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Cutting Your
Lawn Down to Size
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If there is a consistent theme
of homeowners considering changes in their
landscapes these days it is this, “I just want to
get rid of some of this lawn!” It is doubtful that
the lush green lawn will ever disappear from the
American landscape, but there does seem to be a
widespread movement underway in America and
Wyobraska to cut the lawn down to size, so to
speak.
There are many good reasons to
consider shrinking the size of your lawn. First,
the rising cost of water, particularly for lawns
watered with city water, makes lawns an increasingly
expensive landscape feature. Seasonal water bills
for lawn watering in some cases are approaching
$1,000. Add to that the cost of fertilization, weed
control, and mowing, and for some folks it’s a
choice between a green lawn or a black checkbook
balance.
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I suggest that the first step
in developing your landscape floorplan is to
consider whether or not to add additional “hardscape
features” such as patios, walks, or sitting areas to
your landscape. Design the size, shape, and
location of these features to make them functional
for their envisioned use. Properly designed and
constructed, hardscapes are a great way to shrink
your lawn, because they tend to be very low
maintenance while at the same time adding to your
use and enjoyment of the landscape.
Sometimes the actual work of replacing lawn with
hardscape or landscape plantings can be done
gradually, and in other cases it is easier or more
cost effective to simply do the entire project at
one time. Each project is different.
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Previous Articles
It's
Finally Spring - March 13
Spring Garden Calendar-March 20
No
Garden Left Behind-March 27
Planting Trees for a Cooler Earth in a Warmer
WyoBraska-April 3
Viburnums - Shrubs for Wyobraska Springs-April 10
Want A Water Conserving Lawn? You might already have
one-
April 17
Creating Long
Term
Tree-lationships April 24
Bigger, Bolder, Brighter,
Better—and Back In The Landscape May 01 & 08
Hardy Shrub
Roses
May 15
Another Look
at Native Plants
May 22
No Child
Left Inside
May 29
June
is Tree Care Month June 05
Summer Blooming Shrubs
June 12
Roses Are
Red.....
June 19
The Plants They will be Talking About Next Year at
the Garden Walk
June 26
Busy Summertime Gardens
July 03
Cutting Your Lawn Down to Size
July 10
2007 Articles
2006 Articles
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A second reason that many
homeowners give for wanting to shrink their lawns is
that they want more visual interest in their
landscape. A lush green carpet is nice, but there’s
a limit to its visual interest and appeal. A
diverse landscape which includes a blend of trees,
shrubs, perennials, and ornamental grasses offers
far more visual interest—often for the same or less
total cost than an equivalent area of lawn.
The final major reason that I hear homeowners cite
for wanting to shrink lawns is to be friendlier to
the environment. While it is possible to maintain a
visually appealing lawn without the use of
insecticides, it is difficult to maintain a lawn
that won’t incur the wrath of your neighbors without
the use of herbicides (weed sprays). Most natural
environments are diverse plant, animal, insect, and
microorganism communities. Lawns, by definition,
strive to be communities of a single plant species.
This limits not only the plant diversity, but also
animals, birds, insects, and microorganisms. As
homeowners increasingly attempt to attract birds,
butterflies, and other wildlife into their gardens
and landscapes, they quickly realize that the
monoculture lawn offers little in the way of food,
protection, or shelter to any wildlife other than
sod webworms, billbugs, and grubs.
There are right and wrong ways to shrink a lawn.
The wrong way is to kill off the existing lawn
without a plan for a revised landscape. In spite of
all of its shortcomings, a lawn is still a known
quantity and is preferable, as a landscape, to bare
dirt or a weed patch. The right way to shrink a
lawn is to develop a plan first, then get out the
Round-Up.
There is a natural tendency to
think that a landscape plan is only an arrangement
of plants in and around your yard. But a good
landscape plan really starts with a “floorplan” for
your landscape—much like a building plan for a new
home begins with a floorplan.
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In recent years I have seen a
number of homeowners successfully shrink their lawns
by either enlarging and redoing an existing
landscape bed or adding a single new landscape bed
in an area that was lawn. A year or so later when
they are comfortable with the appearance and
management of the first bed, they plan and add
another bed. Over a period of three or four years,
these homeowners have significantly shrunk their
lawns.
Another approach to shrinking
the lawn, is to just shrink the amount of water and
work required to keep a healthy and functional
lawn. One approach some homeowners are using to
shrink their lawn work and cost is to use drought
tolerant warm-season grasses such as buffalo grass
and blue grama instead of the traditional bluegrass
varieties. This approach is particularly effective
for rural homesteads and acreages where there are
increasing concerns about whether or not the house
well will be able to provide enough water to
irrigate a large lawn. While these grasses work
best in lawns when they can receive occasional
irrigation, they are able to get by with
significantly less annual irrigation than
bluegrass. These native grasses also require less
mowing, fertilization, and related care as well.
One approach to shrinking the
lawn that I don’t recommend is to create large
“zeroscape” rock areas in your landscape. In most
cases these rock scapes turn into maintenance
nightmares as dirt and weed seeds blow into the rock
and begin turning the rock bed into a cheat grass
and tumbleweed patch.
So if you’ve had a sudden and
uncontrollable urge to cut your lawn down to size,
put away your lawn mower and get out those garden
and landscape magazines with all of the ideas in
them and start planning your new, smaller, lawn. |