A proud gardener on Reddit recently used an unusual method to show other users three months of progress in the original poster's garden.
The post appeared on r/NoLawns, a subreddit for users creating more interesting, cheaper, and more eco-friendly alternatives to grass lawns. Members of this community often post before-and-after photos as they take their yards from boring, high-maintenance grass to beautiful pollinator gardens, native plant havens, and xeriscaping.
This user, however, took an extra step to make the visual journey more vivid: They created a time-lapse image of the entire process.
The post started off with a photo of the finished garden as it appeared in July. Roughly thirty varieties of plants and flowers were visible in the photo, laid out over a bed of mulch. A paved path running through the garden divided the beds, which were dotted with garden lights and lined with low wrought-iron fences to give them a finished look.
Then the Redditor added a gif, which they said was a "bonus time lapse of late April to last weekend." The image cycles through a series of photos taken from the same spot over the course of three months — the first when the plants were just beginning to sprout, and the last when they were healthy and blooming.
"Not a blade of grass to be found," said the Redditor.
In a comment, they added. "Before Covid this was some invasive low grasses, vinca, and weeds. My wife asked for help planting some things and I ended up clearing all the old stuff, planting many things with her, getting really into gardening, kind of taking over on the front, and planting many, many plants and weeding, and mulching, and fertilizing, and watering, etc. And now we're here."
Their comment also listed the incredible variety of plants they had added, from allium to thyme. Many, like milkweed and bee balm, were pollinator-friendly plants to attract butterflies and bees.
Feeding pollinators is one of the simplest ways for homeowners to support the local environment and neighbors' gardens since pollinators are vital for helping plants mature and produce fruit and seeds.
"This looks amazing!" said one commenter. "Great work."
The original poster replied with a grinning emoji.
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