My biggest advice is to wait a year before you make any major changes. Things like how much sun an area gets will change throughout the year as the sun moves, or as nearby trees drop their leaves or grow them back.

As for specific plants, start by learning about what’s in your area that does well. Apps like iNaturalist are decent at helping identify plants (and bugs and animals) that you see both in nature and in other people’s gardens. You can then research those plants to see if they’re native to your area or not.

For tools, buy what you need when you need it. A shovel is good for planting new plants, but not as necessary for daily maintenance.

The lawn will be a similar process. See what pops up on its own. If you like it, research to see if it’s native or invasive.

Chocolate ice cream and vanilla with chocolate syrup are entirely different. You can buy vanilla with chocolate syrup swirls, but it’s not as good as drenching it yourself.

You can also make pesto from the greens!

The leaves look right for a carrot. I would let it grow and see what you get from it in the fall.

Carrots are biennial. If you planted seeds this year and are seeing something put on flower buds, it’s likely a weed rather than a tall carrot.

But the fruit is delicious! Just be sure to be careful of the sharp little hairs (glochids), they’re no fun to get out of your skin.

And I’m over here having to hand water my newer natives because of a 100+ F (almost 40 C) heat wave.

I recommend against pruning at this stage. I also recommend against rocks. Instead, just do a big perennial bed, or even just make your whole lawn perennials. This is more or less realistic depending on the size, of course. The two main issues with rocks are that they accumulate heat which is then hard on plants and uncomfortable for us, and that they are big and heavy and next to impossible to get rid of if you ever decide you don’t like them.

A native ground cover is another good option. Depending on your area that could mean a native grass mix, native sedges, or something like frogfruit. In most cases your first step will be to solarize the area to kill the existing grass and weed seeds.

I’m happy to see the article has such a strong focus on using native seeds.

Butterflies and bees are great, but I love seeing all the other pollenators that I rarely recognize. Native bees, beetles, and even some tiny (non stinging) wasps. I especially love that no matter what part of nature you’re most interested in attracting/observing, native plants are almost always a good place to start.

I’ll second this. The easiest way to get it to grow is to just set the pad on top of the soil. It will naturally root from the portion touching the ground and eventually sprout some new growth.

That’s why I only buy native perennials. Not as cheap as seeds, but they’ll last pretty much forever. They also need much less attention than annuals.

I do wish I had the time for a vegetable garden, though. I hope to build a sub irrigated planter some day soon to grow annual vegetables in.

The light green serrated leaves in the middle are a hackberry tree that was planted by a bird. They have a bad reputation, but they’re fast growing, native, and provide decent shade. If this is at least twenty feet from your house, you could let it grow and have a tree there instead of a mystery shrub.

You can confirm it’s hackberry by looking at the veins at the underside of a leaf. You should see three main veins starting at the base of the leaf, similar to if you held up your three middle fingers.

If it’s dying back to the ground every year, training it into a tree might not be the best idea.

I haven’t bought it in years, those may very well be pre covid prices I’m remembering.

Your comment helped me remember that I had a dream hummingbirds were visiting my coral honeysuckle!

I just realized I had a similar misunderstanding about trumpet creeper and crossvine. Turns out both are native, but trumpet creeper just grows way too aggressively. This is a good thing for professional landscapers that can keep up with training and pruning it, but most people would probably do better with a well behaved crossvine.

I wouldn’t grow corn personally. The grocery store corn is like four for a dollar when it’s in season. Give that space to some different tomato or pepper varieties!

A two part reminder to be mindful of which type of honeysuckle you plant: Japanese honeysuckle is very popular, but also considered invasive in some areas and grows very aggressively. But also, not all honeysuckle is Japanese, you may have native varieties available that will work even better.

My local native honeysuckle unfortunately isn’t fragrant, but the hummingbirds love it.

Sub irrigated planters are another option. They’re equally effective, but they take the human error factor of setting and adjusting watering rates out of the equation.

This is the site I used to make mine and it turned out well:

https://albopepper.com/sips.php

Note that he says not to put perennial plants in it. This may be true for areas that get a very deep freeze, but my perennials did great in zone 8.

My chili pequin planted in the ground comes back each year in 8a, but it’s native here.