Reduce Your Lawn and Create a Natural Paradise

I’m sitting at my kitchen table, happily sipping my morning green tea. As I’m looking out the window at the birdfeeder that I filled just two days ago, wondering where the statement “he/she eats like a bird comes from” (because the birds in my yard eat like it’s their last supper), and the feeder is almost empty.

I also notice that, gulp, my lawn needs mowing.

Ugh.  It’s that time of year, again- when the lawn needs mowing, when I spend too much time in the yard pushing the noisy beast around and around and around, hoping that at least the labor counts towards a workout of some kind.

What is it with our lawn obsession anyway? 

We mow it, trim it, fertilize it. Many spray their lawns with toxic chemicals that make it literally unsafe to walk on (yes, the little sign with the person and the dog on it with the huge line through it is not a mere suggestion). 

We spend hours upon hours of our precious time, not to mention hundreds of dollars in water, gasoline and chemicals to maintain the grass (let’s not even get into how bad that is for air and water quality and how many beneficial insects die in the process).

And what does the grass give us. Really, what’s our return on investment here? 

Sure, my kids go outside and play in the backyard a lot. But, do I really need a huge yard full of grass for that? No.

Sure, the green is nice to look at. But so are flowers and bushes and trees and ponds and vegetables.

So, every year, I select a different portion of my yard, dig up the grass and create a new space. Since we moved here five years ago (to the day), we’ve built five new garden spaces (some for flowers, most for edibles such as herbs and vegetables and some sand to play in) and eliminated a total of 670 square feet of grass.

As a result, my yard is a playing, planting, eating, harvesting colorful playground. 

And it’s not rocket science. Pick a spot. Grab a shovel. Dig.

Several ideas include:

• Ponds (with or without fish)
• Edible gardens (herbs and berries are low maintenance)
• Shade gardens (aren’t you exhausted from trying to get that patch of grass to grow in that shady spot anyway?)
• Flower gardens (my daughters love our cutting garden and free to go and pick bouquets of flowers daily for their teachers, neighbors and me).
• Rock gardens
• Meadows (good for large spaces, which here in our neck of the woods, no one really does)
• Alternatives to grass (ya know, the kind that doesn’t need watering- artificial turf, etc.)
• Bird paradise- create a big island in your yard and fill it with bird feeders, a bird bath, perches, bushes with edible berries, etc.)

If you need visual inspiration, the eye-catching book, "Beautiful No-Mow Yards," is full of stunning photos to point you in the right direction on how to get rid of your lawn and create beautiful gardens that welcome habitat for wildlife.

Reducing your lawn and replacing it with native plants will create more habitat for wildlife and a garden full of life. You’ll get to enjoy the sight of birds aflutter, swirling butterflies, hovering dragonflies, nectaring native bees and so much more.  What could be better than that?

Now, that sounds like a good return on investment to me.