Backyard Columbus

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Backyard Columbus

"If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own backyard...

06/18/2026

📢 SOUND ON 📢✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨
This is what your yard should look like at night ✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨

Your yard - like ours- is a reflection of what you do - or don’t do.

When you spray pesticides all over your lawn, you unintentionally kill fireflies and their larvae. Companies don’t tell you this. They tell you you’re getting rid of “bad” insects and mosquitoes (that’s a lie, btw). But you’re ALSO killing the things we all love to see: fireflies, butterflies, moths (there are pretty ones!), etc. And you didn’t know; now you don’t have any (or many) fireflies 😭😭😭😭😭

✨Did you know that fireflies are pollinators, too? 🌼
✨As they move between blossoms to feed on nectar and pollen, they inadvertently transfer pollen from plant to plant. While they may not be as prolific as bees or butterflies, they serve as quiet, resilient contributors to local ecosystems 💡

The ask: reduce or eliminate your pesticide use. As a bonus idea, if you reduce the size of your lawn in exchange for more beautiful, flower filled habitat, then you won’t have the need to spray much lawn🤷🏼‍♀️
Just sayin’…..

✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨✨

06/17/2026

I’m closing the day out with a bang!
Podcast episode and blog post both hitting this week on a topic I’m passionate about:

ℍ𝕠𝕨 𝕥𝕠 𝕄𝕒𝕜𝕖 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕄𝕠𝕤𝕥 𝕠𝕗 𝕐𝕠𝕦𝕣 𝕊𝕦𝕓𝕦𝕣𝕓𝕒𝕟 𝕐𝕒𝕣𝕕: 𝔽𝕠𝕠𝕕, 𝔽𝕝𝕠𝕨𝕖𝕣𝕤, 𝕎𝕚𝕝𝕕𝕝𝕚𝕗𝕖 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕁𝕠𝕪 🥳🤗💚

A suburban yard doesn’t have to be just grass, mulch, and a few shrubs.
Even a regular neighborhood yard can become a place that feeds your family, supports pollinators, welcomes wildlife, creates beauty, and gives you peaceful places to enjoy being outside ☀️

Link in bio where you can find my podcast and blog 🙌🏼
New podcast episode drops tomorrow morning, 6/17 5:00am 🥳

06/16/2026

Part 1 of many little spots in our suburban yard 💚 I hope that you find some ideas along the way….

First up: 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑽𝒆𝒈𝒆𝒕𝒂𝒃𝒍𝒆 𝑮𝒂𝒓𝒅𝒆𝒏 🥕🫑🍅🫛🥒🧅🫜

🍅Raised beds
🍅DIY irrigation
🍅No chemicals
🍅Pollinator plants to attract bees and other pollinators to, well, pollinate the veggie blossoms 😁
🍅Trellises and arches for climbers
🍅Solar fairy lights for ambience ✨
🍅No mulch because it harbors pests who overwinter & emerge in the spring to destroy my vegetables
🍅Insect barrier cloth to protect my kale 🥬

Start small; you can always grow!

06/12/2026

Squeaked out a new blog post 🥳 It's more complete info on yesterday's post. Check it out here:

06/11/2026

PLANT THIS, NOT THAT is on summer hiatus since it’s a CRUMMY time to plant (you definitely still can, but you need to baby the plants A LOT👎)

To explain why we did that series in the first place: to help increase habitat for our local pollinators 🦋🐝

Some of the native [Ohio] plants that we featured are important because of their host plant abilities.

Even if you just like to do vegetable gardening, you need pollinators to increase your yield (or even get any fruits, unless you enjoy hand pollinating all of your vegetable blossoms 🥴🤢)

🦋The entire family of Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) require host plants
🦋No host plants = no butterflies or moths = 😭😭😭😭😭
🦋This is one more reason that we see fewer and fewer butterflies and moths in our neighborhoods: virtually no one is planting their host plants, but it’s so easy! 🥳🥳🥳

👉Pick your fave butterfly or moth
👉Provide some good nectar sources to ensure they come to your “restaurant“
👉Plant their required host plant to make sure they lay their eggs in your yard! 🐛🐛🐛🐛🐛🦋🦋🦋

A few easy ones:
Monarchs 👉milkw**d
Black Swallowtails 👉 dill, fennel, parsley
Skippers👉 native grasses (NOT turf grass), sedges and legumes
Zebra Swallowtails 👉 Paw Paw trees!! 🦓
Great Spangled Fritillary 👉 native violets 💜💜💜

It’s a looong list, but a quick Google search 😉 It’s one of the easiest ways you can help butterfly populations- FR 🙃🦋✨🦋✨🦋✨

06/09/2026

The entire yard: gardens, habitats, paths, hiding places and nature spaces, are done and ready to bloom 🌼✨✨✨

We live in on 9,234 sq ft, in the middle of busy cross streets.

We started with 5 oak trees (you could do way worse, oak trees support A LOT of life!) and over the course of about 15 years, our yard has become something I didn’t even know I wanted 🤗🥰🥰🥰🥰🦋🐝

I’ve learned so much and continue to learn something new almost every day (but since it’s Ohio, winter doesn’t count😂😂😂).

I hope you can get some ideas from some of the areas I’ve shared here. Instagram limits you to 20 pics 🤣- I did have more 🫣🥴😂🫢

06/07/2026

The Chelsea Chop! ✂️

Have you heard of it or tried it?
I did it last year with our Canadian Goldenrod and it really helped keep the height in check.
This year, I did it to:
👉New England aster
👉Sneezew**d
👉Canadian goldenrod
👉Blue Sage

Hopefully the Chelsea Chop will these plants stay at a more manageable and appealing height 😁

The Chelsea Chop technically is this: The “Chelsea Chop” is a popular gardening technique where you cut back taller herbaceous perennials by roughly one-third to one-half in late spring (around May or early June). It gets its name because the timing perfectly coincides with the famous Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) Chelsea Flower Show in London.

Will you try “The Chelsea Chop” this year?

06/05/2026

How about you? 🤷🏼‍♀️

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

06/04/2026

Welcome to another edition of
ℙ𝕃𝔸ℕ𝕋 𝕋ℍ𝕀𝕊, ℕ𝕆𝕋 𝕋ℍ𝔸𝕋

To recap the goal of this series:
Some of the “not that“ plants are totally fine to plant alongside the native suggestions, and other “not that“ plants are invasive & really should be avoided.
😉We’re talking about the best choices for pollinator plants in this series, not medicinal, sentimental or edible plants 🙃😁
Here we go🦋🐝🐝🐝

🐝Native Black-eyed Susan vs Black-eyed Susan vine: Name confusion! The vine is pretty, but it’s a tropical annual, not the native Rudbeckia pollinator powerhouse 🦋 Black-eyed Susans are also highly valuable larval host plants for the caterpillars of several butterfly and moth species, as well as numerous specialist native bees.

🐝 Butterfly w**d vs Butterfly bush: Holy 💩, don’t freak out 😂 butterfly bush gives nectar, but butterfly w**d is a native milkw**d and a monarch butterfly host plant. Much better backyard habitat value. The issue also is the butterfly bush (Buddleja davidii) is widely considered an invasive plant in Ohio. It spreads rapidly through wind-blown seeds, aggressively outcompeting native vegetation in natural areas and disturbed sites. Additionally, it acts only as a nectar source and is not a host plant for native butterfly caterpillars.
An idea 💡: if you REALLY must have a butterfly bush, cutting the dead flowers off before they go to seed would prevent the unwanted seed dispersal of this plant 🙏

🐝Cardinal flower vs geraniums: instead of defaulting to a pot of red annuals for color, try a native red flower that hummingbirds truly love!
Don’t panic, flower people: this doesn’t mean you have to break up with geraniums. Put cardinal flower and red geraniums together in a container and let them throw a full-blown red hummingbird party 🥳❤️

06/02/2026

Happy Monday evening ✨

The day is almost over and I was gettin’ all the good feels in our woodland fairy garden 🤗

If you don’t get good feels in your yard, it’s time to add some 💚✨🦋

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Columbus, OH

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http://www.BackyardColumbus.com/

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