Garden Rant

An Anti-Valentine to the Lawn

For Valentine's Day, Timber Books has invited some bloggers to write anti-valentines to lawns, to help spread the word about Beautiful No-Mow Yards. (Click here to see the anti-Valentines of my blogging buddies.)

I'll start with a photo that shows lawn at its most perfect and ridiculous.  Next, here are some tidbits gleaned from the 160 or so comments competing for a copy of the No-Mow book:

Husbands are frequently blamed for hanging onto their lawns for dear life, no matter what the gardening wife wants.  But wives can be sneaky:

My husband asked me, "Is it my imagination, or is it taking me less and less time each year to cut the grass?" I have gotten rid of about half of it.

There are plenty of reasons for lawns not doing well: shade, drought+flood cycles, black walnut trees, and DOGS.

On the other hand, dogs are what's keeping lots of respondents from removing their lawns, and they ask about plants that can stand up to them. One commenter is hoping that Carex can, another reports that moss definitely can't.  Another is resigned - only mulch or gravel will work.

Ingenious, adventuresome gardeners report replacing their lawns with everything imaginable - the expected veg plots and garden beds but also meditation gardens, an olive grove rising above native grasses (gotta see!), a sea of mondo grass, a permaculture forest, and prairies appropriate to the climate, like this Little Bluestem in the prettiest blog header I've ever seen.

One writer reported great success with sheep's fescue, which needs mowing just once a year - and then only if the seedheads are looking ratty.  It's not happy in the sunniest spots, though, so she'll be overseeding there with clover.  (Wanna see!)

And lastly, a commenter needs a lawn alternative that's good for grazing dairy cows and chickens.  Oy, the challenges!

Now how about some eye candy?  These are my Valentines to lawnless gardens, from my travels around the U.S. 

Austin, TX

 
Buffalo, NY

Prairie Dropseed at Chanticleer Garden in PA

Poppie Field at the Chicago Botanic Garden

Salvia in Chicago's Lurie Garden

Long Island Garden of Dennis Schrader

 
Portland, OR

Portland Garden of Ketzel Levine (now living in Ecuador)

Seattle Garden of Linda Chalker-Scott

Takoma Park, MD

Lawn photo credit.

More Beautiful No-Mow Yards

As promised in my first post about this book, here are more photos from the book, just a few of my favorites.

Above, the tiny urban back yard of DC Master Gardener Barbara Dinsmore.  Photo by Lucy Dinsmore.

Below, pink muhly grass in a California yard.  Photo by Saxon Holt.

Next, spring-blooming trees in a meadow of fescue at the Olbrich Botanical Garden.  Photo by Jeff Epping.

That's all the eye candy for today.  Be sure to enter to win the book, or just order it now!  Publication date is February 7.

Beautiful No-Mow Yards is just what American gardeners need. And you can win it right here

In the last year or so, we're hearing that there are better uses for our land than turfgrass, that unless it's needed for sport or play, you can save on resources and probably your labor, too, by switching to an array of alternatives - meadows, vegetable gardens, native grasse, and so on. 

All good!  Well, mostly good - because that well-intentioned advice isn't easy to actually implement, without a LOT more information.  Which groundcovers? Which native grasses - and native to where, anyway?  How much do the alternatives cost, can they be walked on, and how much work does it really take to maintain them?

My mixed reviews of much of the lawn-free cheering has me wildly cheering the thoroughly researched and honestly reported definitive book about reducing or eliminating lawns by Evelyn Hadden.  Beautiful No-Mow Yards contains exactly the kind of info that's needed, and its gorgeous photographs (most by Evelyn and the wonderful Saxon Holt, too) are deeply inspirational to anyone looking to make their yards more interesting, more beautiful, and more wildlife-friendly.

Meet Evelyn

Readers of GardenRant are no strangers to this subject (see the many stories in our Lawn Reform category), but may not be familiar with the author.  Well, Evelyn is THE original lawn reformer, having written Shrink Your Lawn and created the Less Lawn website back in 2001.  She's a pioneer whose cause has caught on.

What's in Beautiful No-Mow Yards

• Photos and stories about gardens sunny and shady, flat and hilly, a "shockingly simple meadow garden", a "patio for pennies", rain gardens, edibles, ponds, terraces, hellstrips and more.
• "Smarter lawns" using fine fescue mixes, carexes, and other low-resource grass types, including where each type works best and what it takes to install and maintain them.
• Real gardeners and the truth about their attempts to replace their lawns, failures and all. 
• How-to chapters for killing the lawn, designing alternatives, and maintaining them.
• An illustrated guide to groundcovers by type.

Here's Evelyn's quick video introduction to the book.

Just one more photo from the book for now (more coming this afternoon, I hope), and a confession.  That's my garden on the cover!  And in the photo on the left, both by Saxon Holt.  (Though I suppose I should start saying "former garden," since I sold it three weeks ago. Sigh.)

Plus, I wrote the foreward, happy to help in any way I could because this book is soooo needed. 

So I feel like the proud aunt to Evelyn's baby. Her beautiful, superbly written baby.  Great job!

WIN THIS BOOK
Just leave a comment about lawns or alternatives thereto, and I'll choose one at random.  Entries close Friday at midnight Eastern.

Who will buy my lawnless garden?

Breaking news - to anyone who knows me and assumed I'd never, ever leave my garden - I'm selling it and the house it surrounds.  Time to move on.

Selling the Complicated Garden

Any realtor will tell you that nice gardens may or may not be advantages in selling a house - because most buyers just want what's easy.  So I'm prepared to hear that, and I'm ready with some assurances that mostly-shrub gardens are really easy, and I'll even teach the buyer how to prune and otherwise take care of this low-maintenance garden (really it is, I promise). 

But then there's the problem/advantage of the totally lawnless state of the garden, front and back.  Above you see what it looks like today, a two-species combo of Sedum sarmentosum (sometimes identified as Sedum acre) and Liriope spicata. Neither needs any maintenance except a bit of edging to keep these vigorous spreaders within bounds.  No mowing, feeding, or even weeding required.

(I recently posted photos of what this looked like a mere month ago when it was mostly bare soil - scroll down to the second photo.  Since  the heat wave has ended, the Sedum has filled in vigorously, and for the bare middle section I've filled in with Liriope for instant erosion protection.)

But if the buyers have kids, we all know what they'll do, right?  Rip out all these groundcovers and replace them with conventional turfgrass.  Oh, well.

Click here for more photos of my garden. The house, on a great street in Takoma Park, MD, is a 1925 Sears kit home, the "Conway" model.

Downsizing for the Aging Gardener

Like Sydney Eddison, I've been feeling the aches and pains of taking care of a large garden for too many years - 26 years on this lot.  But unlike Sydney, who's converted her perennial beds into shrub beds and plans to age in place, I've decided to downsize both house and garden to a manageable townhouse-sized garden (end unit, of course).

So I'll be moving to Historic Greenbelt, Maryland, a planned community built in the '30s as part of FDR's New Deal. (Lots more about it here and here.)  I haven't found my new home yet but I already know I'll be paying about a third the price of the house I'm selling.  I'm cashing out!

I hope to be settled and unpacked by spring, in time to start my new garden.  It'll be both smaller and more visible to the public, owing to foot paths running between all the backyards, and its location on the corner.  So now I'll confess that as much as I looooove my back garden and the woods beyond, it's a lonely place to spend so much of my time. 

Contribute photos of groundcovers that can replace lawns!

Lawn Reformers are getting lots of questions about specific plants that can be used en masse to create a low, lawn-like expanse in the landscape and we're frustrated by the lack of detailed, regionally specific information about the plants people are asking about - Carexes, buffalo grass, low-input grass mixes like No-Mow, and creeping perennials like Sedums and thymes.

SO, we've created a new Flickr group for photos of these plants in landscapes, with details like shade, sun, drought-tolerant, region and what maintenance may be required.  Check it out here - the Lawn Alternatives Flickr Group. 

Our goal is to create a searchable database to act as a resource for those looking for lawn substitutions appropriate for their own specific cultural conditions.  

PLANTS WE WANT PHOTOS OF

We are interested in low-growing groundcovers up to two feet tall. Ideally, they will have been in the ground for at least two years. They can be mowable or not, but should be appropriate planted en masse.

(We are NOT looking for garden design alternatives such as a mix of perennials, gravel gardens, etc. Design alternatives to lawns may be shared at our FLickr group for No-Lawn, Small-Lawn and Alternative Lawn Gardens.)

DETAILS NEEDED ABOUT EACH PHOTO

• NAME OF PLANT(s): Please title the photo with the plant depicted in it, like "Carex pensylvanica" - Latin and common names both if you know them. 
• DESCRIPTION: The more information you can share, the better! At a minimum, include the location (Southwest, Mid-Atlantic, Northwest, etc.), date of installation, and cultural conditions. Other helpful information includes maintenance required, how it was installed (seed, plugs, nursery pots or sod) and basic cultural conditions, such as amount of sun and water required. 

USE TAGS TO HELP PEOPLE USE THIS DATABASE

Again, the more the better, as this will greatly improve the search function of the site. Key tags to include are:

• USDA Zone
• Full Sun, Part Sun or Shade
• Drought Tolerant, Low Water, Moderate Water
• Evergreen, Deciduous
• State and or region where the photo was taken
• Native, if applicable

MORE ABOUT HOW TO POST

• To contribute, first create a Flickr account if you don't already have one (it's free).
• Within your Flickr account, please set your email notifications so that you'll be notified when someone comments on a photo (by saying yes to emails about "activity on you or your photos").  That way, you can answer questions that people may have about the plants you've posted about, and this resource will be even more helpful.

WHO MAY POST PHOTOS:

• Landscape designers and landscape architects
• Public gardens
• Homeowners

Growers and nurseries may not post, although we encourage them to have homeowners or designers who have experience with their plants share their photos.

GOT A GREAT DESIGN TO SHARE?
Like the one in this photo?  Please upload it to our other Flickr group - for No-Lawn,  Small-Lawn and Alternative Lawn Gardens.

Top photos, from left: Prairie dropseed, UC Verde Buffalo grass, and Liriope spicata.  Lower photo and garden by Pam Penick in Austin, TX.

Garden Designers Roundtable: From lawn to Sedum, clover, bare soil and erosion!

The Garden Designers Roundtable invited the Lawn Reform Coalition to be their guest blogger(s) this month, combining forces to publish 19 articles about Lawn Replacement on the same day, and linking to each other. Great idea, designers!  Scroll down for the links to those 18 other blog posts, including one on my other blog, showing off the much more successful lawn replacement project in my front garden. 

From lawn to Sedum to mostly clover.

This is the still-in-progress lawn replacement saga in my back garden, a hillside with about 6 hours of sun.  I'm here to tell you that finding the right plant or mix of plants that'll meet these requirements is anything but easy:

• Require NO maintenance after they've settled in. 
• Be short enough to, like a lawn does, let me see over it into the borders and woods beyond, and let me drag the garden hose over it, too.
• Cover the ground quickly and with enough thickness to keep the soil from running downhill during downpours.
• If more than one species, they have to play well together - not kill any neighboring plants.

Okay, those are the goals.  Here's what's really happened, in a nutshell.  I dug up the turf, enlarged the borders, and replaced what was left of the lawn area with a Sedum that grows here as a weed and spreads quickly (S. sarmentosum, sometimes identified as S. acre) - which it did in one season.  I underplanted it with early-spring bulbs, tossed self-sowing Alyssum here and there, and allowed just a few annual wildflowers to remain - like Pennsylvania smartweed and wild violet.  Loved it! 

Then I got the brilliant idea of seeding some Dutch white clover here and there across the space, which had some unintended consequences (reported in My Falling out with Clover). To wit: unmowed, it got so tall it shaded and then killed the Sedum. 

I considered ditching the Sedum and having an all-clover lawn - it looks gorgeous, blooms all season, and the bees LOVE the stuff.  But here's the problem with that: the smell of clover attracts deer from seemingly miles away (I later learned that hunters use it to lure them).  So thanks to clover, my minor deer problem became a major one.   

 Today, some Sedum, but lots of bare soil and erosion damage.  UGLY!

So starting last fall, I began removing (by hand, mind you) all the clover, which seemed like a whole lotta work, 'til this season I realized I had at least twice that much clover to remove still, thanks to its generous seeding qualities.  Oh, my aching back.

But no problem - I filled in the where the clover once grew with extra bits of the Sedum I found growing here and there on the property, and told myself and my doubting visitors that the whole space would fill in, I was betting, by mid-summer - coz this plant is so vigorous, you know.  Except that apparently in the 95-to-100-degree heat we experienced here from early June through mid-August, the Sedum not only didn't spread; it retreated!

So all summer I've been anxiously looking at mostly bare soil, which is A, ugly, and B, erosion damage just waiting to happen, which finally did happen a few days ago when a crashing downpour sent large quantities of soil sliding down the hill.  And the storm season us far from over.

WHAT NEXT?

I haven't given up on this particular Sedum covering the area and once again performing splendidly, as it did pre-clover. Just look at how well it's covered ground here on either side of the sidewalk.  That little strip of soil between the sidewalk and the fence was all-weeds-all-the-time until the Sedum took over.  Then across the sidewalk, it's the perfect groundcover in the hell strip.

But back to the hillside that's washing away.  Even with milder, more encouraging temperatures over the next few weeks, there's just not enough of the Sedum left to cover all that bare soil any time soon.  A friend suggested terracing - a big job - and I'm considering planting a cover crop.  Another option is to cover the space temporarily with Liriope spicata, which I have access to plenty of, for free.  It's soooo boring, I know, but damn, it holds a hillside like nothing else.

Your suggestions, please?

(A more complete history of this lawn replacement conversion is here - scroll down to the back yard.)

Now check out posts about lawn replacement from these Lawn Reform Coalition members:

• Evelyn Hadden in Saint Paul, MN
• Saxon Holt in Novato, CA
• Ginny Stibolt in Green Cove Springs, FL
• Susan Morrison in East Bay, CA
• Shirley Bovshow in Los Angeles, CA
• Billy Goodnick in Santa Barbara, CA
• Susan Harris in Takoma Park, MD - yes, it's me again on my individual blog updating the mix of groundcovers I'm trialing in my small (and level) front yard.

And these members of the Garden Designers Roundtable:

• Scott Hokunson in Granby, CT
• Rochelle Greayer in Boston, MA
• Rebecca Sweet in Los Altos, CA
• Pam Penick in Austin, TX
• Lesley Hegarty & Robert Webber in Bristol, UK
• Laura Liven Good Schaub in San Jose, CA
• Jocelyn Chilvers in Denver, CO
• Ivette Soler in Los Angeles, CA
• Genevieve Schmidt in Arcata, CA
• Douglas Owens-Pike in Minneapolis, MN
• Debbie Roberts in Stamford, CT

 

Turf is top topic in my town's parade

You've seen the partying spectators for my town's July 4th Parade.  Now for the turf- and gardening-related floats and people IN the parade.

This group of reel-mowers have been at it for 15 or so years now, way ahead of the rest of the Lawn Reform movement.  I believe their official name includes the term "Precision Drill Team" because they, like the "World Famous Lawn Rangers" that inspired them, have a choreographed routine they're mighty proud of.

The float for the Coalition for Natural Sports Fields was a new one this year and they have no website, just a Facebook group. There we're told that the group is local to my county and composed of people fighting the threat of synthetic sports fields.  Since it's odd to see a pro-turfgrass demonstration these days, especially in this hyper-eco town, I naturally suspect that ChemLawn or a mow-and-blow trade group may be behind this, looking to improve their image and hold onto their sports-field business. I joined the Facebook group, wrote to the administrators for more info, and to date have received no response, so I'm standing by my cynicism.

In the photos above and left, the local organic food co-op came out in force to encourage gardening, as well as ride-sharing, cycling, water pistols and all manner of good clean fun.

For one small town's parade, there seemed to be a whole lotta turf- and garden-related content.  Even here.

Finally, not specifically garden-related but still in the pro-environment vein, below is the parade's grand marshall - someone thoroughly deserving of this and any other honor that may be bestowed on him.  It's Mike Tidwell, head of Chesapeake Climate Action Network and an increasingly popular spokesman for doing something about climate change. 

As goofy as he looks here, believe me - he's unbelievably articulate, and his clear-eyed focus on stopping the building of MORE coal plants is right-on.  He makes my paltry efforts at making a difference seem, well, paltry.  Thanks, Mike, for making me feel bad about myself all you do.

Dead trees! Killer compost! Thanks to DuPont and their herbicide Imprelis.

Boy, this sounds familiar.  A new chemical that's claimed to safely kill dandelions and other turfgrass weeds turns out to be not safe at all.  This time the unintended consequence is killing nearby trees. 

We heard from Mother Earth News about it, asking us to spread the word that:

• Conifer trees near lawns treated with Imprelis, especially Norway spruce and white pines, have shown signs of damage after Imprelis was used. Signs include brown and curled growth.
• Damage has been reported in Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, Indiana, Nebraska, Wisconsin and Delaware.
• DuPont recently sent a letter asking applicators to spray well away from the root zone of trees and shrubs and to make sure no drift or runoff could impact those ornamentals.
• If you suspect that your trees or garden plants have damage from Imperis, get them tested through your local Extension service. They may also have tips to minimize damage.

We also heard from a law firm representing one homeowner and an Indiana golf course looking to gather more plaintiffs. From their website:

Introduced to the market in late 2010, DuPont claims Imprelis is "effective against a very wide spectrum of important turfgrass weeds." Many landscapers and professional gardeners switched to Imprelis to control weeds in turf such as dandelions because Imprelis was claimed to be safer for the environment than predecessors such as 2,4-D.

Substantial tree damage has been reported throughout the Midwest, in East Coast states, and as far south as Georgia.

Dandelions growing happily in turfgrass at the Rodale Institute.

Killer Compost, Too!
The killing of nearby trees is new.  What's not new is the fact that "killer compost" that can ruin gardens  or farmland for years results when clippings from Imprelis-sprayed lawns or fields are composted. 

DuPont's response to that problem has been to put a warning about it on their label - their 9-page label.  Which they know damn well most people don't read.

So spread the word, lawyer-up if you think you may have damaged trees, and next time someone tells you a new pesticide of any type is "safer", be wary.  

Photo of Imprelis-damaged spruce by Purdue University Extension.

Lawn Reform Blog is Born!

 Standard-issue "lawn care" information is OUT.  Lawn reform information is not only IN, it's important, dammit.  So 15 months ago the Lawn Reform Coalition launched a website filled with alternatives to the conventional, overly perfect and supersized American lawn.  Next came our Facebook page, which quickly grew to over 1,000 followers. 

And now, by popular demand, we have the new Lawn Reform Blog, launching today with as big a splash as we can muster, with all 13 of us Coalition members making a fuss about it at once.

WHAT'S ON IT 
The blog's Welcome message tells you it "covers design ideas to reduce or replace lawns, regionally appropriate lawn species, and eco-friendly care for all lawns. And news!" 

Just yesterday I wrote about the 2011 High Country Gardens catalog, which makes the case for alternatives to conventional turfgrass lawns, and offers lots of plants that'll look great with minimal inputs, especially water (we'd expect nothing less from this Santa Fe-based company.) 

Lots more Coalition members will be contributing to the blog.  Susan Morrison and Ginny Stibolt (and yours truly) are the blog's admins and frequent authors, and Coalition members Evelyn Hadden, Saxon Holt, David Salman, Billy Goodnick, Tom Christopher, Shirley Bovshow and Paul Tukey will be contributing, too.

Coming soon are a Zazzle account where supporters can order up their Lawn Reform swag - buttons, T-shirts, hats, and more.  And a "tag cloud" so readers can search on the blog for terms like "front yard," "buffalograss" or "California" to get really specific help for their own gardens.

GUEST BLOGGERS WANTED!

We're looking for as many guest contributors as possible, so DO contact us if you have a story to tell - how you've reduced or eliminated your lawn, about a low-water lawn species you're trying, or just a horrific example of lawn care advice that could have been written by Big Chem (and probably was).  Already we have contributions in the pipepine about:

• Front yard edible gardens from the Germinatrix herself - Ivette Soler, who's our most ardent supporter on Facebook, hands down.
• Mary Ann Newcomer will show us her favorite lawn-to-garden make-overs.
• The Rant's own Eliz has promised reports of the very best examples of lawnless front yards that Buffalo has to offer. 
• And of course we've asked Michele Owens if she has any thoughts about giving up lawn for the growing of some food, and of course she has. 

SO GET IN THE LOOP
Subscribe to our blog.  "Like" us on Facebook.  Contribute photos to our Flickr group. 

An Appalling Waste of Horticultural And Scientific Talent? You Betcha

Turf without management

I hate to be shockable at 50--it's unseemly--but I was doing some research yesterday and was shocked to learn that Colorado State University has an entire degree program devoted to "turf management."

This program is taught by actual Ph.D.s.  It leads to glorious management careers, the site informs me, even in this brutal job market.

The thriving turf management industry offers management opportunities ranging from sod production to the establishment and maintenance of private and public grounds. Turfgrass managers are supervisors for golf courses, ski resorts, sports fields, and for park departments. Excellent employment opportunities are available in the areas of lawn care and landscape management.

A similar program is in place at Penn State, which has a full Center for Turfgrass Science, as does Rutgers. Turfgrass management students at Rutgers are eligible for scholarships funded by pesticide makers Bayer and Syngenta.

Seriously? 

The world is running out of arable land.  We've had food riots in developing countries in recent years.  Global warming appears to be unstoppable.  The American Southwest threatens to turn into a dust bowl.  Pesticides are implicated in a host of diseases.

And you want to spend four or more years learning how to pour water, artificial nitrogen manufactured from fossil fuels, and soil-deadening pesticides onto turfgrass mowed with giant gasoline guzzling machines?  In order to make 75 year-old golfers who don't care about the future happy? 

Wouldn't it be more socially productive to get a degree in Croupier Sciences?  Sex Worker Management? Pyramid Schemes?

New York bans phosphorus? Huh?

Algae in Lake Erie. Courtesy of the Ohio Sierra Club.

For a state government that is generally immobilized under the weight of its own bureaucracy, inefficiency, and stupidity, the crew in Albany have shown a certain activism when it comes to horticultural regulations.

I was taken by surprise when Layanee/Ledge and Garden drew my attention to a bill passed in July that prohibits the sale of lawn fertilizers that contain more than .67% of phosphorus by weight. I was totally dumbfounded when I saw that the bill was introduced by my own State Senator. I have never known him to do anything in the least bit interesting and/or useful. It must have been in one of the newsletters I get at least once a week and routinely toss.

Here’s the reasoning: there is a big problem with fertilizer run-off and algae bloom in all of our local waterways, including, of course, the Great Lakes, and several major clean-up initiatives are underway. Many other pollutants are involved, but the problem with phosphorus is that one lb. of it can produce up to 700 lbs. of algae.

Of course, it’s not that simple. Some lawn experts and scientists think that there’s no need to ban phosphorus because healthy turf prevents run-off (and other factors), while even more say that banning phosphorus won’t be a problem for synthetic fertilizer manufacturers, but might put organic fertilizer companies out of business.

Here’s the Safe Lawns take on it, and here's the bill itself. I am pretty sure from my reading of the bill that this only applies to lawn treatments, not flower beds. It doesn’t take effect until 2013.

And this is the statement from my State Senator, who might recognize a daffodil if a bushel of them hit him in the face. 

I've never needed to use lawn fertilizer, and over the years I've begun to avoid the use of any fertilizer. In my garden now, I use some organic rose mixture 3x a summer, compost, and—I admit—some water soluble for containers a few times a summer. But I would be happy to forsake it all and go to compost alone (although this bill would not require it). If it helped clean Lake Erie, it would be worth it. We have some nice beaches.

In the Washington Post: "Toss the turf."

There's a great story by Adrian Higgins in today's Washington Post titled "Lose the Lawn" - and look at it on the cover of their Local Living section!  Here's the introductory story, in which Higgins weighs in with his own conclusion on the subject:  "Toss the turf."  (As if we weren't already fans of his!)

The article is a glorious, photo-rich spread over three pages, revealing four terrific examples of front gardens without lawns (two of which I showed Adrian when he was in my town on a scouting mission).  Plus, he links to the Lawn Reform Coalition and lets me expound briefly on the subject!

Sad to say, the online version botches the story entirely.  The photos are mainly separated from the text that describes them, and readers have to sit through an unusually long commercial before seeing the slide show.  The poor thing's so sliced and diced, the whole visual impact is lost.

So for your benefit I've compiled links to the four garden stories, because they're hard to find online.  First  there's the garden in nearby Silver Spring that you see on the cover above.  Next, a wildlife-friendly garden in D.C. (though they're ALL wildlife-friendly, to be sure).  One of my favorite Takoma Park gardens is by landscape designer Wendy Bell. And the garden I refer to as the best front yard in town is shown below in photos I may have even posted here before. It's the garden of Suzanne Hubbard, designed by Holt Jordan.

What's unique about Higgins's story is the honesty.  These four gardeners were motivated far more by their passion for plants and boredom over lawn than even the obvious eco-benefits of the transformation, or a misguided attempt to save time on maintenance.  Nowhere is it stated or implied that these gardens are less work than lawns - au contraire!  Here's a quote.

Weeding, watering, pruning, plating, mulching, moving plants:  All these aspects of cultivating plants are more work than running a mower over weedy grass, but that's what gardening is about.

Good News - Campus Lawns are Controversial!

We knew this was coming - the great lawns of college campuses are being challenging on environmental grounds.  As Mark Hough, Duke's landscape architect, says in a recent issue of Landscape Archiecture Magazine, "Everyone now knows that high-maintenance turf must be questioned."  And "The use of lawn is being cast as the villain in the minds of many."  That's enough for Stanford's landscape architect to get her dander up but good:  "I see nothing wrong with the university greens, even in drought-stricken California," she protests. "I also resent the assumption by many landscape architects and others that lawn equals bad." The Collegiate Turf War has begun!

And being located in a desert doesn't stop some colleges from defending their lawn. The University of Arizona's landscaper-in-charge defends their large turf mall as "the center of campus and highly valued by students and alumni."  In their defense, he says they're (at least) now using reclaimed water, not the potable stuff. 

Oh, those controversial meadows!
At UNC-Chapel Hill they removed "underutilized or unneeded lawns" and replaced them with "sustainable planting areas and reforestation".  And at Rutgers they're replacing lawn with "low or no-mow areas", which the author tells us have been "warmly embraced in concept, though issues do sometimes arise when they are actually installed."  The guy in charge sums up the "issues" this way: "People don't really understand what meadows actually look like.  Northeastern U.S. meadows are mostly grasses, not wildflowers.  But that isn't what people want to see."

At Duke, about which the author has direct experience, the contract designer proposed keeping ceremonial area lawn and turning the rest of the site into a hierarchy of "native meadows" that would be allowed to "go back to nature".  Duke staff were presented with "beautiful images of wildflower meadows in full bloom" and at first, the bulbs looked great, and they were followed by spring and summer perennials.  "However, after a couple more seasons went by, these supposedly carefree plantings became overrun with volunteer invasive species, and the exceedingly complicated matrix of plants became too much for the grounds crews to properly maintain.  While an advocate for this responsible and didactic display of sustainable site design, I found myself questioning the practicality of what we had installed.  For just how sustainable is a landscape that cannot be efficiently maintained?"  

Complaints were heard about the appearance of the meadow, which unfortunately looked its best during the summer when nobody saw it, so it was ripped out and replaced with fescue sod and some canopy trees.  The author concludes that Duke's case "effectively displays the complicated issues involved at the institutional level that may not be readily apparent to those on the outside."

(Apparently designers have been turning to meadows in order to rack up points toward LEED certification.  In that costly endeavor, native plants are considered "low-hanging fruit".)

Preserving history while going green?
Sustainable landscaping may seem incompatible with preservation of historic landscapes, but the folks at UNC/Chapel Hill are determined to make theirs more sustainable, with help from Michael Dirr and hot landscape architect James Urban. The transformation starts with improving soils so that trees and lawns can be managed more responsibly.

Even Harvard Yard is changing.  It's the site of a much-publicized pilot program of using compost to improve soil structure and drainage, again to make the lawn easier to care for. The author contends that "such maintenance measures need to be promoted to show that ongoing support for these lawns does not contradict larger goals toward sustainability."  Even ardent lawn-haters have to agree that managing them more responsibly is a good thing, right?

So what about the most famous lawn on any American campus - the Jefferson-designed Great Lawn at the University of Virginia? It's super-historic, but they seem to have found a compromise.  They're irrigating just 1% of the lawn - the most historic bit - and letting the rest go dormant during periods of drought.  They report that people are dealing with brown turfgrass - imagine that.

Sustainable Sites to the Rescue
Finally, the author opines that the Sustainable Sites Initiative will be great for campus landscapes (better than LEED standards) because it endorses the value of cultural landscapes explicitly and gives credit for protecting and maintaining cultural and historical places. Also, LEED applies only to individual buildings, though there's a LEED for whole campuses in the offing.

Hey, change is coming, and it's all good.

Photo of Great Lawn at U.Va. by Rendezvous CP.

I Can't Believe We're Even Having This Conversation.

 

Actual words used on GardenRant to talk about what people do with their front yards:

"Practically no one wants a meadow out their front door."

"A meadow in a suburban development looks suspiciously like a weedy, unkempt yard at an abandoned property.  Neighbors are not amused."

"Mowing requires no experience at all to do it right.  Contrast that with the largely unknown and misunderstood methods of creating and maintaining meadows."

"I'd be shocked to see them turning to meadows for the answer.  Not in my lifetime, anyway."

"Down here, with an automatic sprinkler system and a lawn crew, you can maintain a St. Augustine grass lawn with a minimal investment in time and money. The same cannot be said of a rain garden, a native plant garden, a butterfly garden, a wildlife habitat, a meadow, a front-yard vegetable garden, or any other hort-trendy theme gardens."

Now.  I don't really think of my front yard as a meadow, but apparently Saxon Holt does, and that's good enough for me.

I also don't think that I have the most beautiful, perfect front yard meadow/garden/thingy in the world, but that's not the point of these photos.

The point is to show that my house is on a block that is an uninterrupted expanse of green lawn except for my little whatever-the-hell-I-feel-like-doing-with-it garden.  And it's not a quarter-acre lot, it's an eighth-acre lot.

I know that there are various definitions of "meadow." One of the reasons that I would not call my front yard a meadow is that I can't be bothered to walk around with a clipboard and make sure I fit the criteria. What I do have is an assortment of ornamental grasses, chosen because they look interesting in the wind and the rain, and we get nothing but wind and rain and overcast skies from about November through April, and in between the ornamental grasses are some flowering perennials and a few self-sowing annuals. Is it a meadow or a perennial border or a mess?  I don't know. I don't care.

These pulled-back photos are hardly glamor shots, but at least they let you see the garden in context. In the neighborhood.  Next to the neighbors with their green mowed lawns.  Who, by the way, have nothing but compliments for my garden.  At least to my face, that is.  Which is the same thing as having nothing but compliments, as far as I'm concerned.

Here's a bit more of a close-up.  You can see that there are some weedy-looking gaps to the left.  I've got some small perennials that will take a few years to fill in, but give it a little time and the left will look like the right:  masses of green, orange, and red stuff, mixed with flowering stuff, so densely planted that there are no weeds to pull, ever.

This is a more carefully-chosen shot that gives you a sense of what about 75% of it looks like now, and what the whole thing will look like once the last few gaps are filled in.

Okay, so:  we can all agree that this maybe isn't the textbook definition of a meadow.  It's a bunch of perennial grasses, combined with flowering perennials like salvia and nepeta, along with some self-sowing annuals like California poppy and nigella. We can also agree that I don't worry much about wild animals and ticks and the truly horrible Lyme disease, although we do have our neighborhood population of skunks, raccoons, and possum, who seem to find a home anywhere, not just in my garden. 

And it's true that I don't live in the suburbs with its opinionated neighbors and deed restrictions.  I live in a mixed neighborhood of Victorians, bungalows, and marijuana grow houses. These are the least controversial plants you'll see in Humboldt County.

And, of course, I live in an area where it never snows, so that's different, too.

But.  I get no rain from June through October.  None.  Not a drop.  Not once.  No. Rain.

So here's my "unknown and misunderstood method" of caring for my whatever-it-is front garden:

1. On some decent day in the middle of winter, I go outside with pruning shears and whack down the dead flower stalks.

2.  Maybe on the same day, or maybe on some other winter day, I go outside with a rake and comb through the ornamental grasses, removing the dead grass as if I'm brushing its hair (which turns out to be a deeply pleasurable task that satisfies some primal grooming instinct, sort of like combing nits out of a child's hair, something I've always wanted to do, not enough to actually have a child, but enough to think I might volunteer for the task if it ever came up.)

That's it.  That's all.  Now, when there are empty spaces that hold nothing but small, growing plants, those spaces must be weeded.  So I do that maybe once or twice a month in summer.

When there are small, growing plants, they need water during our annual drought.  So once every three or four weeks during the summer, I stand outside with a hose in one hand and a martini in the other.

But for the areas that are all filled in, I don't even do that. Repeat:  I do not water. I do not weed.

Automated sprinkler system?  Lawn crew? Mowing?  Blowing?

Huh?

You mean that's easier?  Or cheaper?  I've never mowed anything in my life, but I'm pretty sure it involves a big noisy piece of machinery that must get cranked up about as often as I run my washing machine. And I've never had an automated sprinkler system or a lawn crew, but that sounds like a lot of money and trouble to me.

I will suggest this: the front yard meadow is maybe not the same thing as the "we have acres of property in the country" meadow.  But you can get pretty darn meadow-esque, with plants appropriate for your region, and come up with something that looks nothing like "a weedy, unkempt yard at an abandoned property" and requires far less maintenance than that machinery-and-paid-help thing you people call a front yard.

Harumph.

Do people really want meadows on their quarter-acre lots?

All the talk about meadows we're hearing these days is great, but let's get real - practically no one wants a meadow out their front door.  Or out their back door.  Or anywhere they have to walk through.  Which kinda leaves the back 40 for real meadows, or at least the back five or so.  That's the size of the American Hort Society's lovely meadow on the banks of the Potomac, and the size of most client lots of famous meadow-maker Larry Weaner in Pennsylvania. 

Now to make my case, starting with aesthetics.  Meadows look great some of the year and not so great the rest of the year, which is fine from a distance but not in our front yards.  And judging by the ones I've seen, even at their best these suburban meadows looks suspiciously like a weedy, unkempt yard at an abandoned property.  Neighbors are not amused.

Then there's safety, especially safety from the ticks that carry Lyme Disease. What's the number one advice we hear about that?  Avoid tall grasses!  And that's exactly what U.Md. entomologist Michael Raupp said on the radio the other day, so I emailed to ask him to put some meat on those bones - How tall is tall?  He wrote:

The trick here is to have a "lawn" or ground cover that will discourage small rodents like field mice. I imagine that a mouse feels well hidden from a predator like a raptor in grass 18" tall - this is about the height of the meadow where my study site is and my crew and I pick up one to three ticks per day when walking through the plot.  But I think that 6" would make rodents feel a lot less comfortable.

The other piece of the puzzle will be distance from a forest edge. They further away, the less likely you will be to have small mammals in your lawn. Hope this helps. 

I posed the same question to plant expert John Peter Thompson, and he recommends 4-6" as the maximum plant height for safely walking on or through, noting that this is something he thinks about a lot. (Unlike some, adding that "The meadow folks aren't thinking about human health.") His solution is a layered garden, with fairly controlled vegetation close to the house, with more layering of plant heights and types at a distance, and at a distance is where meadows are fine. 

John Peter also referred me to USDA websites for tick-fighting info, and there I found pages of mind-numbing info about insecticides and acaricides, and a mention of the fact that many of us don't want to have to spray our gardens with toxic stuff.  On that note, here's Cornell weighing in on a natural tick control - the nematode.  I also found some scary info about what ticks can do to pets and other animals we care about.

 

Finally, there's the problem that as boring and uncreative as lawn care is, homeowners can generally figure it out, and mowing requires no experience at all to do it right.  Contrast that with the largely unknown and misunderstood methods of creating and maintaining meadows.  It took the American Hort Society years and one completely failed attempt to do it right, after all. 

So as much as I'd love to see suburbanites replacing their lawns with something, I'd be shocked to see them turning to meadows for the answer.  Not in my lifetime, anyway. 

Discuss among yourselves. 

Photos taken at River Farm, headquarters of the American Horticultural Society. 

Big Lawn Reform Update

Saxon Holt, photographer of meadows, grasses, lawn alternatives and sustainable gardens of all types, has joined us.  We are now 10.

We have a Facebook Page, y'all, so click here to "Like" us and follow what's happening.  If you're one of the hundreds who joined our Facebook Group, sorry about that!  And we promise - no more switcheroos, now that we've figured out what works best on Facebook. And to make sure everyone can follow the lawn-reform news, we also have an e-newsletter, which you can sign up to right here, and start receiving quarterly issues in September.  In the meanwhile, click here for the latest news of "lawn work" by the 10 Coalition members, plus news of publications, new legislation, research findings, resources - you whole shebang.

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Lawn update - the good, bad and just less of it

Lawn in the News
"Study shows that Lawns May Contribute to Global Warming" say the headlines, but the study actually confirms what we all knew - that conventional lawn care is the culprit, not really the turfgrass itself. Findings are summarized in UC Irvine Today:

Turfgrass lawns help remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and store it as organic carbon in soil, making them important “carbon sinks.” However, greenhouse gas emissions from fertilizer production, mowing, leaf blowing and other lawn management practices are four times greater than the amount of carbon stored by ornamental grass in parks, a UC Irvine study shows. 

Virginia Smith wrote this terrific story about Lawn Reform - the concept, the Coalition and lots more - in the Philadelphia Inquirer. In my chat with Smith for the article I learned that she's an ex-lawn gardener herself and confirms that, counter to urban-suburban legend, she found gardens to be more work than lawns.  By far, she says.  This article in Boston.com proclaims: "Natural and eco-sensitive lawn care is IN."  Even Turf Magazine covers the move to organic lawn care and Paul Tukey's SafeLawns campaign.  There we learn that Connecticut, Maine, Minnesota and Vermont now have restrictions on "lawn chemical application."   And here's Minnesota's info about how to comply.[pdf] From the golf world we learn that:

The Golf Course Superintendents Association of America has released the results of a nationwide survey of golf courses examining nutrient use and management on golf facilities. The results indicate that superintendents apply fertilizers at rates that fall within the guidelines recommended by university scientists. [Italics added.]

That raises the question: WHICH university scientists and who funds THEM? (But that's a rant for another day.)  Here are the findings to read yourself but I'll just note that the survey found, on a less favorable note, that only 64% of nitrogen applied to U.S. golf courses is slow-release; less than half of golf courses have written nutrient plans; and not all of them even have their soil tested.  I'm just saying. Lawn on the Web
The Wild Ones organization has compiled some great information about landscape laws that protect native-plant gardens.  Stuart Robinson offers a rather positive telling of what it takes to maintain synthetic turf but still it serves as fair warning about the work involved. Found on Sunset Magazine's blog: a Portland lawn-to-border make-over, with step-by-step and how much it costs to do.  (Photo right.) Sunset also posted a great rip-out-the-lawn do-over in San Diego. In the Boston area, Rochelle Greayer posted this story of a front-yard makeover from lawn to garden. And a gardener in NE Florida sent me these photos of his front-yard ex-lawn make-over.  (The top photo in this post is one of them.)
Photo credits:  Top photo: State of Minnesota.  Lower lawn reduction photo by Janet Loughrey for Sunset.

Anti-Lawn Nazis Should Call Off the Blitzkrieg

Guest Rant by Frank Hyman  
You can’t have read about gardening for the last 5-10 years and missed the stories about how lawns have  gone from being a symbol of the American Dream to becoming the nightmarish instrument of the corporate horticulture industry. What had been the greenest portion of the American Dream is now undermining our clean water, clean air and our peace and quiet while we read the morning paper. In the good old/bad old days of our grandparents, lawns were mowed aerobically and peacefully with reel mowers (what a friend calls “acoustic” mowers), leaf blowers hadn’t been invented and fossil-fuel based fertilizers were expensive and rarely applied. And nary a discouraging word was heard. But like garlic mustard gone to seed, times have changed. And as any anti-lawn nazi or student of the environment can tell you, the Standard Operating Procedure for an Ego Lawn (think habitat for McMansions, corporate HQ’s and 50 acre public school sites) calls for:
1. Mowing with a noisy and dirty two-stroke engine on a self-propelled mower (that no doubt will soon come with cup-holders for our hi-fructose-corn-syrup-infused fizzy drinks), 2. Fertilizing with an excessive amount of water-soluble nitrogen and phosphorus that causes algae blooms that poison the water and kill fish, 3. Irrigating with timers that throw out water even on rainy days and wash more fertilizer into waterways, 4.  Bagging grass clippings and dumping them in landfills where they can produce climate disrupting methane gas, 5.  Saturating the soil with herbicides that kill many of the microbes that would improve the soil unbidden, 6.  Spreading lawn fungicides to kill the diseases that are generated by the excess fertilizer, Rinse, lather, repeat.

 

But as a reformed member of this tribe, I have to say these folks are taking their goal of exterminating lawns too far. (The story of my conversion is here in the Oct./Nov. issue of Horticulture magazine.) To say all lawns are bad, are you also saying that every turf grass plant is bad as well? Would it be an environmental crime against nature to keep one fescue turf grass plant in a pot? To mulch it with some pretty gravel, feed it some lovely worm-compost tea, water it with leftover dishwater and creatively prune its individual leaves with bonsai scissors? And then let it go to seed late in the year for a festive holiday appearance? Of course not. (Note to self: pitch story idea to magazine editors regarding newest hot trend in container plants.) So let’s go a step further. Instead of a modern oceanic lawn, would it be bad to keep a tiny bed of maybe 5 fescue grass plants? How about 50? Or maybe just enough for an adult to lie down on and watch the clouds go by? Better yet, enough for 2 gardeners and a 13 year-old, arthritic, black Labrador Retriever named Molly to lounge on with a couple of gin & tonics and a dried pig’s ear respectively? Somehow, it’s just not quite as comfortable to lie on the anti-lawn Nazis’ preferred alternatives of flagstone patios and xeriscape gardens as it is on a bed of grass.

Only a real Nazi would be heartless enough to want to grub out such a sweet little garden bed of turf. Especially if the grass is maintained on a lean diet of organic fertilizer, mowed with a  quiet cordless mower, watered from a 300 gallon rain barrel, and hand weeded for about 5 minutes every month or so by a gardener with a cold beer in one hand.
What reasonable person could begrudge such a garden? So maybe the anti-lawn Nazis can just take a deep breath, dial back the rhetoric a bit, and in addition to damning the Ego Lawns, they could endorse the occasional Eco Lawn (or what we call our Lawnlet), and sit down with more reasonable gardeners over cocktails to talk about some other worthy problems. Like what can we spray on invasive exotics like Microstegia vimineum (Stiltgrass) to make them taste good to deer?

Frank Hyman is a Durham, NC landscaper, garden coach, and teacher of gardening AND politics.

"A Chemical Reaction" Makes the Case

You may remember my plea to help get this anti-pesticide documentary seen.  Well, that was before I'd seen it myself and now that I have, I can recommend it not just for its powerful message but for the fascinating person at its core.

Here's a blurb from the movie's website. "Dr. June Irwin, a dermatologist, noticed a connection between her patients’ health conditions  and their exposure to chemical pesticides and herbicides.  With relentless persistence she brought her concerns to town meetings to warn her fellow citizens that the chemicals they were putting on their lawns posed severe health risks and had unknown side effects on the environment."  And after years of being a persistent nag on the subject, she succeeded in eliminating pesticides from her town in Ontario, and most of Canada. 

And it was June Irwin herself that I found most compelling in the movie.  Those hats!  That eye make-up!  She must have been easy to dismiss as a character or even a bit crazy, but this crusading dermatologist went on to topple the giants of Big Chem and get products removed from every Home Depot in the country.  Similar  battles for change are now popping up all over the U.S.

Executive producer Paul Tukey (of Safe Lawns and the Lawn Reform Coalition) just sent me the good news that "A Chemical Reaction" has been accepted by the DC Environmental Film Festival next March.  So I'll get to see it with a big audience, and I'm hoping that Dr. Irwin will fly down for the DC premiere.  I've got to see more of this crazy-like-a-fox women.

Ginny Stibolt reviewed "A Chemical Reaction" and concluded: "Water restrictions and shortages are not the only reason to avoid artificially greened lawns. 

I highly recommend this film."  And another Lawn Reformer, Susan L. Morrison, sent me her review: A Chemical Reaction is the ultimate David vs. Goliath story. That one woman’s persistence could convince a town and from there an entire country of the damaging effects of lawn chemicals left me amazed and inspired.  Unhappily, I’m now stuck with the question, inspired to do what?  Because the most shocking aspect of the documentary was learning that the chemical companies have already been successful at preemptively blocking similar legislation in the United States – not to mention changing their company names to disassociate themselves from what happened in Canada.

Weigh in on draft of "Lawn Care We Like"

Update: Since our launch a week ago, the Lawn Reform conspirators have been encouraged by the flood of support, complete with suggested links to more good resources for our website.  But as if to highlight the need for what we're creating, we've also seen a bunch of out-dated articles recommending resource-intensive practices.  Like?

Keep your lawn well-fed and well-watered - you know, an inch a week of water per week even during the summer.  Feed your lawn with bags of fertilizer product (no mention of the nonbagged alternatives).  Kill those dandelions and all that clover.  Just trade your old synthetic products for the new organic ones and you're an organic gardener.  And so forth.So to help homeowners in their lawn management and to be up-front about the kind of lawn care advice we'd like to see everywhere (and the only kind we'll put on our website), we've compiled some quickie bullet points for the busy reader.  We'd love your feedback - over here on my blog.Photo by Billy Goodnick.