Rewilding My Lot

Last year the land here was rather barren because it was a new development lot with nothing but builder-installed turf and landscape plants that were mostly not nature-friendly. As I was in the process of clearing, planting, and planning, I was thrilled to see volunteer sunflowers arrive and really cheer things up.

Unless they were in the way, last year I let the sunflowers do their own thing, because they attracted birds and insects, and were pleasing to see. I knew that the consequence of leaving them would be that I’d have even more volunteer plants here this year from the dropped seeds. True!

So now I have dozens of sunflower plants growing, which gives me the luxury of deciding which ones to keep. Now that they have grown tall enough for me to identify, then I am removing those that are up against pathways, or obscuring other plants. There is no need for the ground to waste nutrients on growing plants that are surplus.

Sunflowers are not bad plants; it’s just that some are in locations that I don’t want. And since many of them are crowding other plants, pulling them up by the roots would be disruptive. So for these sunflowers, I am merely trimming them down to the ground rather than pulling them out by the roots. The roots will eventually decay to feed the soil.

Sunflowers seem to attract a plentiful and diverse collection of insect visitors, so rather then compost the cuttings immediately, I’m leaving them on the ground for a couple of days to allow visitors to escape to another location. Then the pieces will go in the compost. The first photo in this post is the cuttings piled up in the swale since that was a handy bare patch of soil.

And here are before (first) and after (second) photos. There are plenty more sunflower plants in the garden, but I’ll let them grow a little more until I make a final choice on which will stay. It may not be easy in the photos to see what difference I made, but the biggest plants were taken from beside the pathway at the front, and on the right side near the fence.