I bought my first house with my wife in 2015, this was basically my first introduction to any kind of gardening and landscaping other than some family yardwork growing up. Its an old farm house (1850s) on a 0.8 acre property on a busy road, that had been neglected and vacant for quite some time before investors "flipped" it the year before we bought it. The "front yard" is about 10-12ft deep and was just a blank slate of mulch framed by a concrete block retaining wall. There were NO plants in the front garden other than a few weeds and one giant sycamore tree at the end. The lot smelled of dampness and rotting mulberry fruit when we moved in, thanks to a nearly closed tree canopy around the house. Next to the house, the side yard is quite large and allowed an unobstructed view from an intersection into the backyard. My first needs were privacy screening the road, removing hazardous trees, and a low maintenance planting well adapted to the site in the front yard.
The first year, while doing the regular 'lawn" mowing and maintenance of this massive (to me) lot, I started to identify some of the plants growing wild, and it turns out most of them are invasive species, like garlic mustard, multiflora rose, japanese honeysuckle, creeping charlie, winged Euonymus and japanese stiltgrass. This motivated me to start planting native plants, and I have been obsessively reading about native plants, landscape design, landscape restoration, forestry, and permaculture ever since. I've built two hoop houses to winter sow and grew around 250 plugs from seed in 2018, and have sown 880 plugs for 2019. I plan to plant a lot more tree and shrub seedlings and prepare a small plot to start a small meadow this year as well. I am always ready to swap seeds and chat about plants and overcrowded, overly diverse gardens!
