I realized that while this isn’t one species, these grasses take up a lot of space in the garden and deserve to be called out here. Since I am currently waging a war on lawns, it seems even more appropriate to call out these plants in a Plant-A-Day post.
Most of us find a healthy, clipped lawn to be attractive. Some of us also find a lawn essential to any home landscaping.
We inherited a mediocre lawn when we bought this house and my goal from day one was to eliminate it slowly to arrive at a zero-lawn landscape. First, we eliminated the lawn directly north of the house and added the woodland garden. Then, we added two raised vegetable beds on the south side of the yard, then two more. We added a sizeable raised bed around the Douglas fir tree. Then, I eliminated the lawn north of the driveway and added the orchard bed. I also have been widening the driveway bed on the south side of the driveway. And lastly, just this spring, we added the native plant garden, which covered up another huge chunk of the lawn.
Our lawn has suffered over the years from silly things, like the time Leon had to move a heavy sculpture and had to drive a forklift across the wet lawn. Early attempts at weed killing resulted in large bare patches that ultimately filled with more weeds. Fertilizing resulted in lush growth in the mowing season and more frequent mowing than usual.
The lessons I’ve learned from our lawn and my environmentally friendly gardening research is that lawns don’t need fertilizer–just leave the clippings on them. Removing weeds by hand is the best way to get ride of dandelions and others. It is fine to let the lawn turn brown in the summer–no need to irrigate a lawn in Seattle. All of our neighbors have brown lawns, too. Mowing is only needed from about the end of March to the middle of July in most years, with one last mowing in the fall–late October or early November.
My future plans for the lawn are to keep eating away at it every year until it is finally gone, replaced by more productive plantings that support local fauna and add more interest and beauty in all seasons.