Lois de Vries' Garden Views

I recently purchased a cordless electric push mower. It weighs 93 pounds. My friends, most of whom haven't used anything but a self-propelled or riding mower in the last 25 years, are incredulous. I have always used a push mower for the exercise, but the rip-cord style one tied my mowing hours to Dan being home to start it for me. Now I'm free to mow as I please, when I please. Let me tell you, pushing that mower around in our hilly, uneven yard works up more of a sweat and heavy breathing than you'll get in any gym. And, instead of that locker-room odor, you're left with the fragrance of new-mown grass and a sense of accomplishment. To do our 8,000 square feet of "lawn," consisting of various fescues, ground ivy, moss, and assorted narrow-leaved weeds, takes about an hour. The first run only took 45-minutes, but the grass wasn't all in yet and I was racing around because I didn't know whether the charge would last long enough to get the whole...

If you are on the fence about whether to convert part or all of your lawn into a cottage-type garden, do give it a try. I was astonished to learn, at a talk by Leslie Jones Sauer (to see my earlier blog on forest restoration click here ) , that grass is nearly as impervious as asphalt! This is because of the nature of turf grass plants. That greensward effect is the result of lawn grass’s ability to quickly establish an underground net of interwoven roots. That’s what holds pieces of sod together. That root system is only a few inches beneath the surface and, in a “good” lawn, so dense that very little rainwater penetrates beyond it. So, non-lawn gardens actually help the environment. How do you decide how much, if any, of the lawn to keep? At our place, I’m very generous about what I consider to be the lawn. If it stays green after I cut it with the mower, it’s the lawn. We have about 8,000 square feet of it --- not quite 5% of our total property. About 90% of the landscape is woo...

In our area, stormwater sewers that serve housing developments and some businesses empty into the dreaded detention (or retention, or infiltration) basin, a visually hideous engineered method of holding large volumes of water until it can safely disperse to groundwater, natural streams, ponds, etc. (top photo). These are generally grass monocultures or rip rap which, if not properly maintained become weedy, overgrown maintenance nightmares. Suffice it to say that anyone who can get away with not maintaining one will continue to not maintain it. Frequently, the town ends up owning and maintaining such basins, meaning that all the taxpayers pay. When grass is used as the only groundcover and pesticides and fertilizers are applied, they can contaminate the runoff. Regular mowing of the basins is difficult because of the steep sides and wet floor. This maintenance adds contaminants to the watercourse, as well. Grass basins also attract undesirable wildlife, such as Canada Geese, which ...