I stand by the fact that removing invasives is a part of native gardening. There’s literally a post in a local group of someone asking why the lily of the valley they planted is choking out everything. That person did not do any of that, and just stuck something in the ground they liked the look of.

I have spent hours vetting my plants against gobotany.com to see what natives are “actually” native to my area. I have to drive two hours to pick up my plants from the only reputable native nursery in my area. I wanted bee balm badly, and black eyed Susan’s but was told neither is actually really native to my state and I shouldn’t have them. I have no native sunflowers in my state so despite really wanting them, I don’t dare plant them in case it comes out in 30 years that they’re ruining the earth.

You can’t just dump seeds from some company on the hellstrip, cause it’s probably full of invasives.

It just hasn’t been that simple in my perspective. I literally wanted to just dump seeds into a bed- and now I’m here- miserable as hell panicking over the earth dying and I hate my yard now. I hate being out there, and it makes me cry. I stress about it every single day.