The well-manicured lawn has long been an obsession of the average American homeowner. If a man’s house is his castle, the lawn is the green moat around it. It is seen as a mark of success and a reflection of one’s status in the community. In some neighborhood associations a person may be admonished—even fined—for not keeping up with the standard of a pristine lawn. In fact, Americans spend in excess of $40 billion a year on lawn care.
But there is a movement afoot to persuade homeowners to abandon their gas-guzzling lawn mowers and kill—or at least modify—their lawns through native plant alternatives. One of those activists is Alexis Doshas, nursery manager at Nasami Farm, part of the Native Plant Trust. She spoke at the Sept. 25 meeting of the Garden Club of Harvard to a full crowd, including one husband who said, laughing, that he was there since it was raining and he couldn’t mow his lawn.
Doshas said she was a professional gardener on Cape Cod and got sick of putting in plants that didn’t want to be there and that needed way too much water. She went back to school to learn more about ecological gardening, where land is managed with native plants and organic methods, contributing to the health of the ecosystem. She recommended a book called “Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard” by Douglas Tallamy.
Nasami farm is located on 75 acres in Whately, in the Connecticut River Valley in Western Mass. Its mission is to preserve and promote native New England plants by propagating them from seed gathered in the wild to promote genetic diversity. The farm has a retail nursery, and it sells plants to other nurseries and produces plants for restoration projects. Seeds are available, but they need to be in a cold place for a certain length of time. Doshas suggested it is more convenient to buy plugs.
The real dirt on lawns
Acknowledging that many of us inherited the aesthetic of an ideal lawn and may still aspire to it, Doshas laid out the real “dirt” on lawns. She pointed out that the turf in our yards is not meant for our climate and is dependent on an outpouring of money for pesticides, fertilizers, and replacement seedings. The average homeowner spends 70 hours a year on lawn care—or spends a lot of money for someone else to do the maintenance. She said lawns are wasteful and boring; they don’t bring anything to the ecosystem. On the contrary, the gas lawn mowers that maintain them pollute the environment. And increasingly, grass is subject to severe weather fluctuations as we have seen in the past two summers—drought, then deluge.
Native plants, said Doshas, have none of the drawbacks of turf, and in addition they have a positive rather than negative impact on the environment. Because natives are suited to our climate, they do not need watering or fertilizer. And if they need mowing at all, it may be only once a season. They attract pollinators, and some afford food for birds. They create a sense of place, said Doshas; New England has its distinct natives as do other parts of the country.
So how would you go about replacing your lawn? Doshas recommends first shrinking it. Start around the edges of a lawn, cutting out borders, perhaps undulating rather than straight, where you could grow a mix of natives. This would bring some diversity in addition to reducing the lawn area. Places that are difficult to mow, like around trees, could be replaced with natives. And slopes, both sunny and shady, are good places to eliminate grass. Most native ground covers will not be damaged by walking on them.
Planting native ground covers
There are several ways of eliminating the grass so you can plant native ground covers. The fastest but least natural is to use herbicides. Solarization uses sheets of clear plastic, made airtight, to actually cook the lawn to death. It would take about three months to ensure all the seed is killed. Sheet mulching is a process of layering cardboard or newspaper on the grass, wetting it, and topping that with loam and then leaf mulch. In a few months the area will be ready for planting. You can always dig. Or, you can do nothing. Let your grass grow, mow a wide path through it so the neglect looks intentional, see what comes up and perhaps overseed with wildflowers for diversity and color.
Lastly Doshas described a dozen or so native ground covers that could serve as alternatives to turf. A colorful one is Prunella vulgaris, which has a small purple flower that blooms from May to November. Doshas said some of us may have it in our yards already, and many heads nodded. She described Carex pennsylvanica as the native that looks the most like turf. It will grow in shade and is best started by planting plugs. Eragrostis spectabilis (purple lovegrass) is taller and turns a beautiful mauve at this time of year. Bearberry kinnikinnick is a woody evergreen with a bright red berry and is well suited for slopes. Antennaria neglecta is an interesting name for pussytoes, which sounds as though it would be soft to walk on. Tiarella cordifolia (running foamflower) grows in shady areas as does Asarum canadense (ginger).
These and others can be found at plantfinder.nativeplanttrust.org/Plant-Search.
