Celia Llopis-Jepsen

The first great tip that I have from experts is like, maybe don't do the whole lawn.

Like people can get really enthusiastic about this, but like just kill a bit of grass and make like one flower bed to start.

So I talked to Stacia Stelk.

She leads Deep Roots KC, which is a group that educates the public on how and why to ditch lawns for native plants.

And she does not go around telling people like, hey, jump in there and do everything at once.

First things first, like you got to pick a spot.

Like where are you going to kill some grass?

And maybe you think it would look really nice to have a flower bed along the walkway to my front door or along a fence.

Or I want to throw out like the idea of doing it around a tree.

So like maybe you've already got this nice oak tree in your yard and you could replace the grass around it with a flower bed.

And that's like a legit thing.

Like that approach is called a soft landing because actually there's all these like butterfly caterpillars and things in the tree.

And when they finish eating oak leaves, they're going to come down and they're going to look for a place to make their chrysalis and they need someplace safe to

away from lawnmowers and such.

So you're creating a safe space for them.

Once you've got your spot, you're going to go ahead and kill the grass.

And that sounds intimidating, but there's actually lots of options.

And some of them are easier than others.

Some work faster than others.

So an easy approach is layer cardboard and mulch just right on top of that grass.