View Full Version : Lawn care undergoing changes to meadows
I find this funny and interesting. Europe in past centuries developed this model of perfect lawns for the wealthy which was adopted by the masses over the years. There has been resistance to the carefully manicured model by any number over the past decades including me. Covid has now impacted the longstanding view of perfect lawns by the furloughs of lawn workers in the UK.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/mar/13/lawn-growers-throw-in-trowel-meadows-replace-perfect-stripes?utm_term=0ee3cdb24ef3f8dabf98243061900167&utm_campaign=GuardianTodayUK&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=GTUK_email
"They were once a status symbol for the rich, and later the pride and joy of suburbia. But the immaculately striped, tightly mown lawn is becoming an endangered species.
Monty Don this week called time on the predominantly male, British “obsession” with a tidy lawn, arguing that fossil-fuel-powered mowing was noisy and “about the most injurious thing you can do to wildlife”.
As gardeners turn lawns into wildflower meadows, or take the eco-conservation charity Plantlife’s increasingly popular #NoMowMay pledge, so stately homes, parks and playing fields are ditching traditional mowing regimes and allowing wildflowers to flourish.
Even the quads of Oxbridge colleges, regarded by traditionalists as home to some of the finest lawns in the world, are dabbling with rewilding. King’s College, Cambridge last year turned the lawn beside its chapel into a meadow...
Don’s comments were “music to our ears”, said Trevor Dines, of Plantlife, which urges people to pause mowing lawns in May to allow daisies, bird’s-foot trefoil and dandelions to flower in the grass.
Those taking part in the charity’s Every Flower Counts survey have identified 207 species of flowering plant in lawns, including bee orchids, meadow saxifrage and eyebright. Plantlife calculates that one square metre of lawn left to flower supplies enough nectar to sustain on average 3.8 bees a day.
Dines said Plantlife had been inundated with local authorities and others such as hospital trusts seeking to maximise flower and nectar production on parklands and green spaces.
“It’s a win-win for everybody,” said Dines. “You’re cutting down on your petrol costs, CO2 emissions and the time it takes to do the work, and it’s a massive benefit for wildlife.”
Last spring’s lockdown led to the inadvertent wilding of stately home lawns. The furloughing of gardeners meant the National Trust had to trial wilding in some of its 250 formal gardens and parks."
I chuckle at my neighbour who irrigates a large urban lot every other day, mows every third day, edges every couple of weeks, blows every mowing, rolls the lawn, sprinkles fertilizer and sprays weed control with mostly gas-powered tools taking up half his 2-car garage.
I mow every 3-4 weeks my limited grass filled with micro-clover although I will work to clear out the patches of crabgrass emerging alongside the roadway this spring.
I am not sure about creating a meadow though. The snowplow digs up the areas turning into crabgrass so that might be a possibility but I don't want to drive the neighbours nuts.
Anyone switching to meadow?
Anyone switching to meadow?
Boy, I would love to. As I've posted before, my 8 neighbors are all old school lawn folks. We have an acre of frontage (common land) on the lake and they act like vegetation is a plague. Out they go with their mowers and just shave it all down, so there is no buffer between the lake and the lawn.
Here's an interesting thing. One of my neighbors HATES the geese because they crap all over our lawn. So she buys little "scarecrow" devices to keep them away.
A couple of years ago the neighbors weren't paying attention and there was a nice buffer of tall grasses and vegetation lining the lake. One of the neighbors on our far end decided to mow his part of it down to the nub. I was looking out my window, and lo and behold, a parade of geese were marching around the grasses over the now-shorn area and feeding off our lawn--probably 25 geese.
Unfortunately my geese-hating neighbor was not there (this was early spring) so I didn't have that "teachable moment" to share with her.
Not only do they think meadows and grass buffers are bad, they do not believe in the 3" rule for mowing.
This is my fourth year here. I still feel like I'm the Newcomer From New Jersey, but I do think I have a good enough relationship with them now to be able speak gently with them about why it would be good to keep those grasses at least down by the lake. I'm sure I'll be outvoted, but I can try. At one point, I went on the previous owner of my house's FB page--she and her husband were REAL permaculture types, and she had a post like "couldn't we keep at least part of the lawn unmown? Think of all the wildlife we'll protect." It obviously fell on deaf ears, and their reputation among my neighbors is that they were "weird" and did "weird things"-probably meaning organic gardening and stuff.
Oh, well. It's hard enough to try to convince DH about some of these sustainable practices, never mind these folks who lived here for generations.
I got rid of my lawn years ago. I have a small vegetable garden, ground cover (primarily blue rug juniper) and perennial flowers (primarily phlox). My soil is acidic. What plants work best for others will vary. Each year when the phlox bloom I get many compliments on my yard, and sometimes people even stop to take pictures of it.
iris lilies
3-13-21, 11:23am
I remain adamant that I like a strip of green grass to set off flower gardens. I don’t need a big strip, but I do want some lawn.
However our acre in Hermann was purchased so that we could farm it so it will not go to wild Meadow.
The obsession with lawn seems to now be in our DNA. The retired men on my street literally spend hours every week mowing, blowing, and spraying their edge to edge lawns. It will be interesting to see if they comply with watering restrictions set to issue fines this spring if not observed. I do have a little side yard in front where cars used to park that I intend to "prairie-ize" mostly as I need a place to plant all the native seedlings I have going inside. Excited to try it anyway since I have spent the past year learning what things might do well in that spot.
iris lilies
3-13-21, 12:15pm
The obsession with lawn seems to now be in our DNA. The retired men on my street literally spend hours every week mowing, blowing, and spraying their edge to edge lawns. It will be interesting to see if they comply with watering restrictions set to issue fines this spring if not observed. I do have a little side yard in front where cars used to park that I intend to "prairie-ize" mostly as I need a place to plant all the native seedlings I have going inside. Excited to try it anyway since I have spent the past year learning what things might do well in that spot.
Why do you like “natives? “
I have a mullet yard- boring typical grass near the street/front of house. Wild abandon with flowers and other plants on the side and a new-last-year meadow in the back. I live in a rural area on a dirt road with a stonewall across the front, ie not in a competitive lawn area. Though we have occasional transplants from the suburbs who spend hours on their lawn. The only thing that bothers me about that is the chemicals they put on the lawn, since we all have wells and common aquifers.
I read an article recently about the severe decrease in the Florida manatee population. It's so sad. If runoff doesn't kill them, boat propellers and dam locks do.
https://www.planetnatural.com/fertilizer-runoff/
Answers to these kinds of questions are never simple but it appears that the area’s sea grasses — food for the manatees and the breeding grounds of many species of fish, are being overwhelmed by algae blooms. Why? Because of too much nitrogen and phosphorous coming into the water, much of it from fertilizer run off. Why is there so much fertilizer? Because the Indian River has seen an explosion of development, which means tens of thousands of fertilized lawns. Runoff from these lawns goes into storm sewers and, untreated, goes into the River. The process, repeated over many years, has pushed the Indian River to the tipping point. The New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/08/us/deaths-of-manatees-dolphins-and-pelicans-point-to-estuary-at-risk.html?pagewanted=all) has more on the story.
I have ground cover in the front, forest in the back, and weeds along the sides. My neighbors will be as happy when I leave as I will.
I abhor more than a tiny patch of lawn the size of a badminton court. So much foolish, unnecessary labor (noise, pollution) involved.
I've thought about it on and off for years. Never acted on it because it takes 3-4 years to establish here and we were still discussing if we were staying in this house (we are now).
Ours would be in the back, by the fence and on a patch of lawn behind the detached garage that some people use as a garden plot and others use as a boat/camper storage pad (we have grass). I would want some lawn because a three-bedroom rambler is made for kids and kids and their parents will want a grassy area to play in.
Maybe now that this year I'll be more tied to the house it's a good year to get started on it. The neighbors would have to be informed because that part of the lawn will look like cr&p for a few years (uninformed neighbors complain to the city and then there's all kinds of paperwork) but I think mine would be fine with it. Just have to get myself in gear to do it....
dado potato
3-13-21, 3:17pm
A little dividend from the COVID epidemic is that folks who walk behind a gas mower can wear their handy masks and filter out some of the dust and particulate matter when they are mowing.
I still have the lawn that came with the house, but I will not use herbicides or fertilizer on it. I leave grass clippings and top-dress with compost. I dig dandelions and crab grass (and compost them). All-sorts of ground covers are left to their own devices, but (except for a small area where I have planted some perennials, including sweet woodruff) ground covers are mown along with the grass. The two ground covers which I would say are most rampant are self-heal (Prunella vulgaris) and creeping charlie (Glechoma hederacea). I enjoy chipping sparrows and juncos when they come to eat in my lawn. If I had nothing but bluegrass in the lawn, I doubt that there would be as much good fare for them. I also have ugly toads, red-bellied snakes, common garter snakes and little copper-colored frogs in the lawn. It is more fun to walk in my grass than people might think.
I like native plants for the same reason I am drawn to simple living or other alternative ways of doing things - they go against the mainstream and they just make more sense to me personally.
iris lilies
3-13-21, 4:07pm
Ok, opening up this discussion: why do you like “natives?”
I think the focus on “natives” in my well hydrated part of the country is actually mainstream. I am always curious what people in small suburban yards are trying to accomplish with them.
I think of specific poster on the MMM site who talked about planting the yard of her fabulously beautiful and nicely restored 100 year old house with “lush natives” and when I pressed her for what that meant since “lush” is never my characterization of native plants, she was not able to articulate why she wants to use native plants. As it turns out, she doesn’t know anything about plants, she is parroting the latest eco talk.It is mainstream.
I would love to see her gorgeous house planted up with historic plants (which, granted, may include natives) but she would not be able to plant bearded Iris, peonies, most roses, hostas, most lilies, and any number of wonderful plants suited for her historic house and that thrive with little care if she went native.
I like the idea of historic garden plants being planted in historic neighborhoods. But that is, of course, my specific taste.
I know two main reasons why “natives” are useful. Those reasons are not strong enough to interest me.
GeorgeParker
3-13-21, 4:08pm
I went on the previous owner of my house's FB page--she and her husband were REAL permaculture types, and she had a post like "couldn't we keep at least part of the lawn unmown? Think of all the wildlife we'll protect." It obviously fell on deaf ears, and their reputation among my neighbors is that they were "weird" and did "weird things"-probably meaning organic gardening and stuff.
Oh, well. It's hard enough to try to convince DH about some of these sustainable practices, never mind these folks who lived here for generations.Well at least you have the advantage that the previous owner was "weird", which might excuse your weirdness or at least make your proposals look a little less weird.
iris lilies
3-13-21, 4:13pm
I’ve had many run-ins with Proponents of “native “in our public plantings around my neighborhood. One person planted up her backyard with them and yes it looked like a weed patch. Pretty typical. And she turned up her nose at using any tropicals even those no-care plants such as the ubiquitous canna Lily. Those things thrive through hot humid summers of any kind of rainfallAnd look lush in late summer when everything else is dragging.
Cannas and Japanese beetles are permanently bonded in my garden so not ever welcome.
I love native plants because the bugs and birds have spent centuries learning to coincide their lives and food supplied by the natives; they tolerate the average weather conditions in different parts of the country and go through their reproductive cycles without trauma or mollycoddling; natives are predictable; natives provide valuable original DNA material and seeds without the destruction from the corporate engineering of seeds; seeds of natives can be collected easily in one's own garden since so many seed companies have been taken over, closed and controlled by a few major corporation - hence, Seed Savers Exchange in the US and Seeds of Diversity in Canada. Besides all of those reasons, natives are just as pretty, healthy and fun to grow as the pricey plants of the snobbery elites who compete to get the newest most sensational plant of each season.
IL, you love your lilies and the breeding as do many other people. I admire your interest and enthusiasm but don't care about the latest colour and design. I want a basic healthy beautiful plant of whatever variety and size, shape, season-appropriate. I am not competing with anyone to be one-up on them but simply want a lovely overall appearance to give me consistent joy in my garden. Natives do that very well.
iris lilies
3-13-21, 5:17pm
Cannas and Japanese beetles are permanently bonded in my garden so not ever welcome.
I love native plants because the bugs and birds have spent centuries learning to coincide their lives and food supplied by the natives; they tolerate the average weather conditions in different parts of the country and go through their reproductive cycles without trauma or mollycoddling; natives are predictable; natives provide valuable original DNA material and seeds without the destruction from the corporate engineering of seeds; seeds of natives can be collected easily in one's own garden since so many seed companies have been taken over, closed and controlled by a few major corporation - hence, Seed Savers Exchange in the US and Seeds of Diversity in Canada. Besides all of those reasons, natives are just as pretty, healthy and fun to grow as the pricey plants of the snobbery elites who compete to get the newest most sensational plant of each season.
IL, you love your lilies and the breeding as do many other people. I admire your interest and enthusiasm but don't care about the latest colour and design. I want a basic healthy beautiful plant of whatever variety and size, shape, season-appropriate. I am not competing with anyone to be one-up on them but simply want a lovely overall appearance to give me consistent joy in my garden. Natives do that very well.
Since modern hybrids have as their number one requirement “ability to thrive “I would put up most (not all!) of my iris bred in the past 10 years against any historic bearded Iris for longevity and floriferous qualities. I have limited garden space and I want the best bang for the buck.
Sophisticated hybridization gives me much longer growing periods—the early iris come on in late March and run through first week of June. This would not be possible with the limited number of historics. And natives are pretty much non existent here until the Louisianas come on in midsummer (and they do not thrive for me anyway since I don’t live in a bog. Yeah, natives that are not hardy, imagine that!)
It is not all about “latest colors and designs” there are important aspects of growth bred into these newbies.
But granted, new patterns and colors do engender a great deal of focus in the iris world. They are not expensive however if you are willing to wait a few years after introduction. A 3 year old cultivars goes for $20, and by the time it is 6 years old it is $6. And then, if you know me, you can get the stuff for free because they breed like cats and I am always swimming in iris.
iris lilies
3-13-21, 5:23pm
I don’t remember that Japanese beetles attack cannas but granted it’s been some years since I grew them seriously. Having limited garden space I grow lilies, Iris, and a few other things that I like. While I don’t like cannas for my own garden, I like them very much for certain public areas where I can plant them and forget them.
Wouldn't any evergreen ground cover serve the same purpose as grass? (And with much less maintenance!)
Wouldn't any evergreen ground cover serve the same purpose as grass? (And with much less maintenance!)
The problem with ground covers is that over time, they become invasive and any monogrowth doesn't help all of nature's life forms that need/rely on the diversity of plants for shelter, nectar, seeds,etc.
iris lilies
3-13-21, 6:07pm
Wouldn't any evergreen ground cover serve the same purpose as grass? (And with much less maintenance!)
We’ve talked about this Jane.
Where are you are gets constant rainfall that is a different place than where someone like pinkytoe is.
A blue grass lawn is soft to walk on and it holds up to medium wear. It does not hold up to heavy wear*. But I can’t think of any ground covers around here that hold up to heavy wear. Most of them don’t hold up to the medium wear of a Bluegrass lawn.
If your ground cover is not going to get “wear” and you live in rainy land, then sure there are many choices for one’s yard.Most of us don’t live in Seattle.
* heavy wear is a tiny yard where 5 kids or 5 dogs live.
I replaced about a fourth of my original lawn with xeric perennials. I like using natives because they are adapted to our arid climate and typically require less water. Plus I think it's fun to have plants that may have been original to my region. Some are little difficult to get started and not all do well in their location, but I've had pretty good survival and low maintenance.
I live in a neighborhood of mostly 50's homes with traditional lawns. There has been a trend to replace some grass with ornamental rock which I don't find especially esthetically pleasing, but has it's advantages. The few who have let things go rouge end up with bare dirt and invasive weeds rather than any sort of meadow resemblance. A bane of weekend mornings is the rumble of gas mowers and trimmers. Until I have a better plan I'll nurse my green lawn along with as little maintenance as possible. I replaced my mower and trimmers with cordless electric which saves on noise and fumes, although there the issue of battery disposal when they eventually die.
This 1964 yard came with iris plants all over the place. In my experience they have been extremely hardy. Popping up right now in the snow and they have thrived in the arid, windy weather without much water. They are very out of place but happy so I will leave them be.
I like the idea of natives because they belong up here (not a very temperate climate as the U.S. goes) and the region did just fine when we had acres and acres of them. They're at least as good for pollinators than what most people put in their gardens. And, once established, they're not very high maintenance (a controlled burn every few years and pretty much done). I mean, pushing a mower around a lawn in rows is about as mindless as it gets, but after a month or so of mowing weekly to keep up with the growth, I'm completely over wanting to mow. So less lawn is good imo. And since we live in a mid-70s rambler that apparently has no charm whatsoever, it doesn't matter much what we grow. :) So plants that can take care of themselves, reseed themselves, and attract the birds are just the thing.
I did look at groundcovers for the backyard of my mom's place. By the time we weeded out (sorry) the ones which were toxic to dogs or couldn't handle dog traffic or were too attractive to bees or too tough for humans to walk on or grew too high (the main point being less maintenance and to see the snakes before we step on them), we ended up with white clover. It was okay, but it came in kind of patchy. Then the creeping charlie took over anyway. There's only about 300 square feet of lawn in that backyard; it could use a patch of green but it could be really nice without more than that. Maybe I'll tackle that next year. Or this year -- it's small enough to make a significant update a quick win.
iris lilies
3-13-21, 6:48pm
This 1964 yard came with iris plants all over the place. In my experience they have been extremely hardy. Popping up right now in the snow and they have thrived in the arid, windy weather without much water. They are very out of place but happy so I will leave them be.
Exactly! Bearded iris are desert plants and they would like it in Colorado. They are cold hardy.
I would not say the same thing about lilies at all Although they are cold hardy. They need a different kind of cultivation.
We’ve talked about this Jane.
Where are you are gets constant rainfall that is a different place than where someone like pinkytoe is.
A blue grass lawn is soft to walk on and it holds up to medium wear. It does not hold up to heavy wear*. But I can’t think of any ground covers around here that hold up to heavy wear. Most of them don’t hold up to the medium wear of a Bluegrass lawn.
If your ground cover is not going to get “wear” and you live in rainy land, then sure there are many choices for one’s yard.Most of us don’t live in Seattle.
* heavy wear is a tiny yard where 5 kids or 5 dogs live.
And it takes some time for the ground cover to spread out and cover the area, too. (I wish we got constant rain--that might stifle the G-D mowers.)
Cannas and Japanese beetles are permanently bonded in my garden so not ever welcome.
I love native plants because the bugs and birds have spent centuries learning to coincide their lives and food supplied by the natives; they tolerate the average weather conditions in different parts of the country and go through their reproductive cycles without trauma or mollycoddling; natives are predictable; natives provide valuable original DNA material and seeds without the destruction from the corporate engineering of seeds; seeds of natives can be collected easily in one's own garden since so many seed companies have been taken over, closed and controlled by a few major corporation - hence, Seed Savers Exchange in the US and Seeds of Diversity in Canada. Besides all of those reasons, natives are just as pretty, healthy and fun to grow as the pricey plants of the snobbery elites who compete to get the newest most sensational plant of each season.
IL, you love your lilies and the breeding as do many other people. I admire your interest and enthusiasm but don't care about the latest colour and design. I want a basic healthy beautiful plant of whatever variety and size, shape, season-appropriate. I am not competing with anyone to be one-up on them but simply want a lovely overall appearance to give me consistent joy in my garden. Natives do that very well.
I agree, razz.
Here is what Audobon says (https://www.audubon.org/content/why-native-plants-matter) about natives:
Over the past century, urbanization has taken intact, ecologically productive land and fragmented and transformed it with lawns and exotic ornamental plants. The continental U.S. lost a staggering 150 million acres of habitat and farmland to urban sprawl, and that trend isn’t slowing. The modern obsession with highly manicured “perfect” lawns alone has created a green, monoculture carpet across the country that covers over 40 million acres. The human-dominated landscape no longer supports functioning ecosystems, and the remaining isolated natural areas are not large enough to support wildlife.
Native plants are those that occur naturally in a region in which they evolved. They are the ecological basis upon which life depends, including birds and people. Without them and the insects that co-evolved with them, local birds cannot survive. For example, research by the entomologist Doug Tallamy has shown that native oak trees support over 500 species of caterpillars whereas ginkgos, a commonly planted landscape tree from Asia, host only 5 species of caterpillars. When it takes over 6,000 caterpillars to raise one brood of chickadees, that is a significant difference.
Unfortunately, most of the landscaping plants available in nurseries are alien species from other countries. These exotic plants not only sever the food web, but many have become invasive pests, outcompeting native species and degrading habitat in remaining natural areas."
The natives I grow I think are beautiful--not lackluster. Rudbekia, echinacea, aster, milkweed. I throw in a couple of annuals every year, and I admit to having a couple of non-natives--my favorite being balloon flower (platycodon). Since I don't have one "specialty" and it's hard to decide what to plant, I choose to plant the flowers most likely to make the local birds, butterflies and bees happy.
rosarugosa
3-13-21, 8:53pm
We have a small patch of miscellaneous green stuff that DH mows and we consider it to be the lawn. It has lots of clover which helps keep the bunnies away from our other plants. I try to lean towards natives because they are good for the local bees and insects, but they are often fodder for the local mammals too, so I am not strictly devoted to natives. I see no reason why I cannot have a mix of natives and non-natives. I really love hostas and heucheras and peonies and hellebores and astilbes and sedums, so those are part of our landscape. I was sad to learn last year that bunnies love the hostas, although the groundhogs do not. I have been working on removing all the iris from our gardens, because they don't really excite me. I've learned that there are certain annuals that really pull their weight as container plants, and I will try to include them every year: lantana, cuphea, mandevilla and plectranthus 'Mona Lavender' (that last one I've had difficulty sourcing since I grew it and fell in love with it a few years ago). My 2020 personal Plant of the Year was Gaillardia 'Arizona Apricot' which bloomed non-stop from May until the big snowfall on Halloween, and it was always covered with bumblebees.
I ordered quite a few prairie/plains seeds in addition to ones I collected last fall. They are starting to sprout indoors so I better get my mini-prairie plan going. Little did I know until I moved here that most have to be stratified for a month or more in the cold. DH is being patient about seeds in the fridge, seeds in the cold mudroom and in jugs in the backyard snow - all being stratified as they wait for spring.
iris lilies
3-13-21, 9:07pm
There are not a lot of native perennials here that flower in spring and early summer. The usual things like echinacea and rudebeckia and aster are Midsummer to late summer. Virginia bluebells are lovely but I’ve tried multiple times to get them started in my city garden with no luck. They do grow all over my Hermann property though and that is thrilling for me.
most reasonable people make a mix of natives and non-natives like Rosa because the herbaceous flowering natives are quite limited.
We have a small patch of miscellaneous green stuff
I refer to this as my herbal lawn. :D There is some grass but a lot of green "weeds" too, I like the other stuff because its green and since they don't get tall, they need less mowing. There's a lot of violet, clover and plantain with a smattering of dandelion and lately quite a bit of moss.
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