Ditch the lawn for a landscape that looks like it’s watered every day
In 2005 I killed my front lawn . It was n’t carelessness or ignorance . It was premeditated , cold - spirited , calculated murder . It ’s not that I do n’t apprize turf grass . It most certainly has its benefit , both visually and functionally . But there were too many downside for me . It required considerable water during the heat of summer , which was both impractical and expensive here in Fort Collins , Colorado , where one-year rainfall averages a meager 15 in . My front lawn was also susceptible to fungal diseases , fairy ring in particular . It collect dead smudge where passing dog had erroneously marked it as their territory . And it required loud and obnoxious weekly mowing , which discomfit the serenity of a neighbourhood insert peacefully against the Rocky Mountain foothills .
What I really want was to make a unique residential area focal point juxtapose against the bland ocean of the neighborhood ’s omnipresent Kentucky Bluegrass Country . I wanted something that would provide wildlife habitat ; minimize water , fossil fuel , fertiliser , and pesticide usance ; and eliminate air and noise pollution . However , the cliché xeriscape — a front yard occupy with an raiment of cacti and cosmetic weed placed on a gimcrack blanket of lava rock — would not be in keeping with neighbourhood esthetics or expectations . What I needed was a very lush look , but one that did n’t use 100,000 gallon of weewee every time the ground took a circle around the sun .
Kill the turf and rethink the water
Getting rid of my lawn strike some doing . I find that the good time to harness such a task is during the hot days of summer . First , work off the weewee ( no irrigation , sprinklers , or hand watering — at all ) for a calendar month . From there , focus on killing the roots below the surface . Methods to accomplish this include spraying with glyphosate , smothering with newspaper publisher / cardboard , solarizing with plastic , or removing either by hand with a spade or automatically with a sod tender . Whatever method acting is used , it ’s salutary to disturb the stain as little as possible to avoid activating weed . I decided to provide the dead turf in place . It ’s the promiscuous matter to do , and beat greensward is an splendid weed barrier , aid retain soil wet , and provide much needed constitutional affair as it slowly decompose over five to six years . You may still ask to do a mo of hand weed for the remainder of the growing season when the occasional patch of stubborn grass settle to fare back from the utter , but that should be it for the removal step . I pop the greensward and let it sit all summer and wintertime . I did n’t plant or do anything else until the following spring , which is when I excavate into the deadened turf and install an array of drought - patient of plant .
The idea that a water supply - knowing garden needs no water is imitation . It needs responsible for amount of water to establish the industrial plant at first , and then occasional water afterward during periods of drought . So my next dance step was to retrofit my watering system . If your lawn has an subsist underground irrigation system , you could easily exchange it to a drip mold arrangement using the exist spray valve and zones . The first step is to locate and change the nebulizer valves in each zone to drip valve , which manoeuvre at a substantially lower weewee pressure . Next , come out at each valve , snake a drip line of credit throughout the spray zone orbit . The drip line can be instal directly on top of the dead greensward . plug emitters directly into the drip line , and scarper feeder tubes to the planting expanse . Selecting the right congius - per - 60 minutes emitter will belittle water use ( 1 gal - per - hr for perennials ) .
What’s going on below the surface
Here is how the dead lawn , crushed rock mulch , drip lines , and plants all form a symbiotic relationship .
1 . New plant : identify in beat turf
2 . Gravel mulch : Helps keep wet and deter weeds
3 . drip mold metro : Useful for initially found plants
4 . New flora roots : pass through dead turf into grime
5 . bushed sward : Provides organic matter as it slowly decomposes
6 . beat turf roots : slow decompose into existing grunge
In accession to saving H2O , drip tubes minimize weed growth versus overhead watering . trickle irrigation is utilitarian for both prove plants during the first few develop seasons and supplying extra water on an as - needed fundament during particularly hot , dry , and windy conditions . If you do n’t already have an irrigation system , you could buy a comparatively inexpensive one at local home entrepot . They ’re easy to install and provide the same low - usance , gamy - efficiency watering . alky hoses are also a flashy and easy way to go .
Add a layer of untraditional mulch
If my neighbors call back I was crazy when I wipe out my full front lawn , they surely would have thought I had lose it if I had just impart the dead sod as it was . It ’s of import to mulch the dead sod , plants , and dripping lines with pea crushed rock to a deepness of 3 inches , which is not difficult to walk on ; in fact , it provides a stable shock absorber underfoot . Do not use a fabric weed barrier , as it will step in with plants circularize and reseeding . The pea gravel will assist retain ground moisture and permit extensive reseeding of desirable plant as it pull together solar hotness during the day and subsequently free it in the evening . sess may sow in , too , but they can be observe easily and extracted from the gravel with an asparagus tongue .
Over time , as plant fill up in and self - sow , the pea gravel becomes less and less noticeable . The gravel grow a hard , moonscape look initially , but then it gradually fades into a electroneutral background as time and natural elements brave it . You might wonder why I did n’t just mulch with sliced bark . After all , it is a less punishing material to form with . ab initio , I did use barque mulch , but I found that it compact over time and did not allow enough atmosphere and wet to permeate the soil for the plantings to thrive . It also prevented nearly all ego - sowing .
Plant choice is based on year-round texture and color
The thing that most folks care about lawns is that they are ever present . Sure , they may pass away in winter , but they still have a familiar grain that rent us know , “ There ’s a lawn here ! ” When you ditch the lawn for a garden , you ask to be especially selective with your plant palette . I regain that the most challenging season to keep up ocular pursuit are belated summertime and wintertime . For wintertime , I made sure to pick ornamental grasses , nanus coniferous tree , and shrub with interesting bark , such as redtwig cornel ( genus Cornus sericea , Zones 3–8 ) . With few exception , I stuck to plant that ride out under 3 feet tall so they would n’t block the view to or from the house . Mossy rock boulders and brave out woods stumps and limb also sum up visual interest . The grass may get push down and break by Baron Snow of Leicester at some degree , but they can be quite lively . My favorite plant for winter that does well in xeriscape condition is heath ( Erica carneaandE.×darleyensis , Zones 4–7 ) , an evergreen plant with needlelike leave and small flowers .
Simple musical theme for late summer include coneflowers ( Echinaceaspp . and cvs . , Zones 5–9 ) , ‘ Blue Mist ’ bluebeard ( Caryopteris×clandonensis‘Blue Mist ’ , Zones 6–9 ) , and Russian sage ( Perovskia atriplicifoliaand cvs . , Zones 4–9 ) . My initial decisions of what to establish next to each other were made with the help of garden designer Lauren Springer . She taught me how to base pairings on contrast texture , colors , and forms . As plant broadcast and self - sowed , I allowed my aesthetic hunch to steer decisions around what to keep in stead and what to remove . I ’ve always advance self - sowing and domesticate through flora and bulb survival of the fittest , which helps fill any potential gaps in the garden . I do hail through and edit now and then when thing get unwieldy . When plants kick the bucket and something new need to be add , I attempt to blame something that goes well from a color , texture , and form viewpoint but that also pull in wildlife and pollinator . One of my initial goals in getting disembarrass of my lawn was to leave something more beneficial to the surrounding ecosystem .
I have incur this garden to require less effort and disbursal , and to be more pleasurable and rewarding , than hold turf grass . But most importantly , I have found that countless passersby have been deep touched by it and often take a moment to contain and express appreciation for my no - lawn front railway yard .
Hard lessons learned
When I first started this project , I figured I ’d simply defeat the lawn and plant some drouth - tolerant varieties . Over the years , I have learned several things I like I had known before I started .
Tree selection matters most
Finding the veracious Tree for a front landscape painting is vital . Consider land site characteristic and what industrial plant will be able to coexist with the trees as they grow to maturity . When an existing Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree go bad in the front one thousand , I replaced it with an Austrian pine tree ( Pinus nigra , Zones 4–9 ) . Even though this pick was drought patient of and intermix in well with the adjacent foothills , it is now too large for the site ( photograph above ) . It make too much shade , seriously limits the amount of urine received by the besiege plants , and omit an tremendous volume of pine needles that ask to be gathered up .
Pay extra attention to winter
This is the sentence of year that break the garden ’s under lying structure . As the saying goes , “ Only when the tide belong out do you discover who ’s been swimming bare . ” The first winter , when all the perennials died back to the ground , there was n’t much left to look at except for some bowlder and Genista raetam . Weaving dwarf conifers throughout the landscape provided an interesting answer to this problem and now offer a year - round structure to cite and construct from .
Don’t underestimate the visual impact of accent plants
Accent plant life have unusual and remarkably striking leafage texture or color that immediately draw the eye . These types of plant are well used meagerly and in the same manner you ’d contribute a spicy - red-hot sauce to an alien culinary stunner . They create a vibrancy , sparkle , and delight that will be noticed immediately . I did n’t have any accent plants the first five age — just some taste - and - true perennials and a mixture of drought - tolerant shrub . Immediately after I innovate accent plants into the garden , passersby started to cease , gaze , and take photograph .
Great accent plants
Patrick Quadrel assert his piddle - wise garden , and a XII unruly hops plants , in Fort Collins , Colorado .
Photos , except where noted : Danielle Sherry
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BEFORE.Photo: courtesy of Patrick Quadrel
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Ten years later, the front lawn looks a bit more colorful.After the author killed the turf that came with the house, he reconfigured the irrigation, brought in gravel mulch, and installed an array of drought-tolerant plants. The result is a garden that takes less care than the lawn.
You have to look closely to spot the gravel.The only place you’ll notice the gravel mulch is around slower-growing perennials and shrubs, where space has been left for them to mature into their full size. Ground covers such as creeping thyme (Thymus serpyllum, ‘Coccineum’, Zones 4–9) help to further hide the small stones.
A responsible approach to water drove the planting plan.Where the lawn had once been (to the left of the sidewalk) and even throughout the roadside parkway strip (to the right of the sidewalk), sprinklers were replaced with drip tubes for more targeted, efficient watering in the dry and hot conditions.
Illustration: Elara Tanguy
Perfect pairings happen when you use contrasting colors and textures.The reddish pink blossoms of Jupiter’s beard (Centranthus ruber, Zones 5–8) stand out when surrounded by the purple flowers of ‘East Friesland’ salvia (Salvia nemorosa‘East Friesland’, Zones 4–7), while Mexican feather grass (Nassella tenuissima, Zones 6–10) adds a punch of fine texture to the background.
A varied plant palette ensures perpetual interest.Long-blooming perennials such as ‘East Friesland’ salvia (Salvia nemorosa‘East Friesland’, Zones 4–7) and ever-present conifers such as dwarf globe blue spruce (Picea pungens‘Globosa’, Zones 2–8) contribute to an array of colors and textures in this front landscape that enables it to always look good.
