(soft rhythmic music) >>If you have lots of turfgrass or an old hayfield and you'd like to see something besides that monoculture, think about adding native plants.

If you go online, you may see some pretty intricate machinations that you might have to go through in terms of maybe burning the plot, cutting the turfgrass, rolling it up, or maybe even using herbicides to potentially get rid of the grass that's acting as the competitor.

And when we first moved to this property we thought we might have to do those sorts of things.

But in this area we decided we were gonna try a much simpler strategy, and we were just going to try to find native plants that compete well against the grass.

So, we decided, with some help with some friends, to try our first planting, and that was going to be one of the mountain mints, which is called short-toothed or clustered, Pycnanthemum muticum.

Our friend just gave us one plant, and over by the stake in the middle of this large circle is where I planted one plant.

I did nothing else.

I dug a hole in the grass, and I put the mountain mint in.

And now since 2021, in five years, I have a circle that is several meters wide.

I have a beautiful landing spot of the mountain mint for my pollinators.

Right now the flowers are brownish, and I just like the look of that from the house.

You could cut them if you wanted.

We like to watch how it changes from that fall look over winter into the green of spring.

And then later in summer we will see a beautiful pop of white, light green flowers.

So, how would you do something like this?

Well, you could find someone who has this mountain mint, like me, and you could just dig up one little plant.

So, out from the circle because of the way this grows.

I've got some nice well-isolated pieces, and I'm just gonna pop this out of the ground.

And you can see that it's gonna come up with some grass.

But that's okay.

So, we've got the nice stands of Pycnanthemum.

We've got the roots down here.

And it's okay, if you wanna pull the grass out that's fine.

You don't have to, but this piece in a matter of years will give you this kind of coverage.

You don't have to do anything.

We just literally dug the hole and put it right in.

Rosinweed and goldenrods are other good choices, and you can put them against each other and see which native plant wins.

But they will all do well against the grass.

This is a circle because that's how I mow it.

So, I just come up with my mower and make a path.

Now, I do mow around this several times during the year so I have a path so I can walk up and actually see the pollinators.

Otherwise, this would be in the middle of a much larger grassy field that I wouldn't maybe walk through in the summer because of the other insects that I might not want, like the ticks.

So, hopefully this gives you an idea of what you could do to get rid of some of the turfgrass and some of the fescue if you have a spot where you want more native plants.

Happy gardening.