what happened to them, and unfortunately the spot where they seemed to work got turned into a building the very next year. I’m in areas with low clay content in the soils so it’s difficult to source materials without buying them.

Minnesota actually has a formal program for this called Roadsides for Wildlife: https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/roadsidesforwildlife/index.html

How cool and uninituitive. I worry about prime butterfly habitat right next to a road with high-speed radiator grills.

My guess is that loss of individuals to vehicle strike is not important for the overall population. What's important is the carrying capacity of the habitat which, according to this article, has been significantly increased.

It's likely as nothing compared to running over the strip with a tractor / slasher twice a year ... BUT I expect the timings of those ensure minimal impact to the life cycles of the insects, plus most that are in a mobile phase of their life will likely fly out of the way quickly enough.

Either way, the fact numbers are increasingly rapidly suggests the tradeoff is in favour of the butterflies.

Most butterflies will mate, make territories and remain in the flowered area. As they have yet all that they want, the need to move on and cross the road will decrease. Many butterflies will lay in weeds also so the area is safe for they for most of this live cycle. And in winter they simply will migrate. Is much better than the other option, safer for bikers and cheaper for the government.

> The Environment Agency (EA) did not renew the permit for Lincolnshire to continue the trial due to concerns about waste codes and regulations.

Never let a good idea get in the way of British traditions.

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