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Comment by seszett | Hacker News Reader

It might handle different locations a bit differently, but whichever option I use (feed insects, easy care, soak up rain, etc) it basically suggests me to just leave the most common weeds grow to end up with a heath covered in brambles/wild roses/various thorny weeds.

Which is logical I guess, if the goal is just to have native plants that grow naturally here. But I suspect few people are looking for this without any consideration to the ornamental and recreational qualities of the plants.

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In fact, that’s how I garden: I spray seeds and random plants and see what sticks. That’s literally all I do in terms of interfering; the rest I leave to nature. I don’t understand “weed” as terminology in that context; I am not a farmer, I don’t aim for specific “produce”.

I consider it highly recreational to have transformed the previously dead “garden” and “lawn“ with “colorful one-year flowers” and the need to artificially water and all that strange “active gardening“ maintenance but absolutely no insects and no smells into a beautiful wild garden with buzzing insect life and zero artificial watering in only a few years time. The smell of the different herbs and berries alone is doing much for my quality of life. And the flowers that made it are much more “beautiful” and year-round colorful than the weird catalog almost-plastic tulips that the previous tenant replanted each year to have a few weeks of color.

Your end goal focus is fine and I'm glad it improves your quality of life. Same here whether I focus on edibles or natives in my own garden. But I'd caution you about the "throw random seeds" approach, unless you've sourced those seeds and aren't using retail seed package "for pollinators". Those are notorious for frequently including invasive species.

A few examples among many similar studies:

https://neobiota.pensoft.net/article_preview.php?id=118480

https://www.washington.edu/news/2002/04/18/wildflower-seed-m...

https://www.dtnpf.com/agriculture/web/ag/crops/article/2016/...

https://wssa.net/2017/08/make-sure-your-seed-mix-is-tested-f...

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8176916/

"See what sticks" is inherently biased toward fast spreaders that will outcompete and outspread other plants regardless of their ecosystem services. Even if they're natives.

But like the parent comment, I can't tell you that your own enjoyment isn't warranted in your own garden. The whole point of Indigene is to try and contribute to tilting the balance a bit more into being more aware and focused on the ecosystem benefits of what you plant or don't plant.

You might have missed filters on the result page that specifically let you exclude plants that spread (width or height), thorns, and even stingers. Those can help you avoid what you describe, but they may not be obvious. Maybe I need to make those more obvious? Or default to them?

I think it's fine to have a human-centered mindset although the point of Indigene is to challenge that a bit and re-center the focus on the ecosystem services these plant provide. Ornamental and recreational qualities of a plant don't have zero value, but they definitely don't have 10 times the value of its ecosystem services.

But like everything, since the site is for humans, I do need to find a balance there. So point taken.

PS: swiftcoder and pavel_lishin had similar feedback about garden goals although with a different focus

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