No Lawns

If money was no object I would buy up all of the houses around mine and turn them into native forests.

When ever I see land being cleared for a development, I wish I could just buy it up and preserve it.

time is definitely the biggest issue, so right now it’s just a huge list of tiny chores and a dozen container bags for a kitchen garden in an attempt to incrementally move towards some future ideal

I would love the convert the space over to full-on permaculture / food forest / no till, no maintenance / Mediterranean style garden – olive trees along one swale but haven’t thought about rest yet

(and despite this being “No Lawns”, would probably still keep a little patch of grass, clover, and dandelion as a backyard lawn)

A large greenhouse with a high amount of vertical space so I could have rows of hydroponic trays vertically stacked and growing food for the neighborhood.

Use the rich as mulch /j

Native wild flowers and clovers. And a ton of composting bins and hydroponic systems powered with solar and rainwater.

A huge greenhouse with indoor and outdoor grow beds surrounded by milkweed and beyond that whatever native plants decide to grow there.

I think a lot of people are dreaming too big (nothing wrong with that) and too conceptually (again, no fault, as dreams themselves are conceptual). The only issue, from my humble perspective, is that these dreams don't have much detail. To get detail, we need to make a few basic assumptions to build on.

For the sake of detail, I'll use my own yard as is, and take your question as 'if money was no issue with where you currently live, what would you do to create your dream yard?'

My backyard is currently 10 m^2 ^ in size. At the back is a shrub bed along the fence. My front yard is about the same, but most of it consists of driveway, with two pretty narrow strips (maybe 3 m x 15 m) in size.

Backyard: the shrub-bed has coarse gravel in it, so I'd pull all that, along with the shrubs to be replanted later. I'd add 3-4 more layers of the landscaping bricks that act as the edge of the bed, and then backfill the newly created depth with mineral topsoil. I'd envision this whole thing being about 3 ft tall. I'd then replant the shrubs.

I remove the shed I have back there, and then create a similar dimension shrub bed, but with a shorter height wall, so the whole area is a two-step terrace. This layer would be about 50 cm deep, and backfilled with mineral topsoil, and planted with native bunch-grasses (looking at you fescues) and wildflowers such as wild bergamot.

I've got a shady spot along the south fence, so that would be bordered with a low-profile garden curb, filled with the coarse gravel, and planted with alder or dogwood to create a privacy screen. The north fence gets full sun exposure, so I'd want to do the same with the curb/gravel, but have some well-established spruce trees there, again for a screen. along the fences in the back, I'd put pollinator habitat/hotels.

Front yard: curb/coarse gravel, a few patches of lawn for visual effect, with most of the gravel bed filled in with bunch grasses/wildflowers.

Food forest for sure, I just love the idea of having a lil patch of forest I can walk through and being like "oh shit I forgot I planted pumpkins over here, look at those, they're doing great."

I'd love to have native flowers and trees with walking paths through the yard so I can enjoy all my pretty plants. I'd like to have a small pond (and I mean small, tiny yard) to enjoy. Maybe a sitting area with a nice table for having people over and possibly a fire pit.

To do this would be so much work though due to the grade of my yard and just the awkward shape. I've been slowly transitioning all the current plants to natives. It seems like when I have time I don't have money and when I have money I don't have time so, it's a slow process.