~Written by Nan Sterman

Its the "default landscape," the "worry-free garden," "the easiest thing in the world" – or is it? More and more, people acknowledge they are tired of having to mow, water, fertilize, weed, and pesticide (is that a verb?) lawn that they hardly ever use. Fortunately, there are lots of options for replacing lawn with gardens that are beautiful and far easier to care for.

My own garden has no lawn at all. The front garden never had lawn. When we first landscaped the front, some neighbors wondered what it would be. Now that the garden is mature, people stop regularly to comment on its beauty. They ask about one plant or another, how easy they are to grow, where to buy them, and so on.

Our backyard was dominated by a large lawn we planted when our children were small. When my son became a teenager, however, he asked why we had so much grass. Clearly, it was no longer needed. So, about five years ago, I committed "lawnicide."

Today, half the former lawn is a lovely large patio with a fire pit and seating bench. The other half is a newly planted meadow of low-water, tufted native sedges. The meadow serves as a sea of green in an otherwise busy landscape. Neither the patio nor the meadow require mowing, fertilizing, or spraying. Watering is occasional.

{Nan's patio - photo by Nan Sterman}

How much easier can gardening be!

I teach a class called "Bye Bye Grass" about how to get rid of lawn and what to replace it with. That first part – getting rid of lawn – often stymies home gardeners. But it needn't. Getting rid of lawn takes some time and some energy but it isn't rocket science.

If you have that nice, fine textured, fine rooted turf, you have several options:

Dig out the lawn. Very straightforward, just takes some brawn and persistence.

"Cover and Smother" composts lawn in place. Water well, then cover the turf with four or five inches of mulch. In warm weather, grass composts in four to six weeks. In cool weather it might take longer. Keep mulch damp during composting. When the grass is gone, simply plant into the mulch.

Solarization superheats the soil to kill grass and weed seeds in the top few inches of soil. As summer heats up, cut your grass as short as possible. Water well, then turn off sprinklers. Cover with clear plastic, overlapping seams, and spreading the plastic at least a foot past the edges of the lawn (edges tend to be cooler than the center). Wait six to eight weeks for grass to yellow and die. Remove plastic and prepare to plant. If you have Bermuda or other spreading grass with fleshy, creeping stems or roots, the process is more challenging. 

{Solarization photo by Nan Sterman}

Dig out the lawn Any bit or piece of root left behind will sprout into a new plant so it can take years of digging to get it all, especially when roots penetrate several feet deep.

Spray with herbicide Unfortunately, no one yet offers a certified organic herbicide that kills these kinds of grasses.

Some people combine methods. Dig, solarize, or smother to kill as much as possible, then spray whatever resprouts.

Once the lawn is gone, your choices for replanting are wide open. I'll write more about choosing plants in the future. In the meantime, if your soil is really lean, too heavy or too sandy, add organic matter by using Black Gold Garden Compost. You can also boost the soil's beneficial microbes with Black Gold Soil Conditioner Garden Amendment.

Check out last month's article "From Sticks To Stems" By Nan Sterman

About Nan Sterman

I am delighted to be contributing to Sungro’s website! Writing about plants and gardens, talking about them, teaching about them, creating gardens are my absolutely most favorite things to do. Fortunately for me, that’s my profession!

I grew up gardening. Among my earliest memories is the sweet scent of sweet pea flowers that surrounded my childhood home in Los Angeles. Equally memorable was the musty tomato forest my grandfather planted each spring behind the garage. As a college student in the 1970s, I was in the first wave of the sustainability movement that arose from the birth of Earthday. That was the first world-wide wake-up call about the limits of our natural resources.

Outdoors, I was in charge of the edible landscape, the vegetable garden, the chickens, rabbits, and compost. Many lessons from those days became permanent features in my life. I’ve made a vegetable garden in every place I’ve lived. I composting and recycle everything. I am notoriously frugal when it comes to using energy and even more so about water. In fact, my specialty is low water gardens, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

After my botany degree, I earned a Masters in marine biology at UC Santa Barbara and another in educational design at San Diego State University. For a decade I worked as an education and training consultant for companies like Union Bank and Century 21 Real Estate and organizations like the San Diego Zoo and Scripps Aquarium. In the early dot.com years, I designed educational software.

When I started testing the first generation of garden design software, the editor of National Gardening Magazine (yes, it was a magazine once) invited me to write up my findings. Soon, I was garden editor of San Diego Home/Garden Lifestyles Magazine. It was the end of one career and the beginning of the next. Today, I write for Sunset, the Los Angeles Times, San Diego Union Tribune, Organic Gardening, and etc.

My first solo book, California Gardener’s Guide vII was published in 2007 and in early 2010, Waterwise Plants for Southwest Gardens will be released. I have a TV show called A Growing Passion and am a regular guest on the morning talk show on San Diego’s Public Radio station. I speak, teach, and lecture to garden clubs and at garden shows from Albuquerque to Seattle, though most of my work is in Southern California. At the same time, I consult with water districts, public agencies, and the Water Conservation Garden at Cuyamaca College in southeast San Diego County.

While many people promote low water gardening as a way to save water, I take a broader perspective. Low water plants are sustainable plants. Why? In addition to being low water, they need little if any fertilizers and have few pests so they don’t need to be sprayed or treated. Because they grow slowly, they seldom need pruning. Therefore, they contribute very little to the mountains of yard waste that are trucked and processed with fossil fuels while releasing greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. How much “greener” can you get?

Somewhere along the way, I started designing gardens. I love to dig in other people’s dirt! My own garden is “slightly controlled chaos.” My 2/3-acre property includes beds of gorgeous perennials, shrubs, trees, and succulents, all adapted to growing with little water. I have a large vegetable garden, more than 20 fruiting trees and shrubs, an herb garden (couldn’t live without fresh herbs!) a brand new meadow, and a corner devoted entirely to California natives.

My goal with this column is to write about things that interest you. Please, email me your questions, comments, and photos of your garden. Let’s see what we can discover about gardening, together!

back