How to Reject the Status Quo with A Rebel Garden (Part Two of Three)

The hardest part of changing your yard isn’t the shovel work, it’s the moment you decide the “perfect lawn” game isn’t worth playing anymore. I’m continuing our three-part series on growing a rebel garden with the second phase: Reject. If you’ve ever felt stuck between keeping 100% turf and going 100% native, I’ll show you the wide, realistic middle ground where a small, intentional garden can shift your whole landscape over time.

We dig into the real reasons people don’t start: fear of what neighbors will think, fear it’ll look messy, fear you’ll kill plants, and fear you’re signing up for more work. I make the case for rejecting perfection and choosing participation instead. Your first rebel garden can be small (I recommend staying under 250 square feet), flexible, and designed for easy wins. I’ll also walk you through a quick site reality check so you pick a spot you’ll actually see, enjoy, and maintain while it establishes.

Then we get practical: safety and planning. Before you dig, call 811 for utility locates. It’s free, it’s simple, and it protects you and your property. Finally, we tackle the most controversial step for many homeowners: removing turf. I explain the tension around using glyphosate as a one-time transition tool, why purpose and frequency matter, and what alternatives look like if you want to avoid chemicals. The goal stays the same: move away from ongoing chemical dependency and build a low-input, wildlife-friendly native plant garden that supports pollinators, birds, clean water, and healthy soil.

If this matches your values, join me for the 10-day Rebel Garden Challenge starting June 19th. Subscribe, share this with a neighbor who’s tired of lawn upkeep, and leave a review so more people can find a better way to grow.

Join A Rebel Garden in Ten Days Challenge!

Learn more about getting your own Rebel Garden at ABetterYard.org.

Transcript

Welcome And Series Context

Brad Tabke 0:09

Hello and welcome, my friend, to a Better Yard podcast. My name is Brad Tabke. I am the founder of A Better Yard, and it is my absolute honor to have you here with us today. This is part two of a three-part series on growing a rebel garden. That's our theme of the month in June here at A Better Yard. And so last week we talked about reclaim, which is reclaiming your yard for a rebel garden. And so this week, so I highly encourage you to go back and check that one out. We walk through identifying opportunities in your yard, finding spaces that aren't serving your family particularly well, and choosing a location for your first rebel garden. So if you haven't listened to that episode yet, I'd encourage you to head back and start there because today we are moving on to the second phase, which is reject. So the first phase was reclaim. Now we're on reject. And I think this is actually the hardest phase for most people. Not because it's physically difficult, it because it is mentally difficult. We have to get over a hurdle in order to reject the status quo and move forward with a landscape that supports all the ecosystems around us. And so the hardest part isn't the digging. Most homeowners think that the difficult part is installing a garden, but it's not. The difficult part is actually deciding to do it. The difficult part is deciding that maybe the perfect system isn't working anymore. And the difficult part is deciding that you don't have to

Why Reject The Status Quo Lawn

Brad Tabke 1:35

keep doing something simply because your homeowners association says you need to, simply because your neighbors are doing it this way, simply because all of the Home Depot and Lowe's and lawn chemical commercials say that that's how it's always been done. For many of us, we've spent years trying to win a game that is rigged against us and we do not enjoy playing. We spend the money, we spend the weekends, we spend the time, we spend the clean water, we spend the time with our families. We try to maintain a landscape that often doesn't align with our values. And what we need to do now is reject it. So that is what this episode reject is all about. So it's deciding that you're no longer willing to spend your time, money, energy, and resources maintaining the status quo of high, high-input lawn that uh everyone tells us that we're supposed to be doing. So we are rejecting lawns. You need parts of your lawns. Your kids play on it, your dog uses it. You may enjoy it. And this isn't about eliminating every single blade of grass. This is about rejecting the unnecessary areas and putting them to good use. So that lawn that doesn't get used, the lawn that creates work without creating any value, the lawn that exists simply because nobody ever questioned whether it should be there. So one of the biggest mistakes people make is thinking that they need to choose between 100% lawn or 100% native gardens and that kind of thing. As people are in the process and in this, you know, decision area, in this transition of wanting to move from a traditional lawn landscape type of situation to one that actually eliminates chemicals and actually feeds pollinators and actually feeds songbirds and saves water and stores carbon for a better climate in the future. There is a huge amount of space between those two things. And what we what I advocate here for is a rebel garden. And so that is a smaller, smaller footprint type thing to get you started and moving forward on native landscapes. And so let's talk about the real reasons why people never start and why people stick with a status quo type

Fear Of Neighbors And Imperfection

Brad Tabke 3:35

of a lawn. And the number one reason is fear. What will the neighbors think? Will it look messy? Will it uh will it be more work for me? Will I have to, will I kill all the plants? Will it look bad? I've heard every single one of those concerns and they're all founded and they're all normal. They are really important things to consider. But here's what I've learned after 30 years in the landscape industry, going from full uh service landscape maintenance, where we did full maintenance and used all the chemicals, planted all the non-native plants, and my penance and my uh learning from that has come around to making sure that we need to understand that we need a landscape that works with our ecosystem and with nature and not against it. And what I've learned over those 30 years is most people spend far more time worrying about what their neighbors think and what the others around them think than what their neighbors spend thinking about them. People are happy when plants get planted, people are happy when monarchs in their neighborhood, people are happy when lightning bugs are there. The reality is that most neighbors are too busy worrying about their own lives to spend much time judging yours. And if your install is a thoughtful and intentional garden, most people become curious and not critical. And it's a good positive movement toward helping to support our local ecosystems. So we want to reject perfection. So this is not something that we need to make sure that we are getting perfectly right on the first time. This might is an important thing that I need to tell you today. And you so your first rebel garden does not need to be perfect. The goal is not perfection, the goal is participation. The goal is learning and is movement. The goal is taking one piece of your property and making it more useful. If a few bit of plants die, that's okay. If you change your mind later, that's also okay. That's why we make this flexible and that's why we make this work for you. Do you wish you had made it larger? That's great. You can do that tomorrow. Every gardener learns by doing and not by waiting. But we need to do this intentionally. We need to make sure that we're doing this in a manageable way so that you aren't set up for failure. So that's why we highly advocate that rebel gardens are no more than a maximum of 250 square

Keep It Small And Set Up Success

Brad Tabke 5:35

feet. So last week, hopefully, if you listen to that one first and you came to this episode, you identified one location for your rebel garden. So now it's time to put that location through a reality check. You need to ask yourself a few questions. Can you easily get water to this area while it's being established? Can you see it from your house? Will you walk past it regularly? Will you notice if something needs attention? Can you access it with basic tools? Like if you need to get back in there and do something, is there a fence that's in the way? Are there trees that are in the way? What is the need for that area? And so we want to make sure that you're successful and this success breeds more success. So for your first rebel garden, should be somewhere that you'll see it and enjoy it regularly and be able to see, oh, those are new caterpillars that are here. Oh, there are new butterflies and native bees that are using whatever plant whenever they're using it. So putting your first garden in the furthest corner of your property is probably a mistake, but if that's where you want it, then absolutely do it. So you want to make sure that you're able to have a place where you look at often and that you are able to enjoy. You want to make it easy to succeed. So now let's talk about something that isn't very exciting, but is actually really, really important. So it's safety. So before you dig, before you start to do anything on the property, before you put a shovel into the ground, you need to make sure to call for locates. So you need to locate those utilities. Every state has a utility locating service in Minnesota that's calling 811 and submitting a locate request on or submitting a locate request online. So they check for gas lines, for electrical lines, for fiber optic lines, for water lines, for sewer lines, all those things that you need to know are underground before you start digging. This is a free service. It is really easy. They make it super easy. You need to give them in Minnesota, it's 48 hours, but in most states, it's 48 hours. You need to give them time to get out there and locate. So before you start digging, before you get into the next phases of uh installing your Rebel Garden, you need to get locates done on that property. And I'm super, super serious about this because if there's a line that goes through that you don't know about, you could be seriously injured, as well as those around you. So you need to make sure that you do this whenever you dig on your property. And so get the locates. I cannot emphasize this piece enough. And so you want to do that before you start to dig. And so we also want to reject future problems on things. This is a great time to talk about practical considerations of a rebel garden. So you want to make sure to look up. Are there any utility lines overhead? This will impact what you want to plant in this area. You want to look around. Are there utility boxes? Are there meters? Are there air conditioning units, downspouts, wet areas, dry areas, tree roots, all of those things influence how a garden functions. And so

Safety First Call 811 Locates

Brad Tabke 8:10

you don't necessarily need to avoid them. You just need to plan for them. You need to make sure that you're doing the right thing as you are planning around these areas so that you have a successful garden. So now this is the part that makes a lot of people nervous because this is when the everything really starts to go forward. So it's rejecting the lawn itself. So if you selected a location for your rebel garden that usually grass needs to be removed. So usually lawn is the area that people choose for their first rebel garden. And for many homeowners, this creates a very interesting tension because this is a big move, right? So because one of the goals of a rebel garden is to eliminate chemicals, yet one of the most effective ways to prepare a rebel garden is often to use a chemical. So when I am removing lawn and installing a rebel garden, I use a chemical called glyphosate. And glyphosate is a, it absolutely has problems. It has really big things. And for the most part, glyphosate has proven to be less risky and less problematic than all of those things. But it's still a chemical and it's still something that gets used. And so I also want to make sure to make the point between the differences. It also has been proven that a lot of organic things like vinegars and other things are chemically more dangerous than glyphosate is. And so it's a really interesting tension that gets uh brought up here, and it's one that I really enjoy talking with people about. But I want to get these things done as quickly and as soon as possible and as easy as possible. And so the easiest way and the quickest way to get rid of that lawn in order to make

Removing Turf And Chemical Tension

Brad Tabke 9:55

space and make room for your native plantings is to use chemicals like glyphosate. So, how do those two things coexist? And for me, it breaks down to purpose and frequency. So there's a big difference between using a product once to transition a piece of lawn into a long-term habitat and applying chemicals year after year after year simply to maintain a perfect lawn. So one is helping us move away from that ongoing chemical dependency, and the other is creating it. And so there are, I am not a purist on things, and chemicals I do believe have a place when used thoughtfully and intentionally. And I use herbicides on invasive thistles, I use them on serious noxious weeds, and when establishing a rebel garden, I often find them, use them to eliminate existing turf grass before planting a garden. And one of the also best ways that this helps out is it doesn't, you don't dig into the entire soil. And so you don't dig up that seed bank and allow all those seeds that are existing in your grass already that just haven't germinated to start to grow. And so this helps keep weed problems down in the future and it really works pretty well. But you don't have to believe in it. You can do it different ways, and you can remove that turf and you can do what works best for you. So the alternatives can sometimes mean months of smothering or repeated cultivations or fighting existing turf for years afterwards. So the goal isn't avoiding every single tool here at a better yard. The goal is to use the right tool at the right time for the right reason and as minimal as possible. So if you've chosen a location for your rebel garden, one of the next steps is removing that existing lawn. So inside the challenge, as we talked about last week, we'll walk through exactly how and when to do that, as well as a couple other options. If you do not want to use chemicals on killing those lawns, we'll give you a couple other options as to how to do that. But for now, I simply want you to understand why we do it this way. And so rejecting that piece of lawn because it isn't serving us anymore. And we're making room for something better and something that supports pollinators and birds and clean water and healthier soils and ultimately requires fewer inputs over time, even if we are using a chemical once to kill that grass. So last week your assignment was to pick a location. This week, your assignment is to reclaim that piece of yard. So you are going to reject the barriers that might stop you from moving forward. Here's what I want you to do. So I want you to finalize your location, make a decision, stop evaluating, and choose. I want you to call and get locates for that area. Just do it. It seems overwhelming and it seems like a big thing to do, but it's okay. It is really easy. They will ask you to either spray paint or put some flags around an area. If you're doing it online, you can submit a picture of where you're going with things. So just snap it on your phone and you can do it online. It is really, really easy and simple to do. So get that done. And then the next thing is I want you to go ahead and kill off that grass. So you need to decide how you're going to do this. And if you're comfortable with using chemicals, then just hit it with a glyphosate, kill that area so that that grass is dead when you are ready to plant it. The important thing is to stop treating lawn removal as a future problem. It's part of your project. And I believe in you. I believe you will do great in this. And in the final episode, which comes next

Your Assignment And The Challenge Invite

Brad Tabke 13:00

time, is called Rebel. We're going to talk about rebelling and the action phase. And so we're going to discuss what happens when it's finally time to grow. And so we're going to talk about garden recipes, we're going to talk about plants, we're going to talk about installations and how to grow, create a garden that has the greatest chance of long-term success for your local ecosystem. Because once you've reclaimed the opportunity and rejected the barriers, you're finally better able to build something better. So I want you to join the Rebel Garden Challenge. If you haven't yet, if you are enjoying this, if you're enjoying what we're talking about, if this meets your ethos and your vibes and what you want to be have have happening in the world in this entire process, I'd love to have you join us in the 10-day Rebel Rebel Rebel Garden Challenge starting on June 19th. So inside the challenge, we're going to walk through every single step together from choosing location to selecting a Rebel Garden recipe, which we have all put together for you and we have everything ready for you. So you don't have to make really big decisions, scary decisions. It is all there, ready and done for you within the Rebel Garden Challenge. And so we'll go through ordering your plants, preparing your site, installing the garden, and then maintaining it afterward and what you want to do next from there. So you'll have support from me and a community of homeowners building Rebel Gardens right alongside you. So by the end of the challenge, you'll have a garden in the ground and a clear plan for helping it thrive. So you can learn more in the show notes and or at a member, sorry, or at member at can't do this right. You can learn more in the show notes or at member.abetteryard.org. And so until next uh next time, reject what isn't serving you and reject what isn't serving your yard and reject what isn't serving your community and your ecosystem and make room for something better. So I will see you inside the Rebel Garden Challenge and talk to you soon.