Rewilding My Lot

One of my goals for this fall was to have every area here covered with plants, soil containing seeds, or mulch, so that there is a minimum area of bare soil that could be vulnerable to erosion (obviously I am hoping that my seeds will germinate!). Most of those activities have been achieved by now, but there are a few places where I haven’t decided what to do yet.

So on those bare places, I’ve laid some purchased hardwood mulch. (For now I am using the free city brush pile mulch for pathways only, until I see how it behaves.)

Most of the purchased mulch went on a flower bed behind the house, because I haven’t completely decided how to lay that area out yet. It’s shaded by the house in the mornings, but the afternoon sun that it does get is more intense than I had expected and plants supposedly suited for “part shade” had a hard time in the summer. So it’s not quite the shade bed that I had planned and I will spend more time considering plant options for there.

The green ground cover along the house and in the foreground is Frogfruit (Phyla nodiflora), which absolutely loves this location. It’s so durable that I can literally use the area in the foreground as a mat to wipe off muddy shoes. It also gets a good trimming every few weeks to keep it under control. The cut pieces from this day’s “haircut” are in the white bucket, waiting for relocation.