Example Lawn Evaluation
People come to WildLawn looking for a natural solution to their lawn problems. This article profiles a typical example: a homeowner with a struggling one-acre lawn.
The Problem
Pat and Kris decided to change school districts and move into an older up-scale development with large properties. Previously farmland, trees now dominate the ridge top landscape and the original lush turf grass yard yielded long ago to eroded soils, invasive species, and overall landscape malaise. Kris called WildLawn to see if we could somehow “fix” their ailing lawn.
The Diagnosis
The large trees are predominantly maples, red, silver, and red-silver hybrids. Maples cast moderate shade and their surface-rooted nature tends to wick away soil moisture. The result: classic dry shade conditions under which most turf grass lawns cannot survive. Invasive plants quickly took the place of the turf grass in areas where enough moisture is available while nothing much took hold in the driest areas. Various landscaping contractors would invariably mow everything, even the bare spots, contributing to the loss of about 9” of topsoil. Only subsoil remains in the yard.
Getting back to a lush turf grass yard is certainly possible, but would require two fairly expensive investments: 1) removing most of the 15 large trees to allow enough sunlight for a turf lawn, and 2} importing about 50 triaxle truckloads of topsoil. Given the project’s size, county soil conservation district involvement would be unavoidable along with all the necessary erosion control measures necessary to hold the new soil in place during establishment of the new lawn.
The estimated $75,000 expense to get a new turf-type lawn to which they would anyway become indentured servants just didn’t make sense to the young, ecologically-minded homeowners.
The Prescription
The WildLawn ecologist performing the evaluation identified a potentially appealing alternative approach. The lawn survey revealed several patches of grasses and sedges (sedges are grass-like species) commonly associated with dry, shady upland sites that are well-known to look pretty fantastic if allowed to reach their full potential. So instead of forcing the property into become something that it could never naturally become, the recommendation focused on accepting the reality of the site and accelerating its transition from turf to an all-native ridge top grass and sedge lawn., along with a few flowering species for the pollinators.
Making the transition needn’t cost much but would require patience, diligence, and commitment to a set of steps that include both conventional and unconventional activities.
The first step is to rid the property of invasive plants. Freeing the property from invasive weeds should be completed before taking any other step; it is the single most beneficial thing you can do for your native landscape.
The second step involves finding, identifying, and labeling the good plant patches and encouraging their expansion. And then, don’t mow the patches.
Thirdly, keep the areas around the good plant patches free of leaves and weeds, while disturbing the soil as little as possible. The patches will expand on their own, albeit slowly.
These are the basic steps to restoring any landscape, as long as the species you need are already present in some reasonable quantities, as was the case in this example.
WildLawn can speed up the establishment of a natural, native lawn by actively managing the project and by adding species using seed or plugs.
Sometimes, where there are no desirable species present and there is no reasonable prospect for them to arrive on their own, introducing the desirable species on a large scale through a complete restoration effort is the only viable option.
The Report
A written report culminates the evaluation or consultative process. In all cases, WildLawn makes recommendations that the homeowner is able to implement on their own, if they have the interest and time. WildLawn can make the seeds and plants available for the DIY folks.