Mark and I maintain a small but intensively planted yard of about 1/3 of an acre with lots of flower beds and a 10×20 foot vegetable garden. Every year in early spring we have a five-minute moment of thinking, should we do something about our lawn this year? Should we put down some turfbuilder, or some weed-n-feed? But then we wake up. Nah. We’ve gone thirteen years doing nothing to the grass, why start now?
Besides, it looks great right now. Mind you, it isn’t exactly ready for the Scotts commercial. It has a lot of clover, and okay, we have a few dandelions. Maybe more than a few. But really, dandelions get an undeserved bad rap—it’s all in how you spin it. Are they menaces to the well-kept suburban lawn, or bright harbingers of spring that bring color to the garden? The clover isn’t technically a grass, but it’s green and soft underfoot and the honeybees love it. Same with all the buttercups that grow at the bottom of the yard. Are they broadleaf weeds that should be eradicated? Or naturalized flowers that add interest to the lawn?
And even better, they’re naturally naturalized. I never did a thing to encourage them except ask my lawn care service (i.e., long-suffering Mark) to mow around them. After 13 years in this house I’ve had plenty of time to add lots of things for him to mow around. He is very sweet about this—I know it is a pain in the neck to carefully avoid these random clusters of flowers out in the grass, but he does it without complaint. I love the cheerful look of the bright yellow blossoms. “Why honey,†I tell him ingenuously. “Lots of people pay landscapers plenty of money for this effect!†And I got mine by practicing my favorite gardening method: doing nothing. I like to think of it as the Tao of gardening.
I’ve found over the years that the best way to handle many garden problems is in fact to do absolutely nothing. You could call me lazy, but I prefer to think of myself as practicing Green methods. I mean, look at what happens when an insect pest hatches out in my vegetable garden, like aphids or worms. Sure, you could pull out the heavy duty chemicals, put on the haz-mat suit and go spray. Or you could follow my method and just wait a couple of days; see what happens. Lots of times the infestation gets knocked back just as quickly as it appears by natural predators of the insects. In my garden that would be birds or ladybugs. I have plenty of both because I don’t spray and I keep lots of shrubbery at the edge of the garden for bird habitat. The few pests that can’t be managed by doing nothing I can often avoid by putting floating row covers over young seedlings. No poison necessary and it’s pretty quick work to just lay a lightweight cloth over the ground. I’ve lost a few delicate plants over the years through my laissez-faire methods, but on the whole the system works very well for me.
Isn’t it great when doing the easy thing is actually good for you? Maybe this is a lesson I can apply to other aspects of life besides gardening. After all, doing nothing is absolutely organic and completely chemical free!
Hmmm… that’s my philosphy too. In fact, when we finally move to NM, I plan to have no lawn and sow wildflower seeds everywhere, except for where I plant perennials or put in a vedgetable garden and lay paths.
I may cave to a few square feet of gramma grass – but that’s it – bye bye lawn!