For a plant that stirs the bowels of ecogardeners and Torojockeys likewise , turfgrass looks vapid enough . And that ’s part of the trouble – the monoculture that is the dandy greensward of American lawndom . Lord knows I ’ve ranted about it enough , and not just because when it ’s grown the way the folks at Scotts advocate , it wastes resources and pollutes waterways . I just find oneself lawn care so tedious I can barely force myself to do it . aboveboard , I suck at lawn care and mine looks like bull by about mid - June . Just take this spring photo and replace the colour brown for the coloring material William Green and you get the idea .
But this year my garden and I have embarked on a journey together out of that sea of sameness to a place that ’s unknown , a picayune scary and exciting , too . The goal is to cover this 1,000 - square - substructure , sloping , mostly sunny quad with something that will , like lawn , preclude streamlet - off , be somewhat evergreen , and hold both a little human foot traffic and having the garden hosepipe lugged across it from side to side . Oh , and be drought - tolerant and foreclose weeds . Tall order , I eff , but if , like me , you ’re even a bit of ananti - lawn crusader , you want those magic renewal flora to succeed . Go , squad ! And what might they be ?
In all ignorance , I retrieve I could bend it into ameadow , as you may remember . Enough articulate . Next I ’ll try a mixing of walk of life - on - able groundcovers , starting with what I have or what ’s super - cheap :
Helping me sort out my Stepables
MY FAVORITE WEEDS
facilitate me sort out my Stepables
LOOK , MA , I’M TRIALING!I’m always awfully impressed when genuine plantspeople likeGraham Ricewrite up the results of their experiments . So now , in my good plantsman - wannabe way , I ’ll be farm some choice selections from a most challenging plant mathematical group , sell by a most intriguing caller – Stepables in Oregon – as many of them as the budget allows or they have samples to spare . Here ’s what ’s invoke about them , in the words of spokeswoman Sally Credille :
Helping me sort out my Stepables
Lest you worry I ’m on their paysheet or a total whore for booty , this will be the “ Survivor ! ” of the hort earth , with plants potentially voted off the garden at any time . So reader , we ’ll just see if these little sweetheart can fork out on all those promises . update to stick with . But first …
THE METHOD OF PLANTICIDENow , how to withdraw the lawn that ’s there . I ’ve rejected herbicides , rototilling and baking under black-market credit card , the latter just because I do n’t require to buy all that charge plate I ’d never use again . So I ’ll be going the chintzy - and - organic route – 6 or more layers of paper covered with a distich of inches of leafmold mulch , watered and view for a few weeks until it all breaks down . But will it break down fast enough for me to do all the planting by mid - October ? Tension mounts .
