An anonymous neighbor wanted to control the appearance of my yard without speaking directly to me. So whoever they are, they filed a report that I have weeds and I was cited.

I wanted to understand what law was being used against me, so I looked it up. It turns out the law is in a body of statutes covering health and public safety. So my 1st thought is: that’s bizarre.. an ugly plant is a health issue?

WTF is a “weed”?

In common language most people are making a value judgment by regarding ugly plants as weeds. But the legal definition is not so subjective. It’s plants that have toxins and allergens. So things like Poison Ivy. The law names 6 or so examples but is not limited to those.

So the law is perhaps reasonably written to control health hazards, not so people can control the appearance of other people’s property. But the enforcers were either clueless about this or they were intellectually dishonest in hopes that those cited would naively create a pretty landscape for the demanding neighbor without first reading the law.

I might have been willing to do a landscape had the process of telling me the yard looks ugly not been as rude as sending cops to bully me.

A citation generally saying “you have weeds” is likely typically a false accusation. They should be writing on the citation exactly which plant specie is toxic or hazardous, just as a speeding ticket says how fast you were measured at.

Guys, we finally have a wiki! It's definitely a work in progress! If you want the full wiki you can see the NoLawns Reddit Wiki.

A curated list by YardFarmer

This is hosted by wild ones.org (I have no affiliation I just like free things)

Event Details

“Living in the Liberated Landscape: My Yard” presented by Larry Weaner
Date: Thursday, November 20th, 2025
Time: 7 PM ET / 6 PM CT / 5 PM MT / 4 PM PT
Join Us Virtually: A link will be provided with registration. This webinar will be recorded and available to watch after the premiere. And join the Live Chat: During the webinar premiere, join the live text-based chat on YouTube Live. Connect with a knowledgeable, hands-on, and supportive community.

Via Wild Ones here's a list and images of wild bulbs for Eastern and Central US.

Video is a brief summary of this post: Homegrown Diversity and Infectious Diseases

You might think that a garden full of native plants, thicker on the ground and under the trees, jumbled together in profusion, might be a better habitat for disease-carrying ticks, bugs, and mice than a closely cropped lawn of turfgrass in a neat suburb with lots of "Garden Center" landscaping. Intuitively, the neat and managed neighborhood looks like the sort of place where infectious diseases couldn’t thrive. The experience of the last few decades in southern New England would suggest otherwise!

Lyme Disease, a bacterial infection transmitted by the bite of the black-legged deer tick, has dramatically spread in the region over the last 50 years. The bacteria, the tick vector, and the natural hosts – deer, mice, and birds – were all present before humans arrived in North America. The explosion in human cases, first detected in the 1970s, was fueled by human environmental changes. Development, suburbanization, the introduction of invasive plants, and habitat fragmentation disrupted the native biome.

The inverse relationship between biodiversity and transmission of infectious diseases is an established ecology concept called “The Dilution Effect”. As biodiversity declines the most able species that take advantage of this are those that tend to reproduce rapidly, adapt quickly to denuded habitat, and also tend to be good hosts for infectious organisms.

What would limit this march of infectious diseases into new regions? Biodiversity! Imagine a mouse or a deer or a tick or a mosquito migrating into a new habitat. If a place is already full of a healthy mix of native wildlife (everything from bugs to birds to mammals) it’s harder for an outsider species to take over. There’s just too much competition from the locals. The best way to crowd our neighborhood with abundant neighbors is to create native environments favored by locally adapted species.

One of the most valuable things you can do to support pollinators and other invertebrates is to provide them with the shelter they need to survive the winter. Thankfully, that’s pretty easy; all you need to do is do less yard work.

Leaves, brush piles, fallen logs, plant stems, and flower heads might not be growing anymore, but they aren’t trash — they are natural homes for wildlife! A layer of leaves is vital insulation from the cold for the many animals that hide within (or in the soil beneath), like quite a few butterflies. Others, like many native bees, nest within stems, flower heads, or pieces of wood. Throwing out all of your leaves and other plant material isn’t just taking away options for shelter; there’s a good chance you’re tossing out many animals that have already settled in!

That’s why this year and every year, we are making the case for leaving the leaves. That’s not to say you can’t do any tidying up. We have tips for thoughtful autumn cleanup that still leaves space for nature. You’ll also meet just a few of the many animals you’ll be saving. Read on!

HOW TO KILL

SODCUTTER : Rent a sodcutter. This machine cuts the roots two to three inches deep and disconnects the grass from the soil beneath. The “rugs” of grass must then be flipped over so that the roots can be exposed to the sun and it will die. Does not work well with Bermuda grass since Bermuda grass roots go so deep and the stolons - the tiny bits of root left in the soil when you rip it out - can resprout and become new full-grown plants. The “rugs” of sod that you flip over are left on the ground as a mulch, protecting the ground beneath from getting baked by the sun. The dead sod can be moved aside whenever you need to dig and plant Pros : can kill a lawn in a day, especially bluegrass or St. Augustine Grass, leaving you with essentially a blank canvas Cons : labor intensive, sodcutter is heavy as shit.

SOLARIZATION/SMOTHERING : Cover lawn with a tarp or cardboard and mulch (need lots of mulch, like a dumptruck full). Easiest in lower-latitude hot climates like Texas. May not be possible in Eastern, higher-rainfall climates like Maryland, the Carolinas, Pennsylvania, etc.

This method takes a while, which is a drag, and I’ve seen it fail. The time that it takes to die could be time that you’re spending getting native plants established. Thus I recommend the sod-cutter or just doing the bit-by-bit method.

BIT-BY-BIT : Using a “Sharp-shooter”shovel (basically a long, narrow, 3-times-longer-than-it-is-wide shovel), you come at a low angle (mimicking the flat-slab subduction of the farallon plate, for any of you geology nerds), disemboweling the turf from ground in a back-and-forth stabbing motion. This doesn’t look as nice as using a sod-cutter to rip out uniform even lines of turf, but it works. It sucks to do and is exhausting, but you only have to do it once. Then you plant your natives, dump the mulch on top of the ground (while keeping it two inches away from the stems of natives so as not to encourage rot) to smother weeds and help retain soil moisture, water them in, and you’re done.

TILLING : Only possible with grass species that do not spread by stolons, like bermuda does. Bermuda grass is extremely hard to kill and often requires constant weeding or site-specific spraying and selective, targeted applications of herbicide using a large piece of cardboard to prevent over-spraying or hitting native plants. Tilling essentially “chops up” and plows the lawn into the ground beneath. With species like Kentucky bluegrass, it works like a charm. With Bermuda, it is pointless.

EASIEST, LAZIEST (andthat’s ok) METHOD : JUST START PLANTING STUFF, WHILE CONTINUING TO WEED-WACK AND MOW THE LAWN AROUND THE STUFF YOU PLANT.

The key take-away no matter what is that after you kill the lawn, you will essentially be planting and nurturing the natives, while continuing to go in and periodically remove or weed-wack/spray/dig-up-with-a-garden-knife any remaining bits of grass that pop up. I highly suggest against using herbicide unless you have one of the very invasive and aggressive grass species like Bermuda or Kikuyu Grass. St. Augustine Grass, by comparison, is easy to remove and kill.

The process of constant maintenance works because the native shrubs you initially plant (which should be easy to grow, common keystone members of your local ecosytem) will eventually outcrowd and overgrow the invasive grasses, and you will be the disturbance force that selects for the natives and selects against the attempted re-intrusion of the grasses. After a long growing season where you have watered the natives, any competition will successfully be put at bay since the natives have taken most of the available light and root space. Once you have reached this point, very little continued maintenance is necessary, especially for prairie gardens since prairies tend to be so dense.

• 0:00 An Unusual Enemy
• 5:18 Monsanto’s Secret Poison Problem
• 11:17 Vietnam and Agent Orange
• 14:08 Roundup
• 19:31 How Monsanto controls seeds
• 24:20 ADVERTISEMENT
• 26:02 The Crop Mafia
• 31:10 The Monsanto Papers
• 41:18 How dangerous is Roundup really?

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/37264540

Using friendship-based community organizing and principles of permaculture, gift economy, and mutual aid, Food Not Lawns has been turning yards into gardens and neighborhoods into communities since 1999, when we were conceived by the Food Not Bombs family in Eugene, Oregon. For more than twenty years small, self-organized groups of grassroots gardeners have been organizing local seed swaps, joining together for garden work parties, and making lots of friends while learning more about the simple act of growing food can radically improve your home, your community, and your life.

Part 2 - Roundrock Texas Lawn Kill - How to Install Drip Irrigation Line for Native Plants

archived (Wayback Machine)

re:wild your campus co-directors Mackenzie Feldman and Sheina Crystal discuss their amazing initiative across college campuses, suggest pesticide free options for your lawn, and answer some of your questions about pesticides!

The title is perhaps hyperbole, but back in 2018...

Only in artificial settings do you see grass. Grass doesn't exist in nature

So, what we must do is we must replicate nature in our gardens. How do we do that? Well first what we do is we remove all the grass from our backyards

get rid of ALL the grass. And when you get rid of all the grass, you basically have a system that's now ready to start gardening or farming

So this system has no grass, so you don't have to keep chopping, you don't have to keep pulling weeds; there's absolutely no grass… okay?

This guy may have been onto something.