Very wonderful and most of us are drooling at the thought of no lawn.My dh refused,afraid that two and a half acres of beds would be too much work,and he ENJOYS mowing.

Well if this isn't the most inspirational post for making a no-grass garden then kiss my grass goodbye!
Just what I needed to see instead of viewing my grub-destroyed lawn and wondering where to go from here.
Could I beg for a picture of the overall front yard to provide some guidance for design? Do you have walkways or is it mulched completely?

Thanks for the bright spot. EVERYTHING is gorgeous.

Denise

Gorgeous!
Thanks for sharing!

What a wonderfull garden! I also would like to see a full picture of your front yard. You get such a wide variety of butterflies in your garden. It would be great not to have to worry about a lawn anymore but with a 3/4 acre lot that has few large trees and none of them in the front I wouldn't be able to mantain that big of a garden.

Beautiful. You should get your yard certified by Monarch Watch (I think that's the name). Did you post this on the butterfly forum? Again, awesome job.

Beverly

I would love to know your plant list. We have just purchased a FL home and I'd like to get rid of most of the grass in the front yard, too!
Marcia in PA

Congrats on all the hard work. It looks great and much more interesting than a boring lawn.

BEAUTIFUL!! Don't know how you did it in this heat but it turned out great!
Thanks for the pictures.

So beautiful! I don't know which is more impressive, the variety of butterflies or your ability to capture them in photos. Please keep posting lots of pics!
k.

Amazing, you can come do my house next!

Oh, MY! Sis3, you have done a MARVELOUS job!!! Thank goodness you didn't keel over from heatstroke, but now that fall is almost here, you'll really be able to enjoy all your hard work. The effort has paid off.

And just think...you are now an inspiration to your neighbors. Some of them might actually be jarred enough to think "out of the LAWN box" for a bit. Or even if they just jazz up their beds and foundation plantings with more color and butterfly attractors, it will be a wonderful thing.

I'm so glad that ANYTHING I might have posted has helped you. And I know you have learned (as have I) from everyone on this forum. It's just the BEST place for Florida-specific info ANYWHERE.

I join the chorus for pictures of your overall plan. I'm always trying to think how I want to layout beds and stuff. Can you take a few of the entire garden from different angles, so we can see the shape of your beds and borders?

Thanks so much for posting this. It did my heart good! And the number of butterflies you have is astounding. (Must be some pawpaws in the neighboring woods for you to have zebra swallowtails. They are fast disappearing!)

Congratulations!

Marcia

Absolutely beautiful!!! What a transformation! You must be thrilled to see the front yard paradise that you created for you and the birds and butterflies!

Wonderful! This is just the kind of effort and the type of post that keeps us energized and soldering on (even in the heat).

This is what the GW FL Forum is all about. Inspiration!

Oh wow!!! Thank you all so much for your kind words! I was feeling quite pleased with my efforts but now I am feeling humbled! So many of you have beautiful gardens, some of them huge, and amazing plants. My garden is so small and so new, and I am just a newbie (I began gardening in Florida just over a year ago, with a tropical courtyard!).

Tomorrow I will post more photos of the layout of the garden, some responses to your specific questions and comments, and a plant list. I do hope you are not disappointed, as my front garden is only 25' x 32'!

It's not the size that counts, you know...it's what you DO with it! (wicked grin) A small, colorful and flower-filled garden trumps big, empty spaces, any day. Can't wait to see more photos!

Marcia

Beautiful! And if you love it now, just wait until the plants reach full size! It will be stunning. Very nice work. It looks like it was worth being out there in the summer. I have had that same thought about watering my plants with the sweat of my brow many times.

Melissa

To answer some specific comments, it is going to be a pleasure to maintain this small garden but I can see that karalynn's 3/4 of an acre would be a much more daunting proposition, and as for goldenpond's 2 1/2 acres....well, I perspire at the thought of all that work!!! However I do wish there was more land here to garden, this is a waterfront lot, only 50' wide.

Shellfreak I will check out 'Monarch Watch'. I have never visited the butterfly forum, so I will lurk on there to see whether I can contribute. Thank you.
marciapa my plant list is below, I hope it helps you as Marcia's (manature) list helped me. I can heartily recommend a grassless front yard. It will be interesting to follow your progress if you decide to undertake it.
Thank you for your encouragement thonotorose. It is sometimes daunting for a newbie like me to post when there is such knowledge and experience here. I usually assume I am going to bore, rather than inspire, but now you have inspired me to continue to post.

Here is my original plan. Sorry, I couldn't rotate it. The beds are colored green and the blue areas are mulched access paths.

The plan for the front yard was very simple. We built a curving flagstone path to the front entry and flanked it with a narrow bed raised by a dry stack stone wall. This continues around the flagstone terrace directly in front of the sitting room window. At the lower level there are mulched beds bordered by a mulched access path. There has to be access to the underground propane tank and the water meter. There is a circular area of mulch around the gas tank lid where there will be a something attractive to disguise the tank lid, and a few more containers.

This photo was taken from the second floor window. The terrace and a flower bed are out of sight below.

Hopefully the plants will eventually fill out to cover most of the mulch and will spill out on to the access paths. At the moment there is rather a lot of mulch showing (but not nearly as much as there was when the garden was first planted! :)

Here is the plant list:

Lantana, Bush Daisy, Diamond Frost, Coneflower, Indian Blanket, Brazilian Red Hots, Shrimp Plant, Blue Daze, Buddleia, Milkweed, Cassia, Mexican Heather, Mexican Petunia (Purple Showers - sterile) Penta, Maple Leaf Hibiscus, Globe Amaranthus, Purple Top Verbena, Firebush, Plumbago, Firespike, Firecracker, Kaffir Lime, Meyer Lemon, Black Eyed Susan, Dwarf Powder Puff, Tea Olive, Coral Honeysuckle, Dill, White Almond Bush, Purslane, Dutchman's Pipevine, Gardenia, Thryallis, Porterweed (red and blue), Fountain Grass, Crape Myrtle, Jatropha, Flax Lily, Duranta, Vinca.

It's a long list for such a small garden but it may explain the wonderful variety of creatures that visit daily!

Marcia, I have been reading about the wild Paw Paw (what a great plant!) and I wonder if there may be some in the conservation area directly across the street from my garden (visible in some of the photos). It looks like a rain forest in there, I have been dying to explore it for years, now I am definitely going to do so, if only to seek the Paw Paws. From the street I can see many butterflies floating around in there, mostly Swallowtails and Sulphurs!

When I went to take these photos this morning there were 4 Swallowtails, a Gulf Frit, several Sulphurs, a Zebra Longwing, and many Skippers and bees already at work! In my tiny garden! My heart sang!

Thanks for the extra photos, they really help with ideas for my yard.
I really like the different levels which create distinct areas and the dry laid stone wall is gorgeous.

This is really one of the nicest "natural" non-grass front yards I've seen.

There is a community near me, in Osprey, south of Sarasota, that has been landscaped with minimum grass and someday I'll have an extra 10 minutes to drive through but from the photos I've seen of theirs your yard is head and shoulders above.

Bra-VO!

Denise

Just stunning. And what luck to have a conservation area across the street. I bet it has some of the important host plants for your wildlife that you wouldn't necessarily want in your yard. I know that some of my "weeds" feed critters. It's my excuse for not remulching until the weeds are pretty awful. But it sure would be nice for a conservation area to plant itself across the street for the weeds the critters want.

Sis, what a beautiful and interesting oasis you've created! I also love the hardscape and the change in elevation. Great job! Thanks for sharing all the great photos. Now you can relax and enjoy...

Anna

Me too! Me TOOOO!! *waving hand in the air, jumping up and down and yelling enthusiastically!*

Sis, you have done a FIRST RATE job there! I, too, love the changes in elevation with the addition of the stone wall. And your hardscaping in general looks great! Love the flagstone path.

But most of all, I love the HUGE variety of plants you have managed to include in your garden. At maturity, your yard is going to be a veritable wonder!! And you will be enjoying all the critters it attracts for a long time to come.

Thank you so much for sharing the photos so we can really see just how you've done it. Even those with larger yards can adapt your ideas to their own spaces. Or can create a smaller garden "room" within the larger whole.

See...you really ARE inspiring us! Nice work...give yourself a big pat on the back!!

Marcia

Wow...just wow. You did an amazing job. Wish you were my neighbor so I could steal cuttings from you lol!

Sis, thank you for taking the time to list your plants and the extra photos. I'll keep your list handy when I'm looking at plants to use.
Marcia in PA

Wow! I wish my front yard didn't have grass...the weeds have taken over. Did you have to dig up the grass or was it a new yard? I too would love to see a picture of the whole yard.

I tore out my grass 4 years ago and don't miss it a bit. I dug it up with a shovel and a rake. It was a lot of work and I would not recommend doing that.

The best suggestion I have read on numerous sites is to mow the grass to the lowest setting. Then cover the grass with newspapers (multiple layers), then cover that with mulch (please consider something besides Cypress).

The papers and mulch will starve the grass of light. The newspaper and grass will rot over time. When you want to plant, you move the mulch aside and dig straight through the paper.

And you don't have to do it all at once. Take out 10 feet of grass a year. Then you can experiment and figure out what you can grow and what you like.

Sorry Sis, you can no longer call yourself a newbie, not with the wonderful garden you created and now people asking you advice. Beautiful job. Apparently your garden is salt tolerant. Working in the heat of this summer you did indeed water it with your sweat. Thanks so much for sharing. You are an inspiration to all of us who look out the window and don't like what we see. Aren't you glad you did those 'before' pictures now?
Nancy

Thank you for posting all the extra pictures! Your garden is amazing. You must have a hard time not stopping to admire it every time you go in and out your front door or walk past the windows. All of your hard work certainatly paid off.

Kara

Wow!! You have done such an amazing job! You should be very proud of yourself. Thank you so much for sharing your beautiful garden.

Thank you for sharing! I love it. You are an inspiration.

imagardener the Osprey community sounds very interesting, it would be great if you just happened to have your camera with you when you drive through. Do you think the residents would mind?

sharbear we did not have a lot of grass to remove, but a concrete drive and parking area and a lot of neglected and overgrown shrubs with horrible roots, and weeds. Here is a photo of the front entry before we began remodeling/rebuilding the house and garden.

The worst problem was that after I had bought loads of plants from the USF sale we discovered that there was a layer of hard pan from the old drive about 12 to 15 inches below the dirt covering the entire garden area. In addition the dirt was almost pure sand and very infertile. So in the middle of June we had to remove all the dirt, then the layer of concrete, then replace and amend it. This had to be done very quickly as the new plants were in their little pots waiting to be planted. There is no shade, it was so hot we could work only from about 7am to 11am at best each day and even then it was exhausting!!

This is a similar view now.

Just a quick critter update. It has been a few days now since we last saw our little hummer. I hope it hasn't left for the season.
Yesterday as DH was watching his first Zebra Swallowtail a Polydamas Swallowtail swooped in! The photo is a bit blurry, they flutter so! I think that makes 14 species of large butterflies visiting a garden the size of our family room! Amazing!

Thank you all so much! It is such a thrill to think that my little garden may have inspired some of you, you all have certainly ENCOURAGED me! There's no stopping me now!

I have a sunny west facing front yard, 100' wide and 50' deep. What brought me to this post was searching for front yard ideas, I want to be able to have a sitting spot, a little stone brook type of water feature, create views to my front facing windows, have a cut garden area, attract butterflies, etc. There are a lot to learn from this post. Thank you.