After Reducing Your Lawn, Planning for New Plantings

by | Apr 5, 2026 | Feature, Landscapes, Magazine

A section of the wildflower garden in full bloom, with red, yellow, blue, and pink blossoms filling the frame.

PHOTO Bruce Leander

The decision to replace some of your lawn with added planting beds is exciting but also might feel daunting. There are so many potential directions, and so many inputs. What are you most hoping to do with your garden? What are the conditions in your yard? Do you aspire to attract birds, or grow flowers for cutting? What do you think goes well and looks good together? What have you noticed flourishing in other gardens you walk by? How much space do plants need, how tall or wide do they grow, when do they bloom and bring seasonal interest?

We turned to our own staff and some local gardening experts for guidance on working with native plants and to learn some of their favorite plant groupings. Common themes that emerged are the importance of determining what’s approachable and doable for you, evaluating your site conditions and goals, and being prepared to adapt and grow along the way, just like your garden! The tips shared by these experts are like learning a favorite recipe or a secret shortcut in the kitchen. Hint: If you are gardening in Central Texas, you need Turk’s cap (Malvaviscus arboreus var. drummondii) in your landscape!

#1: Kill the weeds and do some homework

“If you’re a new gardener, start small and be strategic,” recommends Andrea DeLong-Amaya, horticulture educator at the Wildflower Center and author of The Texas Native Plant Primer. If it feels overwhelming to eliminate your entire lawn at once, consider replacing a strip of lawn or carving out some areas from the edges, and do this in winter or very early spring. Then, take the spring and summer to smother out the existing grass or other vegetation on the part of lawn you want to eliminate. “If you don’t deal with weeds effectively at the start, then you’re going to be dealing with them forever,” she added.

“If you’re solarizing or sheet mulching and you’re waiting several months for that vegetation to die, that’s a good time to do some homework,” says DeLong-Amaya. Learn what type of soil you have and if you need to add compost, get a sense of your sun exposure, window shop at nurseries for plants that catch your eye and visit both public and private gardens for ideas of what you might plant in your newly created garden space.

Andrea DeLong-Amaya holds a copy of The Texas Native Plant Primer at a launch event.

In your planning, consider planting ground covers or dense plants that help reduce weeds and protect the soil, or add a layer of mulch or mulched leaves to protect the bare soil while the plants grow in. After you’ve planted, and while the plants are growing and filling in, water as needed to help the plants get established.

When it comes to choosing plants for the new areas you’ve prepared, DeLong-Amaya suggests checking out the Wildflower Center’s native plant database and using the filters (light requirement, soil moisture, bloom time, bloom color, and more) to create specific searches for your needs.

Some of Andrea DeLong-Amaya’s easy-to-grow, readily available favorites:

  • For color throughout the seasons, in a shadier spot: Start with a possumhaw (Ilex decidua) or yaupon holly (Ilex vomitoria) as an understory anchor. The possumhaw has beautiful red-orange berries in the winter, as does the evergreen yaupon. Pair with giant spiderwort (Tradescantia gigantea) for spring blooms and evergreen foliage all winter and Turk’s cap (Malvaviscus arboreus var. drummondii) for red flowers throughout the summer. Inland sea oats (Chasmanthium latifolium), with their constant seasonal interest, make a good choice for framing it all.
  • For sunny spots: Silver foliage plants are at the top of her list. Purple sage or cenizo (Leucophyllum frutescens) makes a good anchor plant. Combine with mealy blue sage (Salvia farinacea) and Englemann’s daisy (Engelmannia peristenia), which bloom blue and yellow respectively in the spring and fall. Plant winecup (Callirhoe involucrata) as a fuchsia-colored spring groundcover. Winecup can look ratty in the summer, so pair it with the annual partridge pea (Chamaecrista fasciculata), a summer workhorse with easy yellow blooms that attracts pollinators and serves as a larval host plant for various butterflies. Add some wooly stemodia (Stemodia lanata), a silvery warm-season groundcover, to echo the silver of the cenizo. Bring in a spineless prickly pear (Opuntia ellisiana) for its structural beauty and to make the colors and textures of everything else in this grouping pop.

#2: Let your site conditions guide you

As one of the lead Horticulturists at the Wildflower Center, Amy Galloway Medley spends most days in the gardens. Whether designing garden beds, planting, preparing soil, weeding and cutting back, or climbing trees to prune, Medley says she loves getting to know each plant “on a deeper level, and working with them in every season and every stage.”

Medley recently completed a large project at her home garden: replacing a lawn with native plants, using the City of Austin Water Wise rebate program. “If you have St. Augustine [grass], like I did, your task is easy. It is not a very resilient grass species. Simply stop watering it for a summer and then use a shovel or sod cutter to cut the grass out. Then plant and mulch well.”

While embarking on a major project such as a lawn replacement might feel daunting, Medley recommends not overthinking it. “The site conditions will narrow your search, and what you can find of that narrowed list in the nurseries will narrow your list even more. And have fun with it!”

Before and after photos from Amy Medley’s backyard landscaping.

She recommends considering the formality of your space. If you live in a neighborhood with an HOA, there may be certain guidelines or conventions to follow. Next, evaluate the soil conditions, determine if you are working with a slope, and understand the sun exposure. Consider structure plantings that are evergreen and will hold the space when other plants go dormant.

Medley included container plants as well as seeds in her newly planted gardens. After planting the container plants, she sowed seeds in the loosened soil around the plants, keeping in mind spacing and growth potential of plants and seeds.

Since completing her project, not only has Medley noticed more wildlife visiting her garden – birds enjoying sunflower (Helianthus maximiliani) seeds and monarch butterflies carpeting her blue mistflower (Chromolaena odorata) – she has also had more neighbors stopping by to appreciate the project.

A few of Amy Medley’s favorite plantings and guiding principles:

#3 Consider plants to make your garden unique

As nursery manager at the Wildflower Center, Lauren Groce is responsible for growing plants for the gardens and the plant sales at the Center. She and her team aim to offer plants that are a little out of the ordinary, that aren’t readily available in the normal nursery trade. A few of Groce’s favorite examples are Rio Grande globe amaranth (Gomphrena haageana), with showy red flowers and a long bloom cycle; wooly Dutchman’s pipe vine (Aristolochia tomentosa), a host plant for pipevine swallowtail butterflies; and Texas bluebells (Eustoma exaltatum ssp. russellianum), always a showstopper. “Texas has a lot of native plants that most people haven’t heard of, and at the Center, we want to share that knowledge,” Groce says. “There are so many native plants that can do really well in anyone’s home garden.”

Young oak seedlings grow in the Center’s dedicated tree nursery. Photo by: Lacey Collins

Young oak seedlings grow in the Center’s dedicated tree nursery. Photo by: Lacey Collins

Groce and the team love helping guests choose plants. Common requests include selecting grasses for pocket prairies, choosing pollinator-friendly plants, deciding on shade trees, and seeking out plants that can weather the relentless Texas heat. Groce focuses on proven winners: “I like to recommend the tough plants, the rock stars that are going to thrive in those types of conditions but also outfit guests with the knowledge and techniques to get those plants planted in the ground properly and to be successfully established.”

Lauren Groce’s favorites:

  • For sunny spots: Blue grama (Bouteloua gracilis), sneezeweed (Helenium amarum), and blackfoot daisy (Melampodium leucanthum) together create a glimpse of a prairie, a little wild and beautiful. Blue grama is a grass that brings movement and texture, and a visual calmness, along with habitat for smaller wildlife. Sneezeweed has bright yellow flowers and a long bloom cycle. Pollinators flock to blackfoot daisy, with its white, honey-scented blooms.
  • For shady gardens: Turk’s cap, spiderwort (Tradescantia gigantea), and golden groundsel (Packera obovata) bring pops of seasonal interest and color. Turk’s cap is a showstopper, able to survive dry shade conditions and drawing hummingbirds. Spiderwort with fleshy, skinny leaves, sends up flower stalks in the spring. And golden groundsel is nice to have coming out of winter, attracting bees eager for early blooms.

#4: Attract birds and wildlife to your new garden

Jane Tillman has been gardening and birding in Austin for 30 years. She volunteers with the Travis Audubon Society, gives bird talks, leads bird walks, writes monthly bird forecasts, and helped develop a workshop for the Native Plant Society of Texas that is offered around the state on landscapes for birds.

When choosing plants, Tillman looks for plants that bring value to wildlife, whether serving as a food source (such as nectar, seeds, fruits or berries), providing perching spots or nesting materials, or acting as a larval host for butterflies and moths. She loves “how nature adjusts to the landscape that you provide.”

Planting shrubs and perennials that provide cover for birds to forage safely away from predators is critical, she says. They also offer perching spots for birds to rest and roost. Tillman observes: “Providing layers of habitat rather than just a ground layer allows safer movement for animals, from snakes to birds, creating a wildlife corridor for them.”

Lesser goldfinch and Turk’s cap

Since removing a ligustrum hedge many years ago and planting a large bed of Turk’s Cap near her deck at her home in northwest Austin, Tillman has noticed a significant uptick in hummingbirds visiting her garden during migration, including some that overwinter. Her Turk’s cap bed also draws big butterflies, and last year she was excited to discover lesser goldfinches in the bed, eating aphids from the tops of the blooms.

An area of her property that used to be mowed but now is left to grow wild has become a frostweed meadow over the years, along with Basket grass (Nolina texana), Texas lantana (Lantana urticoides), and a yaupon holly (Ilex vomitoria) thicket. When the frostweed blooms in the fall, a little community springs up of lynx spiders, praying mantises, and butterflies. “The more you look, the more you see. And the more you listen the more you become aware of birds in your yard… you don’t know what is already there!”

Jane Tillman’s favorites for gardening for birds:

#5: Add some plants for cut flowers

Josy Johnson of Wild Vine Floral focuses on sustainable floral arrangements, sourcing from her own cutting garden and also local Central Texas flower farms. Growing up in a nature-and bird-loving family, with an appreciation for the classic old-fashioned flowers her grandmother grew, Johnson worked at the Natural Gardener before starting her own garden and floral business.

Photos from Josy Johnson’s garden.

At her home garden in east Austin, she embraces the wild, the quirky, and the whimsy of plants. She plants densely, taking advantage of fences and vertical spaces, and constantly experiments and adapts. Inside the house, Johnson likes to rearrange furniture, and she brings that same flexible, creative and open-minded approach to her garden. She digs things up, moves them around, and organizes new spaces. Using rocks to define paths and sections in her garden, she creates what she calls “vignettes,” little garden areas focused on flowers for cutting, or herbs, or plants for pollinators, within her garden. After 20 years cultivating her garden, planting new areas, and incorporating lasagna layering (sheet composting) techniques a little bit at a time, her garden is now entirely lawn-free.

Johnson plants tried-and-true selections while leaving some space to experiment with new plants. She has established areas of bluebonnets, blanket flowers, and clasping coneflowers that reseed year after year. When deciding what to grow, she considers shapes and textures of flowers and how they work in bouquets, as well as what elements could be pressed and dried to use in wreaths and dried arrangements, for an overall effect of something special that represents the season.

She’s noticed that people have connections to flowers their grandmothers grew. “It’s really sweet, it’s a happy thing” to hear from people. She seeks to incorporate this sentiment and sense of connection into what she grows and the floral arrangements she creates.

Josy Johnson’s favorites for a cutting garden:

Core plants that Johnson uses regularly in arrangements, bringing interest across the seasons, are heartleaf skullcap (Scutellaria ovata), yarrow (Achillea millefolium), gaura (Oenothera lindheimeri), indigo spires salvia (Salvia longispicata x farinacea), gomphrena (Gomphrena spp.), purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea), inland sea oats (Chasmanthium latifolium), fall aster (Symphyotrichum oblongifolium), and artemisia (Artemisia spp.). “They’re all so pretty,” she says, with their different organic shapes and textures making them perfect for bouquets.

A cut flower bouquet by Wild Vine Floral

#6: Dig in!

After all the dreaming and scheming, block out gardening time on your calendar and get to work. Consider what would feel manageable to you as a starting project. Read a gardening book, explore the Wildflower Center website resources, and keep your eyes open while on walks so you can snap photos of favorite gardens for inspiration.

Your garden will evolve. See what works, continue gathering ideas from fellow gardeners and gardens you love, and adapt to changing conditions. Rest assured that your efforts to replace your lawn with plants bring endless benefits, including less time mowing and more time appreciating what you’ve planted.

Learn more about our Reimagine the Lawn campaign.

More Resources to Get Started:

Come to an event or take a class at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center

Come to a Wildflower Center plant sale

Explore the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center plant lists and collections

The Texas Native Plant Primer: 225 Plants for an Earth-Friendly Garden by Andrea DeLong-Amaya and the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center

Lawn Gone! Low-maintenance, Sustainable, Attractive Alternatives for Your Yard by Pam Penick

Groundcover Revolution: How to Use Sustainable, Low-Maintenance, Low-water Groundcovers to Replace Your Turf by Kathy Jentz

Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard by Douglas W. Tallamy

How Can I Help? Saving Nature with Your Yard by Douglas W. Tallamy

Water-Wise Landscaping Rebate Program through the City of Austin