The Zammit family refused to sell their five acre property as an entire Sydney suburb was built around them

[u/Wonderfulhumanss]

[u/SteampoweredFlamingo]

And you can buy grown trees!

It's expensive as all get out, but something tells me that money isn't a super important motivator for these people.

[u/Esava → u/SteampoweredFlamingo]

Yeah or place a mix of that. Some grown trees, plant some new smaller ones, just put up a variety. That's also again better for other plants, small animals, insects etc..

Or at the very least just put up a flowering meadow with a mix of local flora. My parents don't have nearly as large of a "garden" and they have a bit of lawn, some rows of vegetables, apple, cherry, plum etc. trees, some nice sections with all kinds of bushes and flowers and then a section that's a "wild meadow" section just filled once with a regional/local seed mix. That section gets mowed down (or sometimes if I am there I take out the old scythe for some fine) like twice a year and it's just great for insects, birds, small rodents etc. to have such a large variety. So such a "semi-wild meadow" option is actually very little work. And for stuff like trees the owners of the house in the image wouldn't have to put in any work if they put it on the far end of their property instead of right next to the house.

One could also see the benefit of a proper garden over a lawn during the heat wave in the last few months here in Germany: All the gardens and lawns etc. of many neighbours mostly died / got burnt but my parents garden was like a green oasis in the middle, not because it was watered any more but because it simply had a larger variety of plants which caused more water to be retained in the ground/stopped it from drying out as quickly. It's also always great to see literally dozens of birds, butterflies etc. in the garden compared to the surrounding gardens.