Ready to rethink your lawn? Start planning now so that in the fall you'll be ready to start. Your options are “intoxicatingly plentiful,” according to the authors of the book Reimagining the California Lawn: Water-conserving Plants, Practices, and Designs (Cachuma Press, 2011).
Carol Bornstein, David Fross, and Bart O’Brien detail the compelling reasons for replacing lawns and offer a variety of garden styles featuring low-growing plants. For each garden style, the authors show examples of landscapes and discuss maintenance considerations for some of the plant choices. They talk about the historical background of lawns and the alternatives and mention public gardens where you can see more variations of a given style.
A short list of plants for each garden style is augmented by detailed plant profiles that fill over half of the book. The book is well-designed and written, easy to use, and authoritative, and at 154 pages, compact enough not to overwhelm readers.
Whether you want to do the work yourself or hire it out, you’ll want to consult this useful manual at every step, from reducing or removing existing turf to deciding between, say, blue grama and red fescue. You’ll be guided to analyze the uses and functions of existing lawn areas, and look closely at whether problem areas could be managed more intelligently by choosing different plants.
The plants highlighted in this book are better adapted to California’s mediterranean climate, so they require fewer resources and less work than traditional lawns. Many of these plants also attract birds and pollinators, creating a livelier and more interesting place to live. Gorgeous photos of plants in the landscape by John Evarts and others offer inspiration and a hint of the endless possibilities if you lose the lawn.
If you’re interested in California natives, you can narrow down your plant list by looking for the plant names printed in green ink. This book offers a nice selection of drought-tolerant plants from other parts of the world as well.
The simplest garden style is the greensward: a sweep of grasses or sedges that requires less water, infrequent or no mowing, and no fertilizers or pesticides. If you use natives, you can also increase the habitat value of your landscape. Greenswards can often accommodate foot traffic and serve as a play surface.
The joy of meadows, according to Fross, is that they are ever-changing. This is not a garden style for micromanagers. Adding annual and perennial wildflowers and bulbs to greenswards creates meadows. Though meadows are informal and naturalistic, they require a lot of attention to weeds in the first couple years.
Four other garden styles featured in the book are
* Rock gardens, which need plants that complement the rocks and don’t overwhelm them.
* Succulent gardens, which take advantage of the colors and forms of the plants.
* Carpet and tapestry gardens, which use drifts of colorful plants or mounds of foliage. Some carpet plants, such as yarrow, can be planted between pavers and tolerate occasional foot traffic.
* Kitchen gardens, which can be visually appealing year-round and provide significant yields of herbs, fruits, and vegetables.
The photos above show the range of California natives that can be used as groundcovers.
1. Woodland strawberry is ideal in dappled shade under deciduous trees.
The photos above show the range of California natives that can be used as groundcovers.
1. Woodland strawberry is ideal in dappled shade under deciduous trees.
2. California fuchsia brightens tapestry, rock, and meadow gardens from summer to fall.
3. A carpet of Radiant manzanita cascades down a slope and over the edge.
4. Tufted hair grass is ideal for meadows or greenswards as well as rock gardens.
3. A carpet of Radiant manzanita cascades down a slope and over the edge.
4. Tufted hair grass is ideal for meadows or greenswards as well as rock gardens.
copyright 2011 Tanya Kucak
