Celia Llopis-Jepsen

So there are a few ways to save money.

One good tip is that you can grow plants from seed.

You can buy native plant seeds online or from like a local native plant nursery.

You can also look for nurseries that sell plugs, like just very small plants in six packs or even in flats instead of

Shelling out big bucks for mature plants.

You can even, you know, sometimes that could be a wholesaler, for example, who's like mostly selling to landscape contractors, but who might also let you walk in and buy plugs by the flat at a better price that you're going to get like at a typical retail place.

And then, like, I have a tip for potentially getting plants for free, and that is to look for native plant Facebook groups in your area.

Because lots of gardeners swap or give away plants because they'll plant something in their garden, it will grow, and a few years later, like...

It's maybe gone to seed and produced baby plants.

And people are happy to swap or give away plants when they have extras.

And then a final money tip on this is that nowadays there are quite a few cities and counties that have incentives for you to replace part of your lawn with native plants.

So that can mean reimbursing you for part of the cost.

And it's worth looking into that before you even start to see if there's something like that in your area.

A common rule of thumb that gardeners like to use for any kind of flower gardening, really, is this idea of sleep, creep, leap.

So three years.

Like that first year, you're not really seeing much happen.

The plants are sleeping.

The second year, they grow a little bit.

It's like they're creeping.

And then the third year, they're going to like really thrive and fill out and look great.