Had to work in some rain, but got about a 42' x 4' area planted with native pollinators for the bees and butterflies. I really want one of these stupid plaques identifying it as a waystation.
The process for selection was actually easy and cool. A state University provided a plant and planting guide for our area, and had details about how to space and when to plant, etc.
I tried to grow as much as I could from seed. Some came up in the greenhouse, but had to order some live too. All told, with mulch and some cute solitary bee and butterfly houses I probably have a couple hundred bucks in it. Pretty happy with everything.
If there were seeds I couldn't find somewhere locally, I went with rareseeds.com. Definitely not cheap compared to some places. For some of the phlox I did from there it was like $3 for a pack of seeds. Can quickly become cost prohibitive.
It was sod before. Pain in the ass to tear out and clean up. If lumber wasn't so high, I may have done a raised bed to help with rabbit pressure and to avoid it, but what can ya do.
Yeah, they've been hit or miss for me. Sometimes I've just scattered seeds and had a lot come up. Redid a lot of sod with an alternative lawn mix and basically nothing. If you've got a local seed place, I've found them to be a good resource.
May be worth it to try to bring something up potted and try to transplant. Might help with some of the competition.
Yup, there's about 6 in the bed, and I have a few others elsewhere. My wife really loves them and we had to resist doing more of them to make sure we had plenty of biodiversity.
Also, they didn't come up from seed for me, but whatever. Hopefully I can split em in the next couple years and spread em out.
