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The guy at the native plant nursery who called me out on my lawn
I went to this little native plant nursery out in the county last Saturday, just looking for some shade perennials. The owner, this older guy named Roy, saw me loading up a flat of generic hostas and just straight up asked why I was wasting my money on stuff that does nothing for bees. I thought I was being a good gardener just by having plants, you know? He pointed to the strip of grass by my truck and said 'that right there is a food desert for everything but your lawnmower.' It hit different because he wasn't being rude, just matter of fact. He walked me over to a patch of wild bergamot and showed me a bumblebee basically drunk on it. I ended up leaving with a whole different cart full of goldenrod and milkweed plugs, and I'm actually kind of excited to rip out some of my front lawn this fall. Has anyone else had a nursery worker totally change what you thought you knew about gardening?
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the_lucas4mo ago
Roy gave me the same reality check about my lawn two years ago and I still haven't fully forgiven him for being right lmao. I showed up thinking I was a hotshot gardener with my big box store perennials and he just looked at my truck bed full of petunias like I'd brought him a bag of garbage. Now I've got about 200 square feet of front yard turned into a mini meadow and my neighbor actually yelled "what happened to your grass" from his porch last week. I just pointed at the bumblebees going nuts on my bee balm and told him they don't need a lawnmower either. The mailman stopping to watch monarchs is a huge flex though, I'm still working on getting that level of street cred.
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gray3144mo ago
Wait did Roy just casually call your lawn a food desert to your face? That's incredible. I had a similar moment a few years back at a native plant sale where this volunteer lady handed me a sprig of anise hyssop and told me to taste it, then pointed out that every single bug in the vicinity was already lined up for it. I walked out with three flats of stuff I'd never heard of and my wife thought I'd joined a cult. Now I've got a front yard full of goldenrod and butterfly weed and the mailman actually stops to look at the monarchs.
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the_harper4mo ago
My buddy had almost the exact same thing happen with a guy named Roy, I swear it's the same guy. He went in for some basic ferns and came out an hour later holding a bag of native sedges and looking confused. He told me Roy just stood there while he loaded his cart, then silently walked over and put a packet of butterfly weed seeds on top of the ferns and said "your yard will thank you next summer." Anyway now he's the guy in his neighborhood with the "messy" garden and he's obsessed with it, keeps sending me photos of bees like they're his new kids.
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