Carrying the Message of the Delawning Movement

[Readers, we've been stirring the pot a lot lately on this meaty topic and I've been taking notes. Now before the following overview is published as my next column, I eagerly await your input.  Susan]

In my relentless quest to keep readers up to date on lower-maintenance, more nature-friendly gardening, we return to the exciting topic of lawns.  They've fallen out of favor because of the vast amounts of herbicides, insecticides and fertilizers people dump on them (so much of which ends up in our Bay), plus all the water that's used to keep them green and the super-polluting mowers needed to keep them under control.  And they're SO boring to look at.  Need more reasons?  On slopes they're dangerous to mow and in the shade they ratty-looking, at best.  Ironically, this symbol of upper class leisure also requires intense labor on the part of the homeowner.  Men in particular are often swept up in the spirit of competitive lawn care and put in insane hours caring for them.  My message to Torojockeys across America: Get over it!

Possible Replacements
-The Veggie Garden.  Watch for news about Edible Estates, a national nonprofit that's creating regional prototypes in 9 cities, including Baltimore. These front yard gardens, though sometimes a jolt to neighborhood aesthetics, harken back to earlier times when even front yards were put to good use.  For useful information about the "fine art of radical gardening," see www.EdibleEstates.org.

- The Meadow.  A popular recommendation for sunny spots, they usually contain drought-tolerant grasses and flowers that are either native to this area or well-adapted to the site. Butterfly-attracting plants can be included, as well as an underplanting of spring-blooming bulbs. Just don't assume that meadows are easy or cheap, or waste your money on those "meadow-in-a-bag" products supposedly suitable for anywhere.  Careful plant choice and good soil preparation are necessary, as well as frequent watering and weeding in the first season or two, at least. Once established, proponents claim they need mowing only once a year, in the fall, and that eventually watering can be eliminated completely.

-Woodland Garden.  If lower maintenance is your goal, a shade garden may be your best bet, since shade reduces both weeds and the need to water. If your yard is sunny, start with a mix of trees to create shade, then add shrubs and woodland plants that are native or drought-tolerant, like ferns, hostas, liriope, moss, sedges, plus spring-blooming bulbs.  Suggestions about species selection and design are available on www.LessLawn.com.   

- Hardscape.  Seating, paving, gravel and mulch can all replace lawn, especially over landscape fabric or another weed-reducing layer.  While low-maintenance, this option is missing the plants we need to clean our air and water and just to look at, smell and enjoy.  And clearly it wouldn't be the first choice of the local birds and bees.

-Astroturf?  Don't you dare.  Even the NFL players demanded it be declared hazardous.

Ways to Reduce Lawn
-If you remove some turf in order to create beds around your existing trees, there are ancillary benefits, like protecting them from the ravages of your mower and keeping them away from the lime you're adding to your lawn.
-You might cut out your lawn's corners for planting areas, using the curved lines that make mowing easier.
-The lawn-reducing technique I recommend most often is to create curved beds around the perimeter of the yard and fill them with small trees, shrubs, and spring-blooming bulbs.  Homeowners who enjoy caring for plants might also include perennials, annuals and groundcovers.  And be sure to keep any bare soil well mulched.

Why Keep a Lawn at All?   
Because nothing beats lawn for family recreation and just plain walking across.  Designers point out that it rests the eye, meaning it makes everything around it look better.  It also absorbs water well, thus preventing erosion.  Admittedly there are reasonable people who disagree with this assertion but as a long-time gardener on a hillside, I'm here to tell you it works.  Another almost counter-intuitive assertion comes from Ron Barnett of American Plant Food, who told me that turf produces more oxygen per square foot than "anything else" and replacing it with a patio or a single tree would be a net loss to air quality.  Judy Tiger of Garden Resources of Washington also reminds us that research has shown that humans prefer open areas surrounded by larger plants because we're "savannah animals." Makes sense to me.

Keeping some lawn but going natural
As Sylvia Wright wrote in Washington Gardener Magazine, "The problem is not the lawn space itself but the overdose of everything from fertilizer and pesticides to water." And though the Chesapeake Club in their terrific Baysafe Program cites our "improper and excessive fertilizing of lawns" as the biggest cause of nutrient runoff into the Bay, they still recommend an organic feeding in the fall because thick, healthy lawns hold more water than thin ones.  So DO stop using chemicals like synthetic, fast-acting fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides.  (For more details about "Earth-Friendly Lawn Care Throughout the Year" see my April 2006 article at www.voice.com.)

To go even more natural, plant some cover and do less weeding.  Some of them actually look good, with a little attitude adjustment.  Mitch Baker of American Plant Food flies in the face of the American lawn-care addiction when he brags that his own lawn is more than half weeds. 

What I Do                     
If you're hoping to reduce maintenance requirements, think twice about removing your lawn because the notion that lawns are more work than their alternatives is largely a myth.  Just ask the owners of the many beautiful lawnless front yards in our community and they'll laugh at the notion that it takes less work.  What does work for me and most of my clients is to use the lawn reduction technique mentioned above - borders.  Then, to fill them up, I choose plants that can do all these things in their new location:
-Look healthy and beautiful.
-Resist disease and other pests.
-Require little or no supplemental watering, even in droughts.
-Require no staking.

And not forgetting wildlife, I make sure to provide plenty of feeding, nesting and cover opportunities for the animals I want to encourage. Then I let my lawn morph into a lively biodiversity of plants  that looks brown and scruffy by late summer but greens up again after an organic feeding in the fall. And the imperfect and infrequent mowing I do is performed with the kinder and gentler electric mower that's now an option for this much-smaller lawn.

If something else works well for you, let me hear about it.

[All rights reserved by Susan Harris.]

Comments

[Oldroses]

That's exactly what I'm doing! Steadily reducing the area of my lawn with ever-expanding borders and new beds. "Lawn" is very loosely defined in my yard. It's not entirely grass. It includes anything green.

[Oldroses]

That's exactly what I'm doing! Steadily reducing the area of my lawn with ever-expanding borders and new beds. "Lawn" is very loosely defined in my yard. It's not entirely grass. It includes anything green.

[M Sinclair Stevens (Texas)]

All good suggestions. Looking at my yard I see that I've inadvertently put almost all these ideas to work just by letting unhealthy grass die and replacing it with something better suited to the site. I have the woodland shade garden, a high-maintenance meadow (more praire really), lawn flanked by beds rounded at the corners, and a vegetable patch visible from the street. I've kept some lawn just because I'm drawn to a small green blanket. My eyes naturally rest on that patch of green.

[Kel (NW)]

we are down to the small patch the kids play on in the backyard - and counting down the years ;)

12 layers of wet newspaper and some compost and voila!

[Kel (NW)]

oh, and I have seen some fabulous "eco-lawns" this years for the first time!

[Janet]

Great article! It's so nice to see a balanced approach that examines the question from several different angles.

The fact that it almost perfectly mirrors my own opinions is, of course, just incidental! ;o)