By Hilda, on February 9th, 2011
When I was growing up on the Great Lakes, there was always that one day, usually in late March, that signaled winter’s dreary days were numbered. I’d come home from school and there, right next to our side door, in the narrow strip of earth between the driveway and the foundation, would be a clump of yellow or purple crocus, often still surrounded by patches of melting snow.
I pretty much hated winter as a girl — I guess that’s why I live in the South now — and the sight of those little flowers meant more to me than I could begin to describe. It didn’t mean winter was over; there could easily be blizzards well into April. It was more like a promise of better days soon to come, a little tiny light at the end of a long, snowy, frigid tunnel. And it was almost mystical, the effect that crocus had on me back then; the pure joy it could inspire. (At one point, one of my college roommates told me that every time she saw a crocus, she pictured me jumping up and down.)
Admittedly, winters are easy here in the South. I don’t find myself watching for the first crocus the way my mom and I did back in Cleveland, and they don’t have the same significance for me here.
Still, when I take a walk around the neighborhood and come across a lawn absolutely filled with lavender crocus, it gladdens my heart. Now THIS is the way to have a beautiful lawn — and it’s nice to see someone out there gets that, rather than using chemical warfare to create a monoculture with a single, boring species of grass. Biodiversity is beautiful, isn’t it?
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©2011, photos and text
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By Hilda, on July 30th, 2010
Here’s a screenshot of a Los Angeles Times garden blog post that caught my attention:(The text and photos in this post are quite interesting, and you can click on the photo to view and read the entire thing.)
I’ve never been a fan of the sweeping expanses of lawn that have become the hallmark of American suburbs, so I love the design of this house in general — the covered porch, rather than a large lawn, is what provides a measure of privacy.
With such a tiny front yard as this, it would be easy enough to care for turf grass (even in drought stricken Los Angeles) but the homeowners have gone one step further and installed a xeriscape – a landscape of drought-tolerant plants that don’t require supplemental irrigation. According to the article, they took advantage of a program that offers rebates to residents who tear out turf and replace it with plants that don’t need much water. (I’ve loved this idea ever since I wrote about it for Continental, the inflight magazine.)
Even after the rebate, however, the homeowners reportedly spent $10,000 on design and installation for their showcase garden! I think it’s this high initial cost that keep so many people enslaved to their front lawns. I’d get rid of my grass in the blink of an eye if it weren’t so prohibitively expensive to do so… what about you?
By Hilda, on June 10th, 2010
The movement toward safer, more sustainable lawns got a boost from the media this month, as three popular magazines featured articles about lawn chemicals in their June issues. They include Prevention, Readers Digest, and Men’s Health.
The article in Men’s Health is especially eye-opening. Paul Tukey, in his Safe Lawns blog, called it “quite possibly the most extraordinary article ever published by a major U.S. magazine about the state of the lawn chemical debate in the U.S.”
For starters, the article is titled Your Lethal Lawn. And the tagline that follows that unexpected headline reads:
In springtime, a man’s dreams turn to an expanse of weedless, bug-free, manicured grass surrounding his suburban castle.
A multibillion-dollar industry caters to this dream, offering a calibrated poisoning that keeps his world lush yet silently threatens his family, his pets … And him. Is it worth the risk?”
Author Bryan Smith does a good job of voicing the concerns of homeowners, physicians, and scientists, and of backing up these concerns with compelling research.
While I’m not an extreme environmentalist, I do believe that too many of us have bought into exactly what the lawn care industry wants us to believe — that the “perfect” lawn must be a monoculture of only grass, unsullied by clover and violets; and that we must regularly perform a chemical assault upon it to keep it “perfect.” I rejected these ideas a long time ago. What about you?
You can read Your Lethal Lawn online, courtesy of the Men’s Health website. Then let us know what you think, by leaving a comment.
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