Alternatives to Grass in Backyards
Metus dictum at tempor commodo
Principles of the Carefree Lawn
There are five guiding principles for lawnkeeping in contemporary landscaping that we should all strive to attain.
- 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.
- 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.
- Restrict alien plants to independent plots that can be supplied selectively with soil, extra water or other special requirements as needed.
- Plan your landscape so that it is self-tending or can be managed with the smallest possible electric or hand-powered tools.
- 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.
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 70’s 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 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.
