Dear Avalonon,

It sounds like you have some nice native plants in your unmown patch (i.e the asters and milkweed) but lovely though they are I would really not encourage the Queen Anne's lace or the chicory. These are considered noxious weeds throughout the continental U.S and Canada. Granted the chicory, historically, has been known be used as coffee substitute.

If you're seeking to add habitat for your wildlife there are other better plants that are native that you can add cheaply through plugs or seed and will give a real great colorful show as well - like yellow coneflower for example.

The best way to get rid of the grass and anything else you don't want would be to first to define the area that you would like to have for your wild garden, create an edge with a spade and then lift all the desirable plants or at least cover them with a plastic bag, and then finally spray the remaining area with Roundup (glycophosphate).

It will take a good 2 - 3 weeks for everything to die. You can take the bags off the plants you wish to save after the 10 minutes it takes the roundup soln to dry though.

Once everything is dead, go ahead and replant those plants that you've salvaged right into the dead turf/weeds (they will become compost later as they decay) and then apply a nice 2-3 inch layer of mulch. Watch for any regrowth of undesireables and then spot spray as needed. If you can add some smaller 3 - 4" plants before you mulch even better.

I hope you don't find these suggestions rude. I do this for a living and I find that when an area is so agressively colonized by undesireable plants that this is the most effective route to take and the most successful in the long run.

Lawn grasses are very aggressive and some of them produce chemicals in their roots to suppress other plants.

You will need to remove the grass, either with Round Up as gonativegal suggested or, if you don't like chemicals, by smothering. To smother, define the garden area and edge and remove plants to be saved as above, then mow the grass short, cover with 7-8 layers of newspaper, wet the newspaper and cover with 3-4 inches of mulch. Wait about 6 weeks and then you can plant what you want through the mulch and newspaper.

The mulch is important in either method as it keep weed seeds away. You will find the common milkweed to be quite spready and may need to control it or replace with butterfly milkweed. Adding some native grasses like little bluestem, switch grass, Canada wild rye and side oats gramma will help the flowers keep the weeds away.

Adding other native plants like penstemon, baptisia, verbena, liatrus, coreposis and rudbeckia and you are on your way to a prairie garden.

Thank-you, gonativegal and judy b for your thoughtful replies. Sounds like I'm going to have to give up on most of the wild flowering plants already there and import domestic ones. The unmowed areas are too big to take out manually in their entirety so think I will do some patches here and there to input plugs of some of the domestic ones you have suggested. Wanted to avoid Roundup but if it's recommended by serious folks like you, I will go for it.

It's a pity that chicory is a noxious weed as the birds love the seeds over the winter. We live on an island where the agriculture is declining so hope the remaining chicory will not pose too much of a problem.

You might get a window of opportunity in early spring or late fall when the turf grass is still green but your favorite plants have gone dormant. That would be a great time to spray the turf with Roundup as long as it's not too cold for the Roundup to work. I like gonativegal's suggestion best but if that's too much for you think about my suggestion. Either way, you will want to make a bit of a trench between the turf you keep and your gardening areas.

Avalonon,
First, let me declare I am NOT an expert. With that said, my suggestion is to do as they have recommended with this idea: Why not plant areas of prairie/natives, and "use" the turf as pathways through the view. I have done this in a small project here and the work, satisfaction and effect were well worth the effort--you can MOW the paths/walkways and incorporate sitting/viewing areas also. Consider this alternative.

Like any garden project, you should start small. Eliminate the turf in a small manageable area, and plant natives. Do research. Buy books on native plant gardening. Educate yourself.

Chicory isn't noxious here, or anywhere that I know of. But its not native. There is a difference.

Contact your native plant society in your state and learn more.

Here is a link that might be useful: my garden