This garden in Encinitas underwent a HUGE transformation.
Birder's Front Yard Fix - "it's unbelievable"
Dave had a big yard. 7,000 sq.ft. of grass to replace in the front alone. “It was drab. Dead grass. It was patchy, and would grow inconsistently. All I had was a push mower. So I’d be out here for 3 hours in the sun going back and forth, it was just ugly... And if I didn't mow, it looked abandoned.” He tackled about 4,000 of it with 2 double-spaced California Wild plant packages.
How'd Dave do it? He got a turf replacement rebate from the county of San Diego and - due to the scale - was required to take 3 one-hour landscaping classes to get his $10,000 rebate (one class on design, one on irrigation and one on maintenance). “I don’t know how we found this program through the county but we did and we enrolled and we’re just like 'well let’s try just taking [the grass] out' and put something in that doesn’t require a lot of maintenance, something that’s attractive to look at, something that maybe looks a little more natural, a part of the local landscape.” The rebate paid for the plants, professional planting and all the new irrigation. But he and his helping hand still had to put a fair amount of money - and a lot of hard work - into materials. Enough for 4,000 sf of bark mulch and 7,000 sf of landscape fabric which they used to snuff out the lawn
But the real value is in their new wildlife sanctuary. "I'm a birder" Dave says, and "the bird activity in this garden…It’s just stunning." And this is in a yard that's only six months old. "A big goal of ours was to attract wildlife, mostly birds and then butterflies and insects...What I really liked about California Wild's offerings is that there’s so much prethought put into what looks good together. Not only color-wise but shape and heights ... I can’t stop talking about how much I love it." They lost about 5 plants out of the 115 that didn't adapt well to the drip irrigation system but other than that the maintenace has been just weeding. Which, Dave says, is a whole lot more enjoyable than the hours of pushing a lawnmower.
This is Dave's garden before (during lawn removal process) and 6 months after installation. Already the yard was filled with bird life and color.
