Lawns and gardens go hand in hand, like salt and chips or Paul Hollywood and St. Tropez. Could one be seen without the other? It may be hard to imagine but lawn hegemony is not a necessary state of affairs. I remember Bob Flowerdew talking about how much strife he had with a 'green thing' growing in the middle of his garden - he could never get it to behave no matter the money or time spent - and when he finally got rid of his lawn his garden was transformed.
Consider these two reasons for re-thinking a lawn…
Lawns are expensive
Let’s say an average lawn gets a mow twice per month during the growing season, March - October, that’s 15-20 hours per year of mowing minimum. Assuming you did nothing else to your lawn that’s two days of your life each year cutting grass. Like hair, most lawns also require more than a trim. To maintain a minty fresh green needs treatment in the form of aeration, feeding, weeding, raking out thatch and re-seeding; that’s another two days. If we sum the opportunity cost of this time plus the hard cash on products it’s clear what an expensive hobby they make.
Lawns are bad for the health of your garden
Just as Newton’s three laws of motion underpin our lives so there are fundamental principles that underpin the health of a garden:
Avoid chemicals
Embrace diversity
Your average lawn undermines at least one of the above concepts: they're typically low in species diversity, comprised of a handful of dominant grasses. This lowers the availability of food in the form of nectar, pollen or seeds. And because the grasses that comprise lawns rarely flower, they are effectively green deserts, with very limited ability to support any kind of insect or birdlife.
Let your lawn go
No doubt to every lawn there is a season - to cushion capering children or host the odd ball game. But they are capable of more than basic domestic duties, lawns can multi-task. If they do serve a helpful function there exist options less committed than total relinquishment. You can try putting aside an area to experiment with:
Put in some colour: Tapestry lawns are entirely grass free, grown with a selection of flowering plants, a more radical take on a meadow.
Try some length: Simply allowing an area of grass to grow long will bring in more insects, like grasshoppers, which be glad for extra cover and protection.
Sow a strip of colour: annuals like corn marigolds and nigella are useful for cheering up a section of tired grass (left).
Whichever route you decide works best, please don’t go artificial, this remains an unforgivable horticultural sin.
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