In the first episode of our Rebel Garden series, we talked about reclaiming your space.
We looked at how to identify underused sections of lawn, set realistic expectations, and begin seeing your yard differently.
Now it’s time for the second phase:
Reject.
This is the point where you stop planning and start making decisions.
Because building a Rebel Garden requires rejecting some of the assumptions we’ve all inherited about lawns, landscaping, and what a yard is supposed to look like.
Reject the Perfect Lawn
For decades, homeowners have been told that a successful yard is a large expanse of perfectly green grass.
No weeds.
No flowers.
No insects.
No leaves.
Just a uniform carpet of turf.
The problem is that this vision often requires constant mowing, watering, fertilizing, and spraying to maintain. It also provides very little habitat for birds, pollinators, or other wildlife.
A Rebel Garden starts with a different question:
What if part of your lawn could do more?
What if it could feed pollinators, support birds, save clean water, store carbon, and still look beautiful?
That’s the opportunity sitting in many yards right now.
Decide Where the Lawn Ends
One of the biggest mental hurdles for homeowners is giving themselves permission to remove lawn.
Most yards have areas that receive very little actual use. The strip along the driveway. The corner of the backyard. The fence line. The area around a mailbox. That awkward section that’s difficult to mow.
These spaces make excellent Rebel Gardens because you’re replacing maintenance-heavy turf with something that provides more value.
Once you’ve selected your location, it’s time to define it.
We recommend using landscape paint, flags, hoses, or ropes to mark the boundaries before doing anything else. This helps you visualize the final size and shape while giving you a chance to make adjustments.
Call Before You Dig
Before any installation work begins, make sure you have underground utilities located.
In Minnesota, that means contacting Gopher State One Call and giving yourself enough time for utility locates to be completed before you start digging or edging.
This step isn’t exciting, but it’s important.
The last thing you want is to discover a cable line or utility connection the hard way.
Why We Use a One-Time Herbicide Application
This topic generates a lot of discussion, and it’s one of the reasons we cover it in detail in the podcast episode.
At A Better Yard, our goal is to eliminate unnecessary chemical use over the long term. That doesn’t always mean avoiding every chemical in every situation.
For most homeowners, the easiest and most successful way to establish a Rebel Garden is to kill the existing turfgrass before planting.
While there are alternatives such as sheet mulching or solarization, they often take longer and can create their own challenges.
A one-time application of glyphosate allows the existing vegetation to die in place, minimizes soil disturbance, and reduces the number of weed seeds brought to the surface.
In many cases, it is the fastest path toward a landscape that requires dramatically fewer chemical inputs in the future.
As always, follow all label instructions and use appropriate protective equipment.
Create a Clear Edge
One of the simplest ways to make a Rebel Garden look intentional is to create a defined edge.
A crisp spade edge immediately separates the future garden from the surrounding lawn and communicates that this space was designed, not abandoned.
This small step can make a huge difference in how both you and your neighbors perceive the project.
The edge becomes the line between the old way of thinking about the yard and the new one.
Reject So You Can Rebel
The Reject phase isn’t really about killing grass.
It’s about letting go of the idea that your yard has to look the way everyone else’s does.
It’s about rejecting unnecessary lawn.
Rejecting perfection.
Rejecting the assumption that more maintenance automatically means a better landscape.
Once you’ve selected your site, marked your boundaries, located utilities, removed the turf, and created a clear edge, you’re ready for the fun part.
In the final episode of this series, we’ll talk about building the garden itself: soil preparation, plant spacing, planting design, mulch, watering, and what to expect during the first three years of growth.
Listen to the Full Podcast Episode
This article covers the highlights from Episode 2 of our three-part Rebel Garden series. In the full episode, we dive deeper into site preparation, utility locates, lawn removal methods, and the practical decisions that set a Rebel Garden up for success.
Click play above to listen to go deeper on this post. Listen and subscribe to A Better Yard: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Amazon Music | iHeartRadio | Pandora
If you’re planning to build a Rebel Garden this year, give the episode a listen before moving on to the Rebel phase.
