Liberated Gardener

Let Me Show You Our Garden

When I moved into my wife’s house ten years ago, the front yard grew nothing but weedy grass. Some people call this sort of thing a “freedom lawn.” I understand the concept, but our freedom lawn enslaved me behind the mower every week.

We both garden, so as time allowed we gave the front yard an edible and ornamental makeover.  Over the years, slices, circles and squares of freedom lawn were swapped out for colorful and tasty gardens.  Our front yard is barely fifty by fifty, so from above it looks like a Whitman’s Sampler box--but one composed of gardens rather than chocolates. 

 

(Driveway on left is to the south. The street above is to the west. And me, I'm on the roof taking the photo, so bottom of the picture where I am is east and to the right is north.)

My wife likes to cook and we both like to eat so we planted edibles near the front door first. A big bed of herbs, artichokes and alliums colonized the narrow strip between the driveway and front walk on the south side of the yard.

Other drought-hardy plants from the Mediterranean—pomegranates, poppies and sedums--filled any gaps in this garden.

And the mulch is as perennial as the plants. Nine years ago we used a permanent 2” layer of Cabernet-colored gravel to cover the soil and suppress the weeds. The rich color sets off the grays, blues and greens of the lavender, bearded iris, candytuft and other plants. A surprising benefit was that many of the plants happily reseed themselves because the gravel mimics their native soil in the Mediterranean basin.

 

Next we created four diamond-shaped raised beds for vegetables on the west side.This vegetable garden lies on our path from house-to-car and back. So it’s easy to keep things tidy. We pick ripe vegetables and pull a few weeds as we come and go.

The regular grooming combined with mulches of cocoa hulls, camellia tea twigs and coffee chaff--all by-products of the food industry—keep the vegetable garden looking pretty enough for a front yard.

 You can’t have food without water so a 300-gallon galvanized horse trough on the east side, next to the house, holds water lilies, thalia and hibiscus. It functions as a water garden and decorative rain barrel in one. We dunk our watering cans in the trough to replenish our container plants on the porch. An unexpected bonus: the water’s surface bounces rippling waves of sunlight through the front window and onto the ceiling of our living room.

As we replaced freedom lawn with plant beds, my wife asked if we could keep some grass. I made all the usual arguments against lawns: pollution and noise from mowers, little support for wildlife, requires too much fertilizer and so on. She waited patiently, looked me in the eye and said, “Well can we have a Lawnlet?”

I was converted by her logic and her neo-logism. Our Lawnlet on the northern side of the yard is no larger than a king-size bed; just big enough for two gardeners and a black Lab named Molly to sprawl on. We lay on our backs to watch the clouds tumble along or sit up face-to-face with peonies in their season.

 

There’s much more going on in the front yard then when we started. But we both probably work in the garden much less now than when I was mowing weekly. And none of it feels like a chore.

 

Frank Hyman gardens with his wife, Chris Crochetière at their home, Bayleaf Cottage, near downtown Durham, North Carolina.

 

Lawn Story

For most of my life I hated mowing the lawn. But about 20 years ago, I learned two things. First, I discovered that the noise of the mower drowned out more than other sounds; it dampened my sense of accomplishment and my ability to think.

            I came to this realization during my time at NCSU working as a landscaper’s apprentice in Raleigh for Bob Mulder--the first organic landscaper in the Triangle area. Bob offered me a set of red and black hearing protectors—they looked like earmuffs—that squelched 20 decibels of the mower’s staccato racket. The first time I wore them I felt like I’d passed through Alice’s looking glass into a calm, quiet world where the mower was humming like a refrigerator rather than roaring like a motorcycle with a busted muffler. At the end of each job, my sense of satisfaction was greater and I had had some “quiet time” to think about organizing my other tasks or, better yet, planning my weekend.

  
 

            The second thing I learned was that if I employed the same kind of annual maintenance to my mower that I gave to my truck I would have a machine that started quickly and reliably. No more starter-rope pulling marathons for me. When the weather’s nice and I feel like saving money, I pull out the mower, drain the oil, soak and clean the air filter, clean or replace the spark plug, and a cranky, crotchety mower becomes lively and eager once again. But on those uh, rare occasions when fair weather and penny-pinching don’t line up, I let folks at a local mower repair shop do a tune-up, plus the blade is sharpened and balanced (a blade that’s sharpened, but unbalanced will wear out the piston—a warning to you do-it-yourselfers.

            These habits have served me well in the past, but have become less important recently. Some years back, I bought a cordless electric mower. The only sound it makes is the quiet whirring of the cutting blade. There’s also no maintenance to be done: no oil, no gas, no filter, no spark plug, no pull rope. All you need is a place to plug it in overnight. I love this mower.

            I would only recommend one of these if you have a small lawn that can be mown in 30 or 40 minutes. The charges on the battery only lasts so long.

            Ok, enough about tools. Here are some mowing practices to help you keep a lawn worth walking barefoot on. Make a habit of mowing weekly. Waiting longer and cutting off more than a third of the grass blade shortens the life span of the grass. Change your mowing pattern to keep from ingraining a pattern on the grass: mow east and west one week, north and south another week, and on the diagonal the next week.

            Bag your grass clippings less often. Leaving the decomposing clippings on your lawn reduces the amount of fertilizer and water needed by about a third. If your mower leaves a few clumps, mowing them a second time is still less work than bagging. Mow fescue at about 3 inches high—when you touch your finger to the ground the grass should be high enough to cover your fingers. Longer shoots, mean deeper roots. With higher grass you’ll have fewer weeds and need less water. I put my mower on its highest setting and leave it there.

One last maintenance tip--I also keep a bag of grass seed available year round for our fescue lawn. September is the best time for reseeding as it gives the new grass all fall, winter and spring to grow roots before facing the summer heat. But anytime that I find I only have a few minutes to get something done, I can stroll the lawn and throw some seed on any bare spots so I can have grass coming up there rather than weeds.

            Two helpful books: “The Natural Lawn” by Brooklyn Botanic Garden and “The Chemical-Free Lawn” by Warren Schultz.

 

How much lawn does one household need?

How much lawn does one household need? A couple of years ago I prepared to do without a lawn entirely. As I transformed our weedy patch of a front yard into a Whitman’s Sampler of gardens, my wife asked: “Can we keep some grass?” I replied with a frown.  “Just a little? A lawnlet?” , she asked. At this, I brightened and said, “Well, when you put it that way…”

 Now, in between the raised beds of vegetables,  the carnivorous plant garden and a bed of meadow perennials you’ll find a cozy, wedge-shaped “bed” of fescue grass—our lawnlet. It’s just big enough for a couple of adults and a black lab named Molly to loll around on. We use this bed for star-gazing at night and flower-gazing during the day.

 

 I can mow this bed in 7 minutes (I counted ‘em) with a sling blade in one hand and a mug of beer in the other, while chatting with neighbors as they walk their dog or push a stroller. Talk about multi-tasking. I’d like to see other lawn-proud gardeners try that.

 It may not be to your taste, but don’t sneer at our micro-patch of grass. If you’ve ever envied those fields of fescue on some corporate campus or even some neighbor’s plush front lawn, keep in mind that sustaining a non-native plant like fescue in the southeast is almost as challenging as keeping something as artificial as an aquarium looking good. It takes lots of monitoring and lots of expensive products applied at the right time and in the right amounts.  Much of the problems with fish kills in our rivers and the decline of shellfish on our coasts stem from the fossil fuel-based nitrogen, phosphorus and herbicides running off of many square miles of lawn.  It’s not a stretch to say that less lawn could mean more seafood.

 Maintenance on a large lawn doesn’t’ just kill seafood—it’s also murder on your free time. While I lounge around on our lawnlet, I might spend about five minutes every month or two hand pulling the few weeds. A couple of fistfuls of organic lawn fertilizer—18-8-6 from Plant Tone—spread on Valentine’s Day, Labor Day and Thanksgiving supplement the nutrients from the lawn clippings that I leave in place to decompose. That and a couple of fistfuls of lime every other year to keep the pH up around 6,5 takes about 5 minutes tops. An occasional watering from a 1950’s era sprinkler during the summer and raking the autumn leaves for the compost pile keeps the lawnlet green and lush year-round and no threat to sea life or my relaxation schedule.  The best time to start or reseed a fescue lawnlet in our area is Sept. The roots will have all fall winter and spring to establish themselves before summer.

The time we used to spend mowing and tending the front yard when it was all lawn, we now spend cutting flowers, harvesting vegetables and herbs, mulching beds with shredded leaves in winter and laying around on our grass bed watching the clouds, flowers and birds.

  So how much lawn does one household need? Some might be happy with no more than a lawnlet.  We are. 

November Garden Tips

• Beat crabgrass without herbicides by fertilizing and liming your fescue lawn now. Fescue shades out crabgrass in early spring if it’s fertilized and cut to your mower's highest setting--which is probably about 3 inches high.

• Fertilize evergreen shrubs and trees with a couple of handfuls of an organic fertilizer. Organic fertilizer takes effect very slowly and will be available to the roots in spring. 

• Roll down your car window and smell the eleaegnus growing along the highways. But don't plant them--they are weedy and get as big as a barn.

• This is a great season for planting--the roots have fall, winter and spring to get established before summer heats up. Plant new trees, shrubs, vines and perennials in wide holes that are no deeper than the rootball. Improve clay or sandy soil with composted pine bark rather than peat moss. It works better and harvesting peat moss damages important habitat. 

• Water new plantings during dry spells or when freezes are predicted.