Are we SURE we hate turfgrass?

Here's why I ask.  This is in my next-door neighbor's back garden by Holt Jordan.  With its sprinkling of evergreens, fabulous stonework, and two ponds with a waterfall between them, even winter looks damn good.

But imagine instead of these patches of cold season lawn there were just mulch, or bare earth above herbaceous plants that are hiding for the winter?  Or compare it to the muddy expanse where turfgrass used to be in my own backyard, which is now SO NOT PRETTY I won't even photograph it.  (It's sealed off from public display by its status as Work in Progress, I tell myself.)

Now that I've cavalierly, possibly rashly banned lawn as a groundcover from my property, is it really so terrible?  These patches may even be maintained organically - I know the folks at Safe Lawns promise it can look this good without the gardener behaving badly.  Not a bad deal, I say.

Comments

[Karen Arms]

What a gorgeous garden! I'm afraid you're right. It's no accident that the French invented tapis vert and it rapidly became popular.

My (inadequate) solution to hating grass but loving how lawns look has been to drastically reduce the area of lawn in the garden and leave the grass to live or die on its own. (No water; no fertilizer.) This is what the average British gardener does. In a dry summer, their lawns are brown, but they generally recover the following year. I am helped by living in a fairly wet area and by the fact that our horrid centipede lawn grass does not really like to be fertilized.

[Pam/Digging]

Man, do ALL your neighbors have lovely yards or gardens? It sure seems that way.

[susan harris]

Oh, yeah, I got lucky with neighbors. In this case I used to look out over a rusty old jungle gym until these folks bought the place and hired my favorite landscape architect to transform it into this. And that waterfall sounds wonderful, too.
On the other side of me an equally nice neighbor has allowed me to adopt her garden and it's looking great, in a much-lower-budget kinda way.

[bev]

It's nice but I'd still rather see a nice mixed shrub border with the only grass being for paths.

[Curtis]

Your right!

My Organic(not feed and not watered)lawn produces O2 as well. I bet the brown mulch can't do that.

[eliz]

I think there should be more. It's nice, but a bit boring--I'd like to see some shrubs, as Bev comments. More texture is needed--or something.

Still, it is very peaceful.

[Eric]

I think any suburban garden "should" maintain at least some teeny patch of lawn...it's just nice to have a spot where you can walk barefoot in the grass or lay out in the grass or play in the grass (or run through a sprinkler on a hot summer day). In my own garden (approx 1/8th acre plot) I eliminated all the grass in the front yard and back yard, except for a few 3-foot wide winding grass paths and one oval grassy area about 20 feet by ten feet in my side yard, a spot that is viewable from the kitchen. Because my paths and oval area are all curved, it is very easy to mow with a reel mower or electric mower, which is so much better for the environment than a gas mower - GASp! My feeling/rule of thumb is if you can't easily/quickly maintain it with a reel or electric mower, then you probably have too much lawn and you should plant other stuff, but having some small lawn is important for people and kids and dogs to play in/on, etc...also, from a real estate persective, suburban homes with NO lawn are a tough sell to people with dogs/kids, whereas just having a token grass/lawn area of at least 200 square feet will help tremendously with resale. Also, grass paths and small grassy areas also create an important negative space in the garden that makes the surrounding beds/borders look that much more attractive. Also, small grassy areas like mine are small enough that I can easily hand-weed them without using any chemicals/products. Again, I think a good rule of thumb is that if it's so big that you can't hand-weed it, then it's too much grass. grass!!!

[Benjamin]

Can I piggyback on Eric's comments? That idea of negative space is key in garden design, it seems to me. Your neighbor's yard looks very peaceful and welcoming, and I assume that in summer it comes alive so it looks a little more full and diverse. I don't think it needs more shrubs or such. I also like the path that stops over the water and tricks you; I'm all for playing elegant design jokes on anyone who comes through my space, especially unwanted children (geeze, did I just say that?).

[Gloria]

I have seen many gardens without lawns that are very beautiful even some that use so called negative space by other means than mown turf.
There are ways to play that do not need lawn.
Paths and open spaces for seating can be accomplished by using materials that allow water to pass through to the soil beneath without creating a bare muddy mess.
I am sure I do not want more and will continue to eliminate existing turf.
To be adamant that turf is "necessary" is as bad as claiming none should exist. It is the absolutes to which everyone is expected to conform that are a problem.
Thinking through the alternatives and having the freedom of choice is what needs to be addressed.
I do not want lawn. I would like everyone to contemplate a different solution. I do not want you to do things my way.

[Curtis]

To comment on my own comment. I have seen small yards filled with Mondo Grass. No Mowing, Yea!

[susan harris]

Good comments, everyone. Both design-wise and for the purpose of being able to drag a garden hose across the space that used to be my back lawn, I'm looking for very low plants, maybe even all the same thing. In fact, someone who saw it turf-free recently suggested mondo grass and I love that idea, just wonder how much it would cost since they don't spread, right?
My first attempt at drought-tolerant lawn replacement will probably be creeping sedum, which I have so much of it (it's a weed in my neighborhood) and it spreads so fast. We'll see. I know it's too short-rooted to hold much soil on banks, and my backyard is on a slope. There seems to be no perfect replacement. Good fodder for blog posts, however.

[jodi]

Trailing along behind, as usual of late (illness and a balky internet connection have been the cause). The grassy areas of our yard have a lot of clover in them, which I'm encouraging as much as possible. We also have lots of dandelions, which I don't do anything about. In spring, the 'lawn' is alive with native bees and other pollinators getting sustenance from the dandelions, and later the clovers. The clovers don't need mowing as much don't turn brown if we do have a dry spell in summer, and feel just great underfoot. There are also delightful mossy patches that I am watching slowly spread too. Nothing gets fertilized, dethatched, limed, pesticided or otherwise tended. It gets mowed when mowing is needed, and the clippings get mulched or sometimes left to mulch back into the grass--that's as much attention as it gets.
I'm on a longterm plan to take back more and more of the lawn every year by edging the beds wider and wider, using the argument it takes less time for my long suffering spouse to mow, using precious fossil fuels. Like others, I do feel the need for green areas to walk on, or put the lawnchairs on, and such, but for the most part, grasss belongs in the pasture and paddock.
For clarification, I also am not trapped in a suburban hellstrip with covenants and lawn-ranger neighbours who have coronaries at the sight of a dandelion or cluster of clover blossoms. Were that the case, I'd come up with other solutions, but it'll never BE the case so long as I'm healthy!

[Don]

Hey, talk about lagging! Here I come, two weeks late! Been busy at the Center, when it gets cold, homeless folks suffer. It stinks.

We're in a drought here in the Carolinas, so turf grass lawns are dying out. All the same, people can't imagine life without them. Today, a local hoidy toidy garden designer popular in areas of town with, frankly, beautiful yards like the one in your pic, Susan, wrote in the local paper that we need to lighten up water restrictions, not just to keep our beautiful (she says) lawns but to keep the lawn company employees from ending up joining the homeless themselves.

Trying as always to think ecologically (remember ecology?), I believe grasses and sedges etc have extensive fibrous root systems that do a good job of hanging on to soil. Good for erosion control. When rainfall is limited, they can become the climax plants (The Great Plains).

They do, however, change with the seasons, and don't naturally live in monocultures. A prairie (natural grassland) and a manicured lawn are cousins, more or less in the same way as a grey wolf and a doxiepoo. We've successfully domesticated lawns, and they cost a lot and aren't sustainable. But getting a wild meadow to work in the suburbs or, worse, in the city, can be very tricky, if very rewarding.

We had a nice start last year at the Center, where I was very proud of the wildflower meadow we sowed in front of the entrance. It's gone now, weedwhacked flat by a volunteer crew, who saw it as 'weeds', in spite of the flowers. Even killed the sedum, which takes some doing.

This kind of experience makes me think that lawns are not simply a garden design option, they are a kind of cultural addiction, blinding us to the value of growing anything else.

There were naturally open spaces in the dominant forest canopy here, filled with Piedmont prairie - they'd form after hurricanes blew hundreds of trees flat, and then bison and other grazers kept the trees at bay, aided by First Nations farmers who used fire. So, you can't say open spaces - and by extension lawns - are "unnatural" in this landscape, either.

All this to say, I don't know. I still have a little patch of grass in back, 1000 ft2. Darwin lawn, survival of the survivors, but no prairie. It's for the dog to dig, and for my son and his pals to kick soccer balls across. Our front lawn is long gone, though, and we don't miss it. The breaks in the mulch are the veggie garden area, the pond, and lots of paths and open places. Strangely, it is more people friendly than most lawns - kids come play on the swing hanging from the big oak, and our yard is generally considered tops for hide-and-seek.

As for what to do for groundcover, especially in shade, that's a tough one. Still working on it. I like the idea of buffalograss (Buchloe dactyloides), but haven't seen it work all that well, and it needs sun.

We all talk about garden rooms, and so it is logical to lay down a nice 'tapis vert' - but, isn't there another way to think about things, one where we try a little more mindfully to design with nature?

One thing I can sympathize with - I got rid of our own old rusty swing set in the back, and it does for sure improve the viewscape, even if it isn't not by a long shot.