@greyor happy to! your local university extension is definitely a goof starting point.

if you’re trying to keep costs down, your best bet is either seeds or landscape plugs. I used a mix of both for my garden — i got a set of 25 plugs from https://www.thepollennation.com when i moved into my apartment and had pretty good success, especially with the drought tolerant goldenrods.

I planted milkweed from seed (a friend collected some seeds from their plants and started them in an egg carton for me) as well as black eyed susans ( these i think? https://www.southernexposure.com/products/rudbeckia-cherokee-nf-ecotype/ ). the milkweed was doing pretty well until the bunny moved in and decided it was best thing ever lmao and i got soooo many plants from the black eyed susan packet even though i literally just planted them midwinter and hoped nature would do the job okay.

@greyor if you’re planning to keep any lawn, even in the short term, you could try overseeding it with more drought tolerant and pollinator friendly turf plants — MNU did a good study on plants for bee lawns that might be useful in that respect, which included not needing irrigation or fertilizer on their list of desired characteristics: https://extension.umn.edu/landscape-design/planting-and-maintaining-bee-lawn they link to some places you can buy bee lawn mixes that met their standards online as well as tips for how to establish, etc

@Satsuma I really appreciate all this, thank you! Will have to dig into it, lots of food for thought!! 💙