eGarden © 2008 Ed Mues

March 26, 2008

Getting Close to the Ground and Loving It.

I'll bet one or more of you have longed for ways to reduce the amount of lawn around your home and maybe even replace some of it. Doing so just may increase the pleasure of your surroundings and be greener at the same time.

Each year more homeowners are beginning to reject the high cost of lawn maintenance. The cost is in dollars, noise, pollution, and environmental insults and threats. The input of chemical fertilizers, weed killers, and pesticides required to keep a lawn looking good seems counter-intuitive when one is seeking a natural setting in which to reside, relax, garden and get closer to nature and away from health and peace compromising elements in our world.

Prepare yourself for the future, one square foot at a time, or a hundred, or a thousand. Take a closer look at what you have. Where is there a lot of sun, where more shade, where is there a damp spot, or a very dry area? Survey your surroundings. Make a map.

It's spring! Visualize an herb garden here, a new flowerbed there. Have you ever thought about a rock garden? How about an expansive area of ground covers interspersed with hardy bulbs. Butterfly garden, anyone? How about a flower garden just for cutting and displaying the bounty of blossoms, maybe on your dining room table, or as a special gift to bring along with you on a visit.

Knot gardens are challenging and a joy to behold. These are not unlike a meditation garden or a garden maze. A Zen garden with strategically placed rocks, gravel, and sand, in a secluded corner of a Japanese stroll garden, would be delicious. How about a Rhododendron glen with a cool, velvety, moss garden for a floor? A reflection garden with small water features, perhaps one moving into the other, might be a tranquil part of a unique garden room.

The amount of horticultural sophistication you bring to the project will be a reflection of your personality, maybe some of it hidden, maybe an eccentric side of you, but surely a testament to your imagination and sense of style.

Theme gardens are becoming very popular and present many possibilities. Xeriscape gardens, with silver and gray foliaged drought resistant plants, can be very striking and extremely low maintenance.

You might wish to create an English cottage garden or start an antique rose garden for future expansion. Remember the movie character Edward Scissorhands? Topiary is an extraordinary horticultural curiosity/oddity and accomplishment. Might it be in your future?

There's nothing like coming up with your own idea. Don't forget all the Botanical Gardens and articles from countless gardening magazines showing what unlimited resources can do in a single season. Just use them as a jumping off point for inspiration. How about an heirloom perennial garden? Why not? They are beautiful, rugged, graceful, easy to grow, endangered, unusual, often fragrant, and regionally adapted and appropriate.

Once you've made the decision to begin a reduced-lawn landscape, you will likely find a lifelong passion take hold of you. The pleasures, aside from making garden and plant choices, will include pairing paving materials with pathways, sitting areas, gates and fences, perhaps steps and bridges, garden decorations, arbors, furniture, pottery, trellises, etc.

Let's assume for a minute that you decide to replace a section of lawn with some ground covers to unite a few unrelated trees or shrubs that are at the moment isolated. The beauty of groundcover plants is that once they are established they require almost no care other than the occasional irrigation in a drought. There is a wide variety of forms, colors, textures and heights to choose from.

Do your homework and make some selections. These might include plants you never thought of growing before. There are hundreds to choose from. Look beyond the mundane Japanese spurge (Pachysandra terminalis) and consider our native Allegheny spurge (Pachysandra procumbens). Pass up the ubiquitous vinca and try something strikingly different, flowering spring to fall, evergreen, maybe suitable for interplanting with bulbs.

Many groundcover plants will only grow to a height of a few inches, others may exceed two feet. Some tolerate light foot traffic and give off a wonderful fragrance. Ornamental grasses are lovely in all seasons and are deer resistant. An "Ice Plant", Delosperma 'Kelaisis', is rated hardy to Zone 4, prefers sun and well drained soil, has jelly bean like leaves, grows only a few inches tall and bears beautiful salmon-pink flowers which open and close daily, spring to fall, and it's evergreen with its leaves changing color in fall.

Site preparation is the key to success. Till or dig the soil deeply, 6 to 12 inches if possible. Incorporate as much as 25% by volume of organic matter such as peat moss, compost, leaf mold and aged manure. The turf that is removed can be placed in the bottom of the mix. Incorporate 3 pounds per hundred square feet of a balanced commercial fertilizer such as 5-10-5 or 10-10-10 at the time when you are adding the other amendments. Top the whole bed off with a thick layer of good clean mulch. Shredded bark or pine needles works and looks great.

Now the fun part begins. Get out there to the nurseries and bring your list of preferences with you. Plant shopping is a joy unlike any other. If you can't find what you are looking for, ask a nursery owner/proprietor to get it for you. Nine times out of ten, they want your business, now and for the future, and will be happy to accommodate you.

How closely you space the plants will often be dependent upon your budget. Some types spread quickly and can be spaced much wider than ones that spread slowly. Plant in staggered rows rather than in straight lines and you will see faster coverage. Early on you will have to do some occasional weeding, mulching, fertilizing and irrigating until they become well established.

If you plan to intersperse your groundcover plants with flowering bulbs, it is best to plant these at the same time. This way you won't disturb the roots, and your groundcover plants can spread freely and unobstructed. Eventually you'll have a dense cover of sweeps of interesting colors and textures and blooms where you formerly only had the same green requiring mowing (noisy and polluting) and maybe chemicals to control insects and weeds.

It's your landscape and like yourself, it merits a new look and feel from time to time. Whether it's the delicate foliage of maidenhair ferns in damp shade, the white blossoms or the lovely fruit of the dogwood cousin, "bunchberry" (Cornus canadensis), the fragrance of the creeping thymes, the splashes of color from daylilies, the aroma of the nodding bells of Lily of the Valley... I could go on and on. It's your lawn alternative. Make it as colorful, textural, fragrant and attractive as you like. And you don't have to do it all at once.

Gardening is the art that uses flowers and plants as paint,
and the soil and sky as canvas.. Elizabeth Murray

From The Garden of Ed. Submitted for publication in The Towne Crier on March 26, 2008

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