I'll stop at shrubs. Seems like a fair balance
this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2025
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IIRC there are ways to greatly speed this up by selectively planting certain fast growing trees to attract certain birds that will poop all over your lawn thus planting certain seeds. Basically you skip the first two steps with free bird poop. I think it was an old rail siding in London somewhere... or something like that. They planted a single willow tree that attracted the birds and BOOM ~~head shot~~ habitat.
https://www.rhs.org.uk/shows-events/rhs-urban-show/urban-gardening/guerrilla-gardening
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/sylvia-wilde-a-forest-garden-primer
That's really interesting! Do you have any links or more info on this process?
I'll try to find tho links when I have time. Remembering it more, it was I think "anarchist gardening" or something like that. It was a I think the side of a man made ravine that was in stage 1 or 2, so they sped things up a little to make it more habitable.
These aren't the links I was looking for, but they speak of the same thing. Really the one I remember is just one act from one person in what is now a large movement colloquially known as "Guerilla Gardening".
https://www.rhs.org.uk/shows-events/rhs-urban-show/urban-gardening/guerrilla-gardening
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/sylvia-wilde-a-forest-garden-primer
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Basically you skip the first two steps with free bird poop.
Can i apply this to other areas as well, like building a house or something else?
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Okay so where can I grow something that won't be full of ticks?
You don't.
Instead, you always have a roving band of chickens following you to eat them.
Basically, how can we, as humans, use our propensity for destroying entire species, but do it for the power of good, on purpose so we can eliminate ALL TICKS FROM THE FACE OF THE EARTH‽
Maybe we can breed super mosquitos to eat the ticks or something
Why do you choose violence?
Violence isn't the answer. It's a question, and the answer is "yes".
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Get a colony of fire ants and then feed them meth and hgc
You foster a family of possums at the same time.
Hate to be the bearer of bad news. Possums don’t eat ticks.
You're going to have ticks in the native area too, especially the marginal zones. They love those. Ticks are native, unfortunately. Remediating your land for native insects' benefit will actually be better for ticks than having an acre of 2" turf grass, but that's just because short lawns are totally ecologically dead.
When I was more uninformed I was more of a purist. The more I've done on my own property, and the more I've consulted with experts, the more I've learned that it's actually a balance between human needs and ecology. Now I'm sort of in the "if planting turf grass by your house is what you need to be on board with the rest of it, fine."
We can't promise people ticks will go away, more like teach people the critical value of native insects. Keep tall grass away from your house, sure, but think about walkways instead of acres of lawn for the rest of it. People plant lawns and call Mosquito Joe to fog it all so "their children can play" but consider your children living in a world with no bugs at all. That's the trade off. IMO it's a lot more scary than ticks, and I fucking hate ticks.
I'm required to keep a 100 ft perimeter of defensible space around my house, so I do need to clear quite a bit. I try to leave as much otherwise, recently (5 ish years) I had considerable sprouting of volunteer oaks. Probably 15 or so across my property, not sure if that's indicative of the land being healthier but we get a decent amount of wild mushrooms as well.
Oak are great. A lot of the understory in oak/hickory forest is now maple and tulip poplar due to shifting climate and possibly deer pressure. It's called mesophication.
My property is also oak/hickory complex and I can say anecdotally that the native understory has a lot of tulip poplar.
One of my relatives' primary concerns isn't ticks, it's mice getting into the house. Is that a valid concern? Personally I think just keeping a couple of indoor cats would offset encroaching rodents.
Depends on that cat.
In my experience if you have access points for mice they will get in whether you have a suburban turf grass lawn or not, and a cat can't get them if they are in the walls or crawlspace. So the best bet is to seal up any holes and keep all vegetation, native or not, at least a couple of feet away from the house.
it kinda does both, there are more mice but the more naturalized habitat gives them more places to hide that isnt your house, especially in the spring/summer fall, but winter too. I dont know, others get mice all the time anyway, we occasionally do, i dont know if it's an improvement or not. I do know that a well sealed house in the woods with totally native habitat for acres (not mine sadly, lol) has far fewer pests than in any suburb house so i think there's merit.
I had a cat once that let a mouse come up to it, touch noses, then run away.
It really REALLY depends on the cat.
One of my cats would probably be scared of the mice, and the other would probably make friends with the mice. They are both disappointments to their Great Ancestors
Hehe. The image makes it look like pine matures to oak and hickory.
this is now canon in the pokemon universe
Tallpine evolved into Oakollossal.
Oakollossal wants to learn Acorn Drop.
Forget a move to learn Acorn Drop?
For a lawn or yard you don't have to go all the way to a forest to have a stablish ecosystem. Perennials can do a lot.
And actually in some places prarieland is probably more important for conservation.
In my case it was plant a couple of native fruit trees for me, dig a small perrenial pond and add some rocks so amphibians can feel safe, and sprinkle in seeds for native grasses, especially edible ones and let nature do it’s work. It was probably my favourite. Loved it.
Shame I don’t live there anymore.
Its easier to get natives but still takes some effort. But its front loaded and makes beautiful spaces
There's no way you're going to get Hickory growing naturally in your garden, unless your garden is in some very specific parts of the world.
This is just an example of course. Succession can look differently and lead to very different results, depending on where exactly it is happening.
I'd also argue, that leaving your garden alone to let succession run its course is not neccessarily the ideal to strive for. Even simply speeding up the process to get to the final stage isn't.
Gardens are a very different sort of ecosystem from an extended woodlands area and there are many ways to use them for human recreation and as a habitat for many species, that even exceed the biodiversity of the potentially naturally occuring ecosystem.
A trimmed suburban lawn is just one of the worst options.
This is just an example of course.
Of course, but it does annoy me when something so specific is mentioned, instead of simply writing "hardwood trees" (or whatever information it was that the reader was supposed to infer from that example).
So how do I skip the weeds and grasslands stages and go directly to mature oak-hickory forest, then?
Millions of dollars, and taking them from elsewhere.
Artificially plant and water the trees. Gather a lot or pile of branches for dead wood, one of the defining parts of an old growth forest.
What does the undergrowth of an oak hickory Forest look like? People can plant the trees, but how do you get the undergrowth?
Order a bunch of plants that are native to your region, plant the medium and shade loving varieties under the trees, see what sticks
I tried that but the groundhogs and rabbits ate the native plants down to their stems
Get a dog, mine love chasing off groundhogs and the like.
Dogs also typically love to trample the whole yard until it's nothing but clay and dandelions.
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this weekend we chiseled off the grass sod out of our backyard in preparation for planting native perennial species. it's all clay back there so it's going to take some soil prep.
Where I live you can't cut down a tree, and if it gets destroyed you need to pay thousands for a botanist to come out. I would never take the risk of planting a tree.
Yikes. One of those good in theory, but completely backfired ideas
Destroyed no matter the cause? I've heard of laws like that for intentionally cutting down healthy trees, but it never applied to natural causes.
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I wish I could allow my yard to revert to the low brush it naturally was, problem is that a certain invasive weed from central fucking Asia would disagree. I blame the fucking Russians.
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Plant some trees to skip a few steps!
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