Rewilding My Lot

On the last day of February 2026, future temperature forecasts for the next 7-10 days are at least 63 degrees F for the lows and 72 degrees F for the highs. So I am going to proceed as if we will have no more freezes this winter and jump into spring preparation.

As usual, I started with the garden in front of the house since that is the most visible. The process there is fairly simple — to trim perennial plants in the pollinator garden (the bed immediately in front of the house) that died back to their roots during the winter. (Annual plants in the meadow nearer the street had already been trimmed in the fall for a neater neighborhood look through the winter, so they did not need any attention.)

Since this collection of plants was not much in volume, rather than use the shredder I just hand-cut the dead stems into small pieces and dropped them on the ground nearby. It is my policy to recycle organic material as much as possible.

Most of what I cut back was Gregg’s Mistflower (Conoclinium greggii). This is a plant that spreads and now that I can see more clearly where it is, I’ll be digging up some of the shoots on the outer edges to donate elsewhere.

Here’s before…

And here’s after…

Other plants that got a good trim were Fall Aster (Symphyotrichum oblongifolium), Mexican Mint Marigold (Tagetes lucida), and Scarlet Sage (Salvia coccinea).

Below are views of the pollinator garden after the cut-back. A lot of the green growth in the bed at the moment are bluebonnets that self-seeded from the nearby meadow. I will let them grow in place for now, since their nitrogen-fixing activity will fertilize the soil. In a few weeks, those plants will be overtaken by their perennial neighbors.

The Flame Acanthus shrub is still small enough for me to leave it at its current size. Once it’s bigger, then it also will get cut back in the spring. That’s the plant in the first picture below in the foreground with brown leaves. The new green leaves that are emerging are too small to see. The bunch grass behind it is Gulf Muhly.