Stop Overthinking And Start Planting Native Plants (Part Three of Three)

Lawns teach us to chase control, but a rebel garden is about building a living system that gets better every season. We walk through a practical, homeowner-friendly roadmap for turning turf into a native plant garden that supports pollinators, songbirds, and healthier soil without getting trapped in analysis paralysis. If you’ve been staring at a blank patch of grass wondering where to start, we’ll help you move from ideas to installation. 

We start with soil, and why you don’t need to obsess over lab-perfect conditions before you plant. Native plants are tougher and more adaptable than most people expect, and a thin layer of compost or topsoil can be enough to help young plugs establish. From there, the real secret is planting density: instead of isolated “specimens” with mulch gaps, we aim for a plant community, often around one plant per square foot, using grasses, sedges, and flowering natives to shade soil, suppress weeds, and create habitat. 

We also get specific about what makes a garden look good beyond one short bloom window. You’ll hear how to think in seasons, stagger bloom times, keep winter seed heads for birds, and use a simple mulch strategy that signals the bed is intentional while protecting new plants during establishment. We close with realistic expectations for year one care, plus details on the Rebel Garden Challenge if you want step-by-step guidance and a community doing it alongside you. Subscribe, share with a neighbor who hates mowing, and leave a review with the first lawn patch you want to reclaim.

The Challenge begins Friday, June 19 --> A Rebel Garden in Ten Days

Prairie Up by Benjamin Vogt

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

Transcript

Reclaim, Reject, Then Rebel

0:06

Hello and welcome my friend to the third episode of our three-part series here of a Better Yard podcast. My name is Brad Tabke, and I'm the founder of A Better Yard, and it is my absolute honor to have you here with us today. So, as I said, this is part three of our three-part series on growing a rebel garden. So, this is our theme at uh Better Yard here for the month of June is growing a rebel garden. So, in episode one, we talked about reclaiming your space. So, finding an opportunity, choosing locations, seeing your yard differently, and how we can use that for in episode two to reject the status quo on our lawn. So, rejecting the unnecessary lawn, rejecting perfection, and rejecting the idea that you have to keep this whole lawn thing going in ways that have always been done. And today we arrive at the final phase, which is rebel. Rebel, exactly. So, rebel gardens, and we are going to rebel. And so this is where we stop talking and start building. So, this is where we take a patch of lawn and make it into something better. And here is the good news. So, building a rebel garden isn't nearly as complicated as many people make it seem. So the challenge is that there are just enough moving parts that it's easy to second guess yourself. And that's why it's how many, many people get stuck on moving toward native plants and they just want things to be perfect and they think too much about it and they try and get too many variables involved. And today I want to give you a high-level roadmap as to how a rebel garden comes together. We won't talk about every single detail, not every single measurement or every single plant, but enough for you to understand the process and you can get started it with that and building your own rebel garden, growing your own rebel garden yourself and understand what is possible. So we're gonna

Soil Without The Perfection Trap

1:55

start with the soil. So one of the biggest mistakes that homeowners make is obsessing over soil tests before they even get started. People get scared that all these soils need to be perfect. But the thing is that native plants have to grow in that soil that is there. They don't get a choice, they're going to be in that soil. And so I never worry about big soil tests, I never worry about big amendments, I never worry about those things, whether the soil is super sandy, super clay, those kinds of things. We worry about making sure to get the plants in the ground and see what works and what goes best. So don't get me wrong, and soil matters, but the native plants are remarkably adaptable and they evolved in clay, they evolved in sand, they evolved in drought, they evolved in floodplains, and they're tougher than we often give them credit for. It is really important to make sure that we're matching the right plants to the right place, and that's a deeper dive than we're gonna do here on the podcast. But for Rebel Garden, I like to start with a layer of quality topsoil or compost spread over the existing site after the lawn has been eliminated. So as we talked about in the last episode, I like to use a chemical glyphosate to kill off the lawn. And then what we want to do is just put this soil, topsoil, right on top of that so that it covers all of the covers all the grass, and it's just a light half inch of topsoil to make sure that we have something good started there and that we have something to cover the soil on things. And so the goal isn't creating perfect soil, it's just to create enough good environment so these young plants can establish quickly and to get that soil covered on things. And so this is our launch pad basically. It's not uh it's not perfection, it's not making sure that we've got the exact right laboratory concocted ingredients in the soil, but it is there to make sure that we have some nutrients in the soil and we use that compost in order to make sure that that works that way. So once the plants are established, they'll do much of the work themselves. And their roots will improve the soil, their biology will improve the soil, their organic matter will improve the soil. Nature is shockingly good at healing itself when we get out of the way. And so, this is one of the big advantages of using native plants in our area, is because they have evolved and adapted and grown to grow deep roots generally and make sure that those roots, as they go through the dying off cycle and the and the growing back cycle, they're constantly going to be punching into that. If you have a super clay soil, for example, they'll be punching into that clay soil, and those roots will eventually die off, and then they'll put more roots down in there, and that will break up those clay soils and add organic matter. And it's just a beautiful system that has evolved over eons that we need to help use that and work with it in order, work with nature in order to make this a better place and to make these plants work better and to have soil that is not just having water run straight across it, but water is able to go into that soil, and having this organic material and these native plants really pushing hard down into that soil is a great, great way to

Planting Dense For Fewer Weeds

4:47

do it. So, the secret is density when we're planting out these plants. So, most homeowners dramatically underestimate how many plants belong in a garden. So, traditional landscapes often plant things several feet apart. So you've got a plant here and you've got a plant there, and then you've got a bunch of mulch in the middle where weeds can grow and things can happen, or even worse, rocks in the middle where uh it is absolutely supporting no diversity and no biology in those soils. So it is a traditional landscape often plates these plants several feet apart, and then they wait and they wait and they wait and the weeds come in. And one thing I love about the work of a guy named Benjamin Vogt, and he is got a great book that I'll put in the show notes called Prairie Up. And uh, he's just a wonderful, uh, super opinionated, super political, just badass of a guy. And he uses a system of planting native plants, and it's a naturalistic design movement and the concept of planting extremely densely for native plant material. So instead of treating plants like isolated, perfect specimens, they become a community and they work together and they grow together into a matrix of plants, and so it's a living ecosystem. Every plant has a neighbor, every square foot has a purpose. And most rebel gardens, we're planting roughly one plant per square feet foot. So if you have 150 square feet, you're gonna have 150 plants in that area. So it's a general rule of thumb that way. Sometimes it works more than that, sometimes it works less than that, but that's the general rule of thumb for things is we do one plant per square foot. And it sounds like a lot, it's a ton of plants. But if you remember, we're planting plugs, so these are small plants, and there are many plants that we put in that are more showy plants and the ones that are meant to have flowers and to attract those butterflies and to attract those bees and the songbirds, and then there's a whole bunch of other plants that are sedges and other grasses that are meant to simply cover the ground so that we reduce weed pressure, that we shade the soil, that we get this covered quickly so you don't have a ton of room for weeds to come in and other things to cause more problems in your new landscape. And so we plant really densely for those reasons. And you'll see in the if you are a member of the challenge, you'll see in the Rebel Garden recipes that how densely and how we do that uh in these landscapes. And so the soil stays cooler, the roots begin to interact with one another, and the garden starts to function like a plant community rather than a collection of individual plants. So you got to think here, we try to emulate nature all the time at a better yard. One of the biggest shifts for homeowners is moving away from thinking about individual plants. If you've got a hedge clipped spirea or a yew or a boxwood or whatever those things are that don't really provide at all and they don't work together with the plants that are around them, most people choose plants one at a time. I like that purple flower, I like that yellow flower, I like that one because butterflies visit. But those are fine reasons. But successful rebel gardens think bigger. Instead of individual plants, we think layers and we think rolls and we think communities, and we think a healthy rebel garden usually contains a few taller plants, depending on the location of things, some medium-high plants and some lower-growing plants. So you've got a variety of sizes. Then you've also got a variety of textures with some grasses and with other plants and colors in there. And then one of the most important things for our pollinator friends is to make sure that we have a variety of bloom times. And so we have a variety of blooms. So there's some bloom early, some bloom midsummer, some bloom in the falls, some that have winter interests, and ones that keep the seed heads for the birds, and ones that host caterpillars, and ones that host pollinators. Each plant is doing its job, and together they create a habitat. Together they create something much more resilient than any individual species could create on its own. So if you think about in this, if you have a typical commercial project that you have some Carl Forester grasses, which are not native and they do not host any plants, any pollinators, and you've got some spirea, which are also not native and they do not host any pollinators or help songbirds or anything like that, and they can take up hundreds of square feet with just a couple of different plants because they put a ton of rock and mulch in between them. They're not doing anything for our local ecosystem. And what we're trying to do is work together to have a dense, easy to maintain planting here that is for our rebel gardens, and so that support the ecosystem and support the F's filter system where we're eliminating chemicals, where we're feeding birds and pollinators, where we are saving clean water, and we're storing carbon.

Bloom Timing That Lasts All Year

9:09

All right. So one of the easiest mistakes to make is creating a garden that looks amazing for just a couple of weeks and boring for the other 49. So, one thing with native plants is they're generally not long blooming like some of these other plants that you have in a landscape. They're not going to be like a daylily and start flowering in April and then flower all the way through, you know, August or September. They are going to be plants that flower for a few weeks at a time. And so it's you want to make sure that you are staggering those bloom times throughout the entire season. So if you're having a smaller garden, it's even more important that you're having bloom times throughout the season. So spring begins with something like prairie smoke and golden alexanders, and summer brings cold flower and bee balms and blazing stars. Leatris and fall arrives with asters and goldenrods. And we want these things to work together so that we have uh through winter seed heads and grasses that continue to provide beauty and movement and food and habitat. And a great rebel garden isn't designed around a single bloom time, it is designed or designed around the entire community so that you've got bloom times and interest happening throughout the entire year. And so it's designed around the seasons and actually is designed for all four seasons because the garden is doing year-round work even when it is sleeping during the winter. So, as I talked about Benjamin Vote earlier, he talks about matrix plantings. So it's a comp concept I think really more homers should understand. And so a matrix isn't necessarily the star of the show, it's the framework, it's the the building blocks of how we make sure that this native garden works in a really great way. So it's the plants that connect everything together, and so it's the plants that occupy the space so that it is uh creates continuity, that it has suppressing of weeds, and so it also has makes the garden feel. And so without the matrix, the gardens can often look sparse, especially when you're starting out with native gardens. And so you want to make sure that you we are filling those spaces and making everything look uh intentional, making the gardens feel like a real true ecosystem. And that's one of the reasons Rebel Gardens establish quickly and become visually interesting much sooner than traditional native plantings do. And this is what we really work toward with the help of uh Benjamin, with the help of Rebecca McMackin, with the help of Doug Tallamy, with all of these incredibly innovative folks who are just doing incredible work in this local ecosystem space and really rethinking how we handle landscapes in America.

Recipes That Remove Guesswork

11:34

And so this all can start to feel very, very complicated. And honestly, it is where many people freeze at this point as they go to a garden center and they see all these different varieties and they see all these different things, and they don't know how to make the right choices, how many species, how many grasses, how many flowers, what's the bloom sequence, what height, what spacing, what percentages, what compost, what sun exposure. And the answer is it depends on your site. And so every site is different, and every homeowner is different, what you want to achieve, every goal is different. That's why we created Rebel Garden recipes. And so instead of asking you to become a landscape designer overnight and to think through all of these different things, I've done all of the thinking for you as part of this challenge. And so the challenge isn't planting, the challenge is making all of those decisions correctly and in the right order. And if you are a member of the challenge, we really work to simplify all of that complexity for you. And so it's a really cool thing. And I hope you join again. I'll come back to that in just a moment, but it's a really fun thing if you are working toward having a rebel garden of your own. So the last

Mulch For Intentional, Healthy Beds

12:38

thing is after you get those plants planted and in the ground, the mulch matters. So you want to make sure that once the plants are in the ground, it's time to mulch. And so, depending on where you're at, you can use any different kind of mulch. You just want to cover the soil with a very thin layer of mulch because, as we talked earlier, the seed bank is in the soil. And so anytime you disturb the soil, you are allowing for light, for water, for air, for heat to get at those seeds, and that can cause them to sprout and give you lots of weeds in your landscape area. And so you want to make sure that you are reducing that potential as much as possible. And a really thin, just a half-inch layer of mulch that will decompose quickly is a very good thing to have on your rebel garden. And so I highly recommend using straw. You can use hardwood mulch as long as it's double ground, so it's smaller pieces. You can use things like pine needle straw, you can use any of those kinds of things because they help to retain the moisture and they help to keep soil temperatures lower, they keep weeds out of the way, and it protects these young plants during establishment. And so it also gives the garden a finished appearance. So if you're working about worrying about neighbors responding positively to your new garden, it's because it looks intentional by putting mulch down before all those plants grow and work together. This can help to make sure that everybody knows that this is done intentionally and what this looks like and frames this new garden bed up as just a thing of beauty, and mulch helps to communicate that intentionality. So it tells people that this is not an abandoned area, this is a garden, and this is an important distinction that everyone needs to make. A lot of times, everyone thinks that native gardens are just these messy, weed-ridden kinds of things. And if you don't do them right, they absolutely can be. But by doing it this way and make sure that it is intentional and that you are doing making sure that everyone knows that this is just not a status quo kind of thing. So

Year One Care And Patience

14:25

for the first year of a rebel garden, it is not the same year as years down the road. And so the first year is about establishment. So these plants are gonna stay a lot the same size, they are not gonna grow a ton, they're gonna flower a little bit. So you'll definitely have some flowers that are in there. They're building roots and they're learning how the site works and they're learning where the water goes and where they want the roots to go, and they're settling in, and you'll spend more time watering. So, again, I suggest using a sprinkler for that watering. You'll spend more time observing, you'll spend more time removing the occasional weeds, and that's normal. And so just don't judge a rebel garden by its first season. It takes a couple years for those to work in and become their own. So made in native plants spend their early years investing underground before exploding with growth in future years. And so the first year is about patience, second year is about progress, and the third year is when the magic really starts to happen. And so it's just a beautiful, wonderful thing. And

Picture The Habitat You’re Building

15:16

so your assignment this week is I want you to imagine your future garden. Take that spot that you've located, take that spot where you've gotten the locates done for, and imagine what that looks like. So now you are not just replacing the lawn, you want to make sure that you're envisioning the garden that you are creating. Think about what bird birds might visit, what butterflies might arrive, what flowers will bloom in the spring, what seed heads will remain in the winter, what part of your yard will become more alive? And because that's what we're building together. This is a place where we are going to continue to grow and continue to elevate and continue to make the world a better place by eliminating chemicals so that we aren't going to have chemicals used in our lawns anymore, and so that this is a less risk of cancer and other diseases, and we are going to be feeding these pollinators and these songbirds, and they're just gonna love being there with you, and you're going to see that it's gonna be a living ecosystem, not just one small piece at a time. And so I appreciate you being here. I hope you've learned a lot from these three episodes of creating a rebel garden.

Join The 10 Day Rebel Challenge

16:18

And so uh if you are interested in this, starting this Friday is when our challenge. So, this is one of the last few days that you can join the challenge, and so I hope you do. So, Friday, June 19th is the first day of the challenge, and so you can join the Rebel Garden Challenge. And over the last three episodes, we have covered how to reclaim, reject, and rebel against the status quo of our lawns and how you can take and install native plants and do the right things. And so, as you are doing that, if this is something you want to do, join the challenges. $47 to join the challenge, and you understand the overall process. But understanding the process and actually building a rebel garden are two quite different things. So, inside the 10-day rebel garden challenge, we're going to walk through every single step together. And so, we'll help you choose the right locations, we'll select the right recipes for your rebel garden, we'll order the plants, we'll prepare the site, we'll install the garden, we'll mulch it, we'll water it, we'll do all those things. And most importantly, you'll have a community of homeowners building right alongside of you. So you won't have any second guessing, no wondering if you're doing it right, you know, spending hours researching plant combinations. We've already done that work for you. I've already done that work for you. And all you need to do is follow the process. So the challenge begins this Friday, June 19th. And you can learn more in the show notes here. You can join at member.arebelbetteryard.org. I'll say that again, member.abetteryard.org. And until

One Patch At A Time

17:42

next time, I hope you remember, you don't need to change your entire yard. You don't need to become a master gardener. You don't need to become a landscape designer. You just need to reclaim one piece of your yard. Reject what isn't working for you and build something better. And I want to do that together with you with a rebel garden, one at a time. So I will see you inside and have a great day.