Ask What Your Garden Can Do For You!
This year offers a fantastic opportunity. A chance to try something new in your garden. But this is also the time to add to your garden’s functionality. Don’t just add to the beauty of your yard; give a caterpillar some food to eat. Give a bird a habitat to make a nest and lay eggs. Or even giving bees and other pollinators a nectar and pollen source during the growing season. There are plenty of plant options that will provide those functions for your garden, enhancing your outdoor experience at home. But there are many other functions that you can incorporate in your living space.
The saying goes that Kansas is flat. Well, at least the western part of the state fits that description; however, in Northeast Kansas, there are many hills and slopes throughout our landscape. Have you been struggling to establish your lawn on one of these slopes? Every rain event that exposes bare dirt increases erosion. Here is an idea: try establishing a different ground cover. Not only would you be able to finally see some success with establishing erosion control on this slope, but this would have the added benefit of growing something other than lawn turf. Imagine something there that looks better than dirt or grass, like pretty flowers. Or a whole lot of butterflies and bees dancing around where there wasn’t any before. This is the year you will address it by planting something to complement your lawn while controlling how much soil runs down your slope.
Slopes also move a lot of water during our heavy spring rains. Instead of letting that water rush downhill and carry soil with it, homeowners can slow and capture it in the landscape. A rain garden placed at the base of a slope can collect runoff and allow it to soak into the ground. Johnson County’s Contain the Rain program helps residents learn how to design and install these features, turning a drainage challenge into an attractive planting area filled with flowers, grasses, and pollinator habitat.
Dense shrubs are great for providing shelter for birds and other small mammals. But they can also be used to shelter you. Privacy screens are an underutilized aspect of using shrubs. In a new subdivision situation, privacy might only be provided by fences that you have to put up to mark your property lines. Fences are cool and all, but wouldn’t a green shrub with lovely-smelling flowers be more appealing? In a privacy hedge, maintenance becomes less labor-intensive, too. Shearing only an inch of new growth is much easier than strategically removing the right branches to ensure the best growth. The benefits of a nice privacy hedge go beyond not being seen; it also reduces noise and wind. A mature screen can also offer shade in an otherwise wide-open sunny spot.
Do you have a creek that cuts through your backyard? Well, did you know there are some ways you can really benefit the water quality of our streams and creeks through plantings? That’s right, especially when it comes to our suburban landscape, which often includes a lot of fertilizer on our lawns. Planting a strip of vegetation along the creek could help slow the runoff of fertilizer, deicing salts, and trash that enter these waterways. These are called buffer strips, and they have the potential not only to filter pollutants from our water but also to provide habitat for our local wildlife. These buffer strips don’t have to be mowed like traditional lawns, and the only maintenance required is to pull out invasive or woody plant species.
If you are looking for inspiration on how to make your landscape more functional, there are several opportunities this spring to learn more. The Healthy Yards Expo on April 11th will feature resources on pollinator plantings, rain gardens, and other sustainable landscape practices homeowners can incorporate into their yards. Johnson County residents bring you soil for a free soil test.
You can also see many of these ideas in action during the Johnson County Master Gardener Public Garden Tour this June. This is an opportunity to see gardens that are not only beautiful but also functional in their suburban landscapes. Early bird tickets go on sale March 15, starting at $25. After Mother’s Day, the price will increase. Don’t miss out on discounted tickets!
by Markis HIll, Horticulture Turf and Ornamentals, 2026