To lawn or not to lawn?

Hidden's HOT post brings this to mind. Where do you stand on lawns? No, I don't mean where are you standing! I mean, what is your position on the lawn debate?

There is a trend away from lawns and to xeriscaping. Waterless landscaping. A yard of gravel, pebbles, sand, brick, cactus, boulders and driftwood. Requires no watering. And since water is non-renewable, in short supply, we should go for these desert zones and a few plants normally found in the Sahara.

Hold the phone! I don't know that I buy that line. I think water IS mostly (with some exceptions) a renewable resource. It cycles through the world. Use, evaporation, condensation, rainfall, snow, melt, run off, more water in lakes and wells. Repeat as required. So I think water IS renewable. And in my immediate zone, NOT in short supply.

But there are those who tut tut the lawn builders of the world. They have their desert home for the lizards and vultures and poo poo the green expanse of grass, then retreat into their homes in the summer heat and turn on the air conditioner!

A lawn, strategically placed, doesn't have to be acres, acts as a natural cooler around a house. Don't ask me how, just take my word that I would never tell you a lie.( ) Grass is cool.

We have a teeny slab of lawn on the side of the house where the evening breeze blows in. At night we open the doors and windows on that side of the house and the evening breeze cools off the house. No air conditioner. It helps that the breeze blows across the lawn. If the breeze blew across a xeriscape, which is often made of materials that are heat sinks, it would be blowing warmed air into the house! As the rocks and sand and gravel let off their heat in the evening, the breeze would pick that heat up and blow it right into your house! But a lawn acts in the opposite way.

Therefore I conclude that any water used to keep a reasonable amount of nearby lawn in good, green condition is a better use of resources than electricity to run an air conditioner to cool the home that you have surrounded with heat sink materials!

Just sayin. So, do you lawn or don't you? Only your gardener knows for sure!

You are right for the most part about lawns generally being more sustainable here in Canada than pure rock garden. I do think that the line gets a bit blurrier in areas that are so arid that your average lawn grass cannot survive.

A couple of tidbits to help grow a lawn in a dry climate that needs less or no irrigation:

- Skip the classic Kentucky bluegrass in favour of deep-rooted grass species, especially if you can find native grasses for your area. Kentucky bluegrass has a very shallow root system.

- Add clover to your lawn mix. Clover is deep-rooted, fixes nitrogen and is awesome. White clover is a good one for a lawn, it is naturally short.

- Raise the mower deck a bit. Everyone seems to think 1 inch lawn is the way to go, but if you cut it even just a little longer, your irrigation needs drop drastically.

And to answer the actual question, yes we lawn. Though we keep it 3 inches long.

Ah yes , the smell at night of a freshly mowed lawn is cooling in itself ! I have a rather large lawn that I made that way years ago when we built the place ( was a field then ,now it's a bush property ) to accomidate any children that might bless us in years to come ( we got one ) .I love mowing a lawn ,it's extremally relaxing ( when my son was small he would sit on my lap till he fell asleep ) and full filling .I have just one problem with lawns and that is the lack of creativity that people put into them ! Those large FLAT lawns drive me nuts ! Make a few hills ,gullies ! plant your trees in such a way that the sun doesn't burn your lawn if you didn't use the proper soil ! build your rock beds here and there ,dry river beds etc .I see these huge lawns and I want a tractor and a few hundred yards of soil and let me at it ! We live in a country that has so little time for enjoying a summer that I wouldn't want it any other way .O and I never water my lawn ( 1.5 acres ) and it never goes yellow ( drives my father-inlaw nuts ) and that is what is called useing the proper soil !

We mow acres of lawn, and NEVER feed or water it. If I lived in the city with just a city lot to care for, I would be a "lawn snob". I love the feel of beautiful soft grass on my feet. I would also be the one watering from a barrel of rain water as that chlorinated stuff is not good for plants. I would also be that crazy person that artfully edges her lawn with a double row of carrots and flower beds of herbs and lovely trellised tomatoes. I think if more people planted veggies instead of rock gardens, the ecosystem would be better for it.

So, my short answer is to lawn!

We have a fairly large lawn. I have a love/hate relationship with my lawn. I love the lovely green and it looks so pretty when it is mowed, but I hate mowing it. I have a push mower and it takes around 4 tanks of gas to mow it and I just plan a day for mowing. Today was one of those days. Leave me alone and let me mow. You get in that Mow Zone where all other sounds except the roar of the mower exist. You can see the kids yelling for various snacks or "I wants" or "Can I haves" but you just can't hear them. But seriously mowing the lawn on a hot day like today sucks and I thought I would die before I was done.

We never water our lawn. Never ever. Since we live in an area where we get a fair amount of rain this works for us. Our lawn remains green even in the drier spells though when the city lawns are a crunchy green.

The secret to our lawn? Well, I would have to say it is the lovely mix of various grasses, dandelion, buttercups, Chickweed, clover and various other 'weeds' that would probably drive some people nuts. The only downside I see to our glorious mix of weeds and grasses, is it grows incredibly thick and it is really hard to push the lawn mower through because it chokes it up constantly. It also grows really fast, and can turn from lawn to field in which dogs and small children can disappear. (I also notice that the area in front of my chicken house is very, very thick now that the chickens are gone. I guess they kept it eaten shorter or it is well fertilized. lol)

People ask me why I bother mowing such a large area? Well, it looks pretty and it took me quite a few years to get the yard this big mowing a little more every year and I just hate to let it go back to 'wild' where burdock and cow parsnip would just take over.

I can't imagine having a gravel yard. I like my green space.

Edited to say, I seriously would LOVE to have a ride mower!

Prairie Dog, I would like to roll out the red carpet for you to come over to my house and tell me how to get my lawn to live on this slope and under the towering pine and fir whose roots reach far under the lawn and SUCK IT DRY!

Getting this puny, little lawn to survive has been an endless battle for me! It is patchy, gets dry in spots and lush in others. We have coated it in chicken manure, which killed it. Coated it in horse manure, which unbalanced the soil ph. Raked off literally thousands of tons of pine needles, lord save me from the pine needles! It is teeny! We use one tank of mower gas all year! I have re-seeded and yes, avoided that finicky Kentucky Blue grass, and of the billions of seeds I have sprinkled on, only 11 of them have ever germinated! A portion of our lawn was lost when in a terrible wind storm we lost several large trees. One was a fir that toppled and almost decapitated our house. It is a weird thing to see your lawn, vertical. But there was a huge chunk of it, stuck to the bottom of this tree. There is now a makeshift, butt ugly flowerish area where lawn used to be.

So yes, I lawn, and weep, and water and weep and fertilize and weep. But hang onto my lawn with ever increasingly worn out fingers. No xeriscape for me yet. I am so happy to have found the company of other lawners. How do you play lawn darts on brick? It's just not right.

Yes we lawn our place. Pasture some of it too. LOL
We have a large grass area all around our house, the grass in the front is mostly shaded so it gets that fine soft feel, rarely do we have to water it. The grass out back in the yard we fenced for the kids is ariated by the juvenille ducks and geese we keep back there now, fertilized by them too. This we do water, it is always in direct sunlight and has a lot of "foot traffic" from the ducks/geese. But they keep it trimmed for the most part and rarely once they are in there do I have to cut it. The kids run in the sprinkler back there and even yesterday the ducks/goslings joined them.
We have a larger area of grass between the house and the main coop, this is where they meat birds are ranged, so right now they are fertilizing it, scratching it up a bit, and we water...Lots since they really poop a lot and we need to keep it mixed in.
The grass across our driveway is fenced and the sheep take care of it, we don't water that but if we did it would keep the lambs all summer/fall in feed. Then there is the grass on the slope on the west of our house, it is shaded for the most part by trees and the house, this is where we fence off later in the year (like now) to move the lambs over for fresh grass, we mow it once to keep it under control then put them in once it has grown back about 8-12", lush and green...

I have nothing but disrespect for a well manicured lawn. I have, er had, 12 acres of lawn sod to cut and maintain here. Creeping red fescue mix, if you want drought tolerance and feed value, so 7 acres has gone for sheep pasture. The other 5, well let's just say me n my little brown jug had a real good time couple weeks ago doing laps with a plow heh heh. Don't care it might have been worth a lot as sod, I just hate the stuff now, nothing but hard hard work and I can't eat it so under it goes. Clover is cool though. I like dandelions too, at least I can eat them. Thistle and nettles make a great goundcover as well...wards off trespassers. Lawn grasses, I'm sorry, I just don't have much use for them other than feeding critters, lawns are a boring institution as far as I'm concerned but each to their own eh.

I mow the green stuff around the house. Itis a mixture of thistle, dandelion, clover, chickweed, other stuff and, oh yes, a little grass. We never water, never feed, never weed, but I do like to pick up the dried green to spread on the lawn as mulch.

The 'lawn' is relatively work free. I enjoy driving the mower. If I keep it short the goats, chickens and geese mostly maintain it and I must say, I maintain a rather guilty pleasure looking out at a freshly mowed and even lawn. It makes me feel calm and I need more of that in my life.

uno wrote:Prairie Dog, I would like to roll out the red carpet for you to come over to my house and tell me how to get my lawn to live on this slope and under the towering pine and fir whose roots reach far under the lawn and SUCK IT DRY!

Getting this puny, little lawn to survive has been an endless battle for me! It is patchy, gets dry in spots and lush in others. We have coated it in chicken manure, which killed it. Coated it in horse manure, which unbalanced the soil ph. Raked off literally thousands of tons of pine needles, lord save me from the pine needles! It is teeny! We use one tank of mower gas all year! I have re-seeded and yes, avoided that finicky Kentucky Blue grass, and of the billions of seeds I have sprinkled on, only 11 of them have ever germinated! A portion of our lawn was lost when in a terrible wind storm we lost several large trees. One was a fir that toppled and almost decapitated our house. It is a weird thing to see your lawn, vertical. But there was a huge chunk of it, stuck to the bottom of this tree. There is now a makeshift, butt ugly flowerish area where lawn used to be.

So yes, I lawn, and weep, and water and weep and fertilize and weep. But hang onto my lawn with ever increasingly worn out fingers. No xeriscape for me yet. I am so happy to have found the company of other lawners. How do you play lawn darts on brick? It's just not right.

..............the secret is what kind of soil /mixture you use .Look around you and you will see that some areas always stay green even when the rest is yellowing and drying up .I have a lot of elms and maples that I have planted as well as the pines and I have never had a lawn that suffered because of the trees ,in fact I believe the shade from the trees kept the soil in better shape and keep the heat from the sun away from it for the better part of most days .It's all in what kind of soil you have under the grass ! I can see though that in BC the soil in the mountain regions will be a lot different then what we have here ...............but if you are willing to pay a bit and bring in the right soil ( Must have a large portion that is peat ,it retains water very well and once it's wet it stays wet for a long time ,that and a bit of sand and black soil and you have the right soil ) you should have a awesome lawn ,with or without the landscapeing ideas with rocks etc .

We have an undefined line as it is hard to kanow where the lawn ends and the pasture begins. We have some mowers that fertilize as they move through the fields. For the last couple years we have been enjoying our lawn which mostly grows without watering. In 2003 we pretty well had no lawn, but with little work we now have a lawn. I have an old JD tractor with a mower deck that I have yet to use. It needed a few repairs this year and is now nearly ready to go again. Perhaps this is the year to give it a try.

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Up until it got nice and crispy hot and dry this week, this was a subject I was QUITE TWITCHY about. However this week I can look out at my grass growing at a moderate rate and appreciate all 2 acres or so of it. I love the colour, the smoothness, the fact that it holds a little moisture into my dry land, and there's nothing better than lying on it under a tree on a sunny afternoon, as I discovered this past weekend. Who woulda thunk it would take me so long to do this, but I finally had a nap on the lawn on a sunny afternoon. I can't imagine the pebbly surface of a xeriscape giving me such pleasure.

I love lawn, just not to much of it. Just enough for me and the dogs to lounge in the shade in the heat of the late afternoon. I actually enjoy mowing it and how it smell and looks when freshly mowed. Again, just not to big a area of it.
I feel the same about xeriscape. Love the rocks, and sand and also the grass varieties that sometimes go with it.
So I guess for me I would like lawn close to the house cause I think it is cooling too, but give me the desert away from the house as I am a desert girl at heart.

Sue, all we really have is weeds too. Just mowed green here.

I fought the lawn and the lawn won! Bah ha ha! That kills me!

Prairie Dog we have one perpetually green spot, it's not on the lawn, it's up in the bush. Hubby claims it's where the soil is rich and deep. I claim it's where we have a break in the waterline. Only time and a backhoe will tell!

uno wrote:I fought the lawn and the lawn won! Bah ha ha! That kills me!

Prairie Dog we have one perpetually green spot, it's not on the lawn, it's up in the bush. Hubby claims it's where the soil is rich and deep. I claim it's where we have a break in the waterline. Only time and a backhoe will tell!

My money is on you Uno, we have that happen here every year.

Water will give you a green lawn only so long ! It's the soil that gives it it's rich green color and what's in the soil .If you had a break in a water line and it's on your pressure system then the pump would be coming on far more often ? Poor soil will give a green lawn ,but it will need constant pampering ,good rich soil will give you that same lawn with out the pampering .Would be a shame to distroy a perfectly good lawn ( patch )on a spectulation ??????????

I don't water. Ever. Its going to dry out no matter how hard I try. Every year it gets crispy and dry. Yet again, every year it gets lush and green.

The only things I water are the gardens. The rest I let nature do its thing in regards to watering.

I don't think I believe you, Hillbilly. Your avatar looks well watered. Is he autobiographical?

Posshiblee