this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2025
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Akshually rabbits aren't rodents...
Of course I entirely agree with your post and am just being anal
Fine, then I love squirrels.
Had a squirrel in my garden earlier today. Invasive bastard...
Could do with encouraging more wildflowers in the open area of my garden that has kinda become a lawn. I put down a meadow grass seed mix and clover. Not sure if much clover really grew though. Ground had been under concrete for decades that I removed after buying the house.
Daisies and dandelions seem like good choices to try and grow there, add some colour and they can usually manage being trimmed shortish too. Don't have a lawnmower but my partner complains if I don't strim it a few times a year. Tbh the pathway probably needs it now but leaving the rest over winter.
What makes you insult your furry neighbor?
They are invasive
If you ecological invasiveness, which is an issue with squirrels in some countries, thats fair. But theres ways you can work around that and still have a nice, healthy yard.
Well it should be healthier than when I moved in as it has now been free of concrete for a little over a year. But the open space in the middle currently only really has grass growing in it, only a very small amount of clover seemed to have grown. The areas that do have clover growing are the bits that are still green while the rest of it has bits of grass going a little yellow.
Not 100% sure, but it looks like it probably dried out too much over summer for the clover to survive. In the more shaded patches the grass is nice and green and there is usually more clover to be seen. Or around edges, which seemed to dry out a bit less over summer. UK for any context if that helps. Its been soaking wet for a few months now so at least the grass grew back.
On the healthiness of your yard: Dry patches are fine, there are plants for that too. The important part is leaving it alone. I would recommend to mow maybe once a year max. I know, it gets real logn, but that way nature can work wonders. The glass and clover root network will widen and sprawl and fill that space in. And if there is still too much dry dirt there, then other plants will take over. Clover is already more resistant than grass, other weeds are even more resistant. Do an experiment, see what happens. I recommend looking for local dry area plants. We have Heide for that, not sure what it is in english, I'm a german native.
Could you define the weather region, local biome and Surrounding biology? I can not precisely help you with that otherwise.
South coast UK. We get drought in summer and then the rest of the year is pretty wet. Even the inside of our houses can struggle with damp in winter. I
Nothing has grown in the soil here for decades, house was built before the war but not sure when the concrete was put down. At least decades given the condition of it. Wonder about trying other wildflowers too but don't really want to risk buying seeds that end up not doing anything. Other than clover, buttercups and daisies are fairly common here.
Perhaps growing them in small pots first to get them started and make a small number of seeds go further? Plant them in the ground once they have got a bit of a root system going and hope they spread over time.
Ok, so by biome I meant the biome and not the area. Is it a clay like ground? Are you in a salt marsh? Ideally you could provide a name or even just a type.
Depending on soil composition and environment I would then like to recommend things like:
If you have a lot of silt, so mineral heavy, and that is unusual for the environment, work the top layer of dirt and get some compost in there (few centimeters deep even) to increase bio matter availability, then use nitrogen and water binding plants like clovers to further increase soil quality. This can help in your case because they sometimes put shitty ass sandy soil under and around concrete so it drains better.
That's an example that may not apply and may be a bad choice. There's a lot of things you can do.
On the topic of drought:
You probably, again depending on biome, want to get low silt, high carbon soil. The ways you can get that are a lot and the best way depends on, you guessed it, the biome. It holds on to the water better. You can also use plants that keep the water in soil longer, clover is good at that. It's kind of the perfect plant to make an area fertile again. If it grows, that's a good first sign. And if it looks dead, chances are it's not. Drought resistant plants, actual shrubs, they help. If it is really bad you might want to get a large rain barrel just to keep it going until it reaches a stable state.
Your country has the National Vegetation C-something (NVC), which will tell you which plants are found in your area. You can then buy some proper seeds for those conditions from an appropriate seller. https://wildseed.co.uk/mixtures/complete-mixtures/
You can't just plant any wild seed pack.
I would like to know the makeup and depth of your soil, as well as if there is anything underneath it, maybe concrete? Is there water nearby, how close and what kind is it? Could you go to a similar area nearby that has growth and compare? How long are drought periods? What are temperatures and precipitation like throughout the year in some actual metric? Ideally you'd look that up on open meteo, since I doubt you want to give me the coords of you city. If you really want some help you would take some pics of soil samples from home and local meadow as well as the plants that grow there and send them to me per dm.
Would love to help you get a buzzy garden. A healthy ecosystem doesn't even need to be full of the annoying buzzers like wasps, you get to decide that. Do it for the Beatles. I wrote that wrong didn't I.
Can't find NVC info for my area, found maps for other counties and Scotland but not here. Quite a few other maps list mine as unsurveyed too. This one actually specifies it as unsurveyed/urban which could be part of the reason it doesn't show up in various maps.
Topsoil carbon stock - low, given that the garden was under concrete for a long time I would assume it is even lower than the surrounding area is too. Although by mixing in compost I expect that could be improved eventually. Hopefully the meadow grass will have improved it a bit too, it has been there for a year now and should grow deeper roots than lawn grass.
Soil layer deep, found a few maps saying sandy loam which I presume is for the topsoil because deeper down it seems much heavier. Parent soil river loam.
I do have water butts, but the combined 300L doesn't last very long for anything more than some pots and we usually get extended drought over summer so for the summer just gone I tried to mainly focus on keeping them going. I do have shrubs (rosemary, thyme, sage, bay trees) down the sides which overall I am more keen on keeping alive than the grass in the middle so I gave them a bit every few weeks without rain but it rapidly uses up water. They are doing perfectly fine which is good, though the bay is still small as they were planted from cuttings and it was freshly planted last year and I watered them a bit more because of that.
I have seen clover growing on the side of roads within a few miles of my house, so I do expect its happy in my region and it probably just struggled to thrive when starting the garden. So growing in pots to get a few clumps established is something I may try in spring and then hope it can spread on its own from there if it has had a better starting point. Common daisy and creeping buttercups are others I am thinking of.
Not sure how useful average rainfall stats are any more, every year seems to be the wettest winter and driest summer on record. Hopefully as life returns to my garden over time it should improve a bit though. Have been contemplating a large underground rain tank but they cost quite a bit.