Roll Gardening & Green
“A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule.”
by Luanne Panarotti
If you’re landscaping a new construction, you can start off right, designing around a smaller lawn. If yours is an established landscape, begin reclaiming sections for higher purposes. Look out your window at your current lawn and picture instead a small grove of flowering trees adorning one corner, or a tumble of colorful wildflowers filling a hollow between driveway and woodland edge. Savor the idea of a strawberry patch, or perhaps a collection of high bush blueberries.
Or, imagine a sea of undulating ornamental grasses, framed by your picture window. Low–maintenance and deer resistant, ornamental grasses add graceful motion, seasonal color and winter interest to your yard. Their varied flowers and seed pods provide beautiful textural detail, from the ethereal cloud of Panicum virgatum (Switch Grass) to the explosive display of Miscanthus sinensis (Japanese Silver Grass).
All of these scenarios offer more aesthetic appeal than a lawn ever could, while also providing food and cover for birds, butterflies, honeybees and other welcome visitors.
REDEFINE! What exactly is a “lawn?” It needn’t be a Kentucky bluegrass monoculture that goes dormant during the hot, dry summer. Consider seed blends that offer the best characteristics of a palette of turf plants, such as drought–tolerant fescue grasses combined with fast–spreading ryegrass and clover that will naturally enrich the soil with nitrogen. Or, investigate “no–mow” mixes of assorted mounding fescues.
“Steppable” groundcovers are another viable lawn alternative. These low–growing, spreading perennials can withstand a certain amount of foot traffic, and are virtually maintenance–free once established...CONTINUE...
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