Growing in Circles: A Recipe for Weeding Out Invasive Species and Cultivating Natives

By: Riva Weinstein

1. Convince your husband to leave large circles in the lawn, unmown.

2. Spend the first summer and fall pulling out invasive stiltgrass and protecting sprouting native oaks. Transplant a native walnut sprouting too close to the garage.

3. In autumn, collect seeds of native species from friends and the wild. Cast them like proverbial seeds on the wind.

4. Spend the second summer pulling out stiltgrass and capturing jumping worms.

5. Collect native nuts through the autumn while marveling at the miracle of their design.

6. Winter sow milkweed and other native wildflowers.

7. Convince your husband to embrace No Mow May, and spend the spring explaining why it’s so important to leave the leaves and let the weeds and grass grow for pollinators and wildlife. Remind him that it hadn’t been a lawn since you put in the septic tank and all the grass died out.

8. Notice the tiniest of pine trees sprouting in pots by the back door where pine cones were dropped from above.

9. Attempt to dig out a native Hickory growing too close to the house. Give up. Its roots are already too deep.

10. In the third summer, notice that the stiltgrass is greatly diminished in the circles, while continuing to spread and thrive elsewhere and everywhere.

11. Notice more Norway maple seedlings than ever and pull them as you can.

12. Spend the summer trying to grow vegetables and flowers in a wild garden with native violets, plantain, and Daisy fleabane everywhere.

13. Enjoy a month or two of home grown lettuce.

14. Harvest a single zucchini.

15. Notice another non-native, Queen Anne’s Lace, sprouting in one of the circles.

16. Though your native plant-growing success was limited, continue to dream of sowing native species and planting them in the circles in the years to come.

17. Imagine a small forest of native white pine, catalpa, and dogwood.

18. Remind yourself it doesn’t matter what the neighbors think. Or what it looks like. It may never be what you imagine and may take more years than you have.