Beautiful No-Mow Yards 50 Amazing Lawn Alternatives PDF
Preview Beautiful No-Mow Yards 50 Amazing Lawn Alternatives
beautiful no-mow yards beautiful no-mow yards 50 amazing lawn alternatives Evelyn J. Hadden Copyright © 2012 by Evelyn J. Hadden. All rights reserved. Frontispiece by Saxon Holt. Published in 2012 by Timber Press, Inc. The Haseltine Building 133 S.W. Second Avenue, Suite 450 Portland, Oregon 97204-3527 timberpress.com 2 The Quadrant 135 Salusbury Road London NW6 6RJ timberpress.co.uk Printed in China Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hadden, Evelyn J. Beautiful no-mow yards: 50 amazing lawn alternatives/Evelyn J. Hadden.–1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-60469-238-9 1. Gardens–Design. 2. Ground cover plants. I. Title. II. Title: Fifty amazing lawn alternatives. SB473.H25 2012 635.9′64–dc23 2011020832 A catalog record for this book is also available from the British Library. To the many fabulous, fascinating gardeners who shared their stories with me and invited me into their gardens. Not just those who made it into these pages, but every one of you. It has been an inspiration to meet you all and see (or just hear about) the magical places you have made and loved. Your connections with your gardens feed my hope for humanity. contents Foreword by Susan Harris Preface Introduction part one design inspiration: the many possibilities Living Carpets Shade Gardens Meadow and Prairie Gardens Rain Gardens Patios Play Areas Ponds Xeric Gardens Edible Gardens Stroll Gardens Smarter Lawns part two how to get there Converting Your Lawn to a Garden Designing an Eco-friendly Garden Maintaining Your Garden Making an Eco-friendly Lawn part three choice ground-layer plants Mounding Plants Mat-forming Plants Fill-in Plants Minglers Recommended References Useful Conversions Photo Locations and Credits Index foreword For decades, gardeners on this side of the Atlantic have emulated the vast, perfect lawns of English estate-owners, who flaunted their wealth by devoting their land to an unproductive use. We’ve coddled and fussed with our lawns in hopes of creating something that meets the high expectations of golfers, all too often by following the advice in ubiquitous ads telling us to “green up” our lawns with repeated applications of products. But finally we’re beginning to see that we don’t have to conform to that crazy standard anymore. People are starting to challenge local laws and homeowner association rules that require the growing of lawn or, even worse, that lawns be green all summer—and they’re winning those challenges. Slowly we’re learning about the environmental damage done in the name of the Great American Lawn—the wasted water, the fertilizers running off into waterways, the lawn pesticides harming everything they touch: pollinators, soil, humans, and pets. We’re seeing connections between disappearing wildlife and the vast acreage we’ve devoted to a single plant that provides virtually nothing for wildlife. And then there are those fume-spewing mowers and blowers. I had a lawn for many years myself, but eventually all those negatives plus being bored to tears by lawn care inspired me to remove it all—done! Well, not so easy. To replace it with what? Researching “lawn replacement” usually yielded just one solution: a big meadow. Where were the inspiring design ideas for regular-sized yards? Or the array of plants that had proven tough and sustainable in spots that were once lawn? Or some realistic advice about how to maintain them? Despite my decades of gardening, I had no idea how to convert my lawn to something that might really work. But in my search for alternatives I did find someone who’d been speaking and writing about lawn reduction for a decade already, and it was Minnesota rabble-rouser Evelyn Hadden. So I enlisted her and a few others excited about this subject, and we formed the Lawn Reform Coalition to spread the word about natural lawn care, better types of grasses, and ways to reduce or eliminate lawns altogether. But the coalition’s website (lawnreform.org) can’t showcase the whole range of alternatives to the bad old ways of lawns and lawn care, with stories about real gardeners who’ve created gardens that are healthier and far more satisfying. To fill that void, we now have Beautiful No-Mow Yards. It’s packed with photos (many by the renowned Saxon Holt) of real gardens, including my own, where I endured several failures in the search for effective lawn alternatives. If only this book had existed a few years ago! In her book Evelyn has used the same inclusive approach adopted by the Lawn Reform Coalition— avoiding finger-pointing and the simplistic one-solution-for-everyone advice we find in so much information about “sustainable gardening.” Instead, she gently leads readers to make peace with their land by growing plants that connect them with nature, and by creating spaces to gather, play, and calm their overworked souls. Beautiful No-Mow Yards is an important book not just because it’s so darn definitive, but because it’s for such a large audience: eco-minded non-gardeners trying to reduce their lawn, beginning gardeners who want gardens filled with glorious plants, and experienced gardeners like myself who are taking their gardens into unknown territory. I predict that first you’ll enjoy this book, then you’ll really enjoy the new life it helps you create just outside your back door. Your front door, too. Go for it! Susan Harris, co-founder of the team blog GardenRant and founder of the Lawn Reform Coalition preface as a nature lover who also happens to enjoy gardening, I have been avidly studying, experimenting with, and having conversations about lawn alternatives ever since I bought my first house (and lawn). During the year in which I assembled the photos and wrote the text for this book, I came to appreciate anew the diverse personalities of gardens and their gardeners, and the stories that both contain. A garden is a dynamic art form that depends on people for its ongoing life. The art does not exist merely within the garden but is also held and nurtured within the soul of the gardener; a real and powerful part of any garden is the relationship between it and the people who cherish it. I have seen the heart go out of gardens whose gardener moved away. I have felt the amplified energy of gardens that are loved and cared for by a group of people. There are so many ways that a place can be enlivened by connections with people that I hesitate to say, as I once did, that land left to its own devices will be more full of life than land that is intensively cared for by people. And that gives me hope that, in the future, our landscapes will be as varied and alive and artful and touching as the people who shape them. All that we need to do is rediscover the many wonderful things that can happen when you take a serious interest in your landscape’s individual character and its good health. These revelations are what this book is really about.
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