The Working Lawn
By John Vivian
A step beyond an expanse of green.
Our transgression?
Lawn care.
Every weekend finds many of us trudging reluctantly to the garage and fighting to start our reluctant, gas-powered rotary mower. Then we push the snarling little demon over wet, slippery grass, never minding the half-inch thick cutter blade whirling at 2500 rpm just inches from our tender toes. We plod back and forth to trim a fraction of top growth from the lawn-a monoculture of alien sod grass. Thus, we carefully tend this unnaturally uniform carpet of an immigrant plant species that evolved on the savannas and plains of the world to serve as nourishment for grazing animals.
This Kentucky Blue grass (Poa pratensis) immigrated to the New World via England from its origins in a cool, wet part of Europe or the Middle East. To stay green through our summer heat and dry spells, it needs twice-a-week soakings totaling 18 to 20 gallons per cubic feet each year. This is enough to fill a swimming pool, as Jennifer Bennett observes in her book Dry-Land Gardening. To thrive, our lawns also need doses of nitrogen-rich chemical fertilizers, broad-leafed herbicides (to eliminate competing vegetation) and broad-spectrum insecticides to get rid of unwanted insects (and, unfortunately, beneficial bugs as well).
All this work - and most of us hate doing it. Sure, we relish that first whiff of freshly cut grass, but after 20 minutes or so of shuffling along at mosquito-bait speed, most of us are bored silly. The discomfort factor is pretty high, too, when you consider summer heat, exhaust pollution and the ear-shattering din of the mower's engine.
Why do we do it? And how can we stop doing it?
Our lawns are rooted in the longoutdated Renaissance idea that man's moral duty on Earth is to improve on wild and chaotic nature. This is compounded by the uniquely American "Manifest Destiny" - the need to settle and civilize a wild and savage land. Perhaps we wish to recreate a small scale Western ranch, manicured like the set of a 1930s cowboy movie. Maybe we strive to emulate the great lawns and formal gardens of Europe's country estates from days of yore. We might also be following along blindly in the more modern context of suburban competition. For such a relatively modern home accessory, the lawn has acquired mythic status.
Today, however, the long-forecast but widely doubted limits on our supplies of petroleum and water have become realized: Witness the drought in once-lush southern Florida, the power shortages in southern California and natural gas price hikes nationwide. Being purely ornamental and resource-hungry, expansive residential lawns are no more consistent with a resource-conserving ethic than Lincoln Navigators or Chevy Suburbans.
But whether the resource in short supply is the water, good soil, moderate temperature, petroleum, or the time and energy required to maintain sod grasses, there are five guiding principles for lawnkeeping in contemporary landscaping that we should all strive to attain.
PRINCIPLES OF THE CAREFREE LAWN
1. Reduce the amount of land covered by sod grass to the minimum that you genuinely need or that is required by local norms, neighborhood expectations or ordinances.
2. Supplant or replace resource-hungry alien grasses, other ornamental species and even food-garden cultivars with low-maintenance varieties. Choose those that are native or otherwise suited to your own land, water availability and climate.
3. Restrict alien plants to independent plots that can be supplied selectively with soil, extra water or other special requirements as needed.
4. Plan your landscape so that it is self-tending or can be managed with the smallest possible electric or hand-powered tools.
5. Adopt resource-conserving land-management practices.
Minimizing turf area is not easy to do if your place is in a town or a suburban area of expansive lawns. Some municipalities have ordinances requiring lawns around homes, and status-conscious, lawn-valuing neighbors can exert pressure against nonconformists. Also, a strong, self-regenerating blanket of low-maintenance grass suitable to the climate is the best surface for children and pets to romp on.
I took my lawn-keeping cues from Mrs. White.... Her side yards were grown up thick in flowering hedges - natural fences - including self-tending lilacs, honeysuckle and spirea. These hedges were partitioned by narrow pathways of flat stone laid in deep sand.
THE LAWN OF COMPROMISE
When we left our remote farm and moved to a small college town in central New England, the oil crisis of the 70s was well under way, promising to raise prices to $5 a gallon. This greatly reduced our forays into town, and certainly made me think twice before pouring precious fuel into the mower's gas tank.
We took our lawn-keeping cues from Mrs. White, a retired teacher who lived down the way in a small Colonial home with a large maple tree out front. Her side yards were thick with flowering hedges - natural fences - including self-tending lilacs, honeysuckle and spirea. These hedges were partitioned by narrow pathways of flat stone laid in deep sand. The strip of grass between street curb and sidewalk (known in some parts of the country as a "parkway" or "boulevard") plus her postage stamp-size front yard was all the sod Mrs. White had. She mowed it diligently every Sunday after church wearing a long house dress and sensible shoes.
From this neighbor, we also learned to appreciate some of nature's bounty we'd previously ignored. Each spring, Mrs. White would pull up new dandelion greens as soon as they appeared, well before they matured into bitterness. She dug the dandelion knife as deep as it would go to extract the roots and sweet, flower bud-filled stems. She brushed them free of dirt, then steamed them until tender and served the greens with butter and vinegar. From the shade under her maple tree, Mrs. White gathered violet leaves and new blossoms for spring salads.
We lived on an unpaved cul-de-sac that lacked curbs, so our front yard maple served as a sun-shading car park. The soil under it churned to mud each spring until I had a truckload of crushed rock spread there. Renewed periodically, it hosted an abundance of violets after I transplanted them from surrounding stands. To keep encroaching lawngrass sod at bay, I sprinkled rock salt sparingly around the borders. For the sake of appearances, we retained a patch of turf right in front of the house, but also planted a sour cherry tree in the circle of sod, which was covered by water-permeable black landscaping fabric. Half of the fabric was disguised by a blanket of chipped-bark mulch. On the other side was a border of dwarf filberts and Hansen's bush cherry.
The inner half of the side yard was left with the existing fescue/perennial-rye sod, but also hosted a bathtub-shaped sand pit, a basketball goal and other play stuff that evolved as our children grew older. I tried to mow the remaining lawn with a cordless electric push-mower, but electrics, with both battery and motor, are heavy - and this land sloped upward. I compromised by using a small mulching mower with a tunnel-topped deck that minced clippings small so they'd rot down and not contribute to a thick thatch. Today, I'd compromise even less and purchase a low-horsepower, gas-powered string-trimmer/mower. On the down side, these universal mowers use petroleum and their thick, monofiliament cutter can inflict a nice gash. Still, they're much lighter to push and dimensionally safer than a steel mower blade. A house-powered electric model with a long extension cord might be better for flat yards.
The sod that was in a wide strip around the house foundation was dug out and composted. Under more bark-covered landscaping cloth, the soil was augmented with compost and planted with old-fashioned beauty bush, althea, trumpet vine, honeysuckle and dwarf fruit trees. These ornamental plants were pruned to be espaliered on the house walls.
Along the back and side borders of the lot, sod was dug out and planted with self-reliant fence plants including mock orange, bird-attracting Russian olive, lilacs, wild plum and other hardy, tall-growing bushes. We interspersed the flowering bushes with a random selection of scrawny and misshapen white pine, spruce, balsam and hemlock seedlings dug from where they were fighting to find sunlight in the deep woods.
The rear third of the back yard hosted a chicken house and pen, an arbor of Concord grapes that made fine jelly, and a large, old apple tree with low branches. There was no grass sod - instead, we had low, native, shade-adapted ground covers including native ferns, mosses and bearberry or Kinnikinnick ceremonial tobacco that I dug from abundant wild stands in the woods. The apple tree was never sprayed, so crops were small and worm-eaten - we made the best of it into applesauce. But the open-spreading three-stem trunk made the tree a perfect host for swings, rope ladders and tree houses.
I tossed clippings and trimmings onto a mulch pile in back of the tree and, from an unknown seed source, the plot grew up into a thick stand of Jerusalem artichoke-producing sunflowers. After frost killed the plants, we harvested as many of the delectable tubers as many we could dig from the soft, loamy soil by hand. Raw, the Jerusalem artichokes were like a crispy water chestnut substitute in salads and stir-fries. Peeled and cooked briefly, they served as a watery potato substitute.
There's no reason to consider our lawn example as the standard for alternative lawns. It is submitted to show how many options there are beyond the classic, labor- and resource-intensive green carpet. If you want to try your hand at an ancient technique that has enjoyed a modern revival, try...
XERISCAPING
"Xeri" means "dry" in Ancient Greek. Pronounced "zeer-eh-scape," this is a system of lawn and garden design, planting and water management that evolved in the semidesert areas, where growing populations threaten limited and water supplies.
Folks living in arid regions around the world have been dry-land farming and gardening for eons. Xeriscape is the method by which Native Americans such as the ancient Anasazi gardened; their descendants the Pueblos still use this method, along with modern deep-well irrigation. But the concept was formalized, named and made popular by a group of state and private water-supply, academic and landscaping experts in Denver back in the 1980s. It has been adapted in nondesert areas as well (called "mesiscaping" in well-watered Massachussets).
There are seven basic principles of xeriscaping:
1. Plan for water conservation and beauty from the start.
2. Create practical turf areas of manageable sizes and shapes with appropriate grasses.
3. Select plants that require little water, and group plants of similar water needs together. Then, experiment to determine how much and how often to water the plants.
4. Use soil amendments like compost or manure as needed by the site and the type of plants used.
5. Use mulches such as woodchips to reduce evaporation and to keep the soil cool.
6. Irrigate efficiently with properly designed systems (including hose-end equipment) and by applying the right amount of water at the right time.
7. Maintain the landscape by mowing, weeding, pruning and fertilizing properly.
We will add that in drought-plagued southern Florida, crushed native coral rock is laid out over black plastic landscaping fabric that excludes light and prevents plant growth but lets water through to retain normal soil moisture and reduce runoff. Trees and ornamentals are planted in beds planted with varieties that have similar soil and water requirements.
The books (listed in Sources below) further break down these measures into specifics applicable to different climate zones within their geographic area. They also contain lists of lawngrass species and ornamental plants to fit each zone, as well as names of nurseries that specialize in growing plants for xeriscaping.
WETLAND AND SHADE
Towns long-established in areas of natural wetland or woodland have managed to deny nature's intent by draining land, channeling water and cutting down all the native trees. Then, over time - and at great municipal and individual landowner cost - they install backyard ponds or swimming pools and plant exotic replacement shade-tree specimens or roadside treelines.
Anyone so fortunate as to build or buy where the high, dry, cleared area of the home place is surrounded by an existing or former natural woods or wetland can skip the "log-it/drain-it/bulldoze-it-flat" stage and restore or convert the surrounding area into a water- or woodland garden.
...instead of mowing a patch of fake prairie each weekend for the rest of your life, ...invest time at the outset to.... establish broad vistas, pleasant walking paths sunny meadows, deep ponds and vibrant marshes.
The objective is a wetland or woods that is open, airy and attractive, similar to a climax forest where mature trees have shaded the ground for the 20 years or so needed to shade out and discourage the snarl of mixed undergrowth. This means that instead of mowing a patch of fake prairie each weekend for the rest of your life, you invest time at the outset to go out and cut brush and pile it to shelter rabbits as it molders down. Then plant, thin, dig and fill as needed to establish broad vistas, pleasant walking paths, sunny meadows, deep ponds and vibrant marshes as land elevation dictates. Despite the pictures in landscaping books, you don't need a multiacre estate to do this.
A stormwater marsh can be dug in a snap and can protect the property from flood damage. Jo-pye weed, lobelia, cardinal flower and other wild plants attract birds and butterflies. Native trees and shrubs just might restore your faith in what a lawn is supposed to be.
SOURCES
DRY LAND LAWNS AND ORNAMENTALS
Xeriscape Plant Guide by Denver Water (Fulcrum Publishing, 1998). A reasonably priced (under $25), fullcolor guide to water-stingy plants that are good for any temperate climate. This highly recommendable guide contains no fluff or imported exotics, but makes the most of common shrubs such as spirea, native trees such as staghorn sumac, catalpa and maples, as well as little-known natives like Arctostaphylos uva-ursi, bearberry or Kinnikinnick-Indian ceremonial tobacco - a trailing, gloss-leafed, evergreen, shade-loving groundcover that thrives in poor soil and tree shade (we've transplanted it from the wild, but never seen it so much as mentioned in other landscaping books). Fulcrum also publishes a general xeriscaping handbook and a brand-new xeriscaping color guide.
www.xeriscape.org/history.html
www.denver.water.co.gov/conservation/xeriscape/html
MOWER SAFETY INFORMATION
www.outreach.missouri.edu/newfront/summer/lawnmowing.html
www.shriners.com/Prevention/lawnmowerform.html
For a free printed copy of the Shriner's popular Lawnmower Safety Brochure , write:
Public Relations Department at International Shrine Headquarters
2900 Rocky Point Drive
Tampa, FL 33607
(813) 281-8162
GREEN MOWERS
www.cleanairmowing.com sells a variety of hand-powered mowers and other petroleum-free lawn tools.
CleanAir Mowing
5200 Martel Ave #6Q
Dallas, TX 75206
Questions: (214) 370-0530
Orders: (888) 4399101
