Two Years Turned This Open Lawn Into a Garden Filled With Native Plants
Two years made a major difference in Reddit user u/Status_Block591’s Southwest Florida yard. Most of the space began as open grass bordered by a white fence, with a few existing plants and palms. String lines held down with bricks marked where new beds would cut into the lawn.
The homeowner, who gardens in Zone 10a/10b, says the finished planting is about 80 to 85% native. Instead of replacing every patch of grass, the project added broad beds across the yard while leaving strips of lawn between them. Those strips now work as routes through a mix of shrubs, grasses, flowering plants, and trees.
String Lines Mapped the Beds Across the Open Lawn
String stretched between bricks marked the first planting areas across the grass. The lines form broad shapes in the center of the yard rather than narrow beds pushed against the house or fence.
The plan reserved much of the center for plants while keeping grass around the proposed beds. Existing trees and the fence also stayed outside most of the marked sections, giving the new planting room to expand without turning the full yard into one bed.
More Than One Bed Was Planned Into the Grass
Seen from the opposite side, the string layout shows several planting zones spread across the lawn. Bricks hold corners and changes in direction while long string runs define the space between them.
Breaking the lawn into separate beds left grass between the planting areas. That choice becomes more important in later photos, when the plants gain size and the remaining lawn forms open passages through the garden.
String Made the Scale Clear Before Any Grass Came Out
One closer view shows how much lawn each marked section covered. The string crosses a large part of the grass, with several lines meeting at weighted points to establish the bed shapes.
There are no plants or mulch inside these outlines yet. That makes this image one of the clearest references for judging how much growth would fill the same ground during the next two years.
Planting Zones Extended Across Much of the Yard
From the fence corner, the planned beds stretch across much of the open space. They are not laid out as matching rectangles or a border that follows the property line.
The layout gives plants more depth than a narrow perimeter bed could provide. It also creates room for shrubs, grasses, flowers, and small trees to occupy separate heights once the garden matures.
Young Plants Filled the First Mulched Bed
One early stage shows a curved bed built around an existing cluster of palms. Black edging separates mulch from grass, while young plants sit with wide gaps between them.
Small shrubs, grasses, and upright flowering plants establish several planting heights from the start. At this point, grass still accounts for much of the visible yard and the new bed reads as a separate island within it.
Mulch Was Still Visible Between the New Plants
Another view of the young garden shows open mulch around the palm trunks and between plants. Red flowers punctuate the bed while fine grasses and low shrubs begin covering more ground.
The homeowner used a mix that is about 80 to 85% native. He identified spotted beebalm, scorpion tail, coreopsis, rudbeckia, wild tamarind, firebush, and silver buttonwood among the plants growing in the yard. Amaryllis and Pride of Barbados are among the exceptions to the native-heavy plan.
Grasses and Flowers Began Closing the Open Gaps
More growth changed the spacing around the palms. Tufts of grass spread across the lower layer while red flowers and shrubs rise through them. Far less mulch remains exposed than in the earlier view.
Some plants also began competing for space. The homeowner reports that spotted beebalm and scorpion tail spread enough to obscure some of the coreopsis and rudbeckia, though the dense growth has drawn pollinators.
Grass Became a Path Between the Expanding Beds
The project did not require removing every section of lawn. A strip of grass remains through the center, with mature planting on both sides.
That open ground now separates beds that have grown far beyond their first-season size. Large grass clumps sit near the path, shrubs fill the fence line, and taller flowering plants rise from the bed on the right.
Two Years of Growth Filled the Garden Islands
From this side of the yard, the change in scale is clear. Beds that began with small plants and open mulch now hold shrubs and trees broad enough to overlap when viewed from a distance.
The palms remain visible above the new planting, but the ground around them has changed. Grass still provides a route beside the house and along the fence while dense beds occupy much of the space that started as uninterrupted lawn.
Trees, Shrubs, and Grasses Built Several Planting Heights
Mature sections contain far more than a ground-level layer of flowers. Palms and young trees form the highest points, shrubs fill the middle, and grasses and smaller flowering plants cover the ground around them.
One of those trees has shown why the homeowner values plants suited to Southwest Florida. He says his wild tamarind grew more than 20 feet and came through two hurricanes and a tropical storm without damage. A firebush and silver buttonwood suffered storm damage but survived.
Dense Planting Now Covers Much of the Former Open Lawn
Two years after the beds were mapped with string, much of the open view across the lawn is gone. Shrubs, grasses, flowering plants, palms, and young trees overlap across the center of the yard, with blue and red flowers visible among the foliage.
Narrow sections of grass remain around the beds instead of serving as the yard’s main feature. Comparing this view with the first string layout shows how much ground plants can occupy once beds are given enough width and time to fill in.
All image credits: Reddit user u/Status_Block591’s, r/NativePlantGardening.