The No Mow Lawn

As I defensively say; our front lawn is not pretty. Seriously, there were a few straggly weeds growing in lonely islands when we moved in a few years ago and we decided that the place would look better if we removed the few green weeds and covered the whole muddy mess with pinestraw.

Our plan was to plant grass seed or lay sod in early spring...but time got away from us. Before we knew it the temperature was too high to work in the yard, Georgia was experiencing a draught, and our neighborhood had a watering ban. We congratulated one another on the wisdom of having pinestraw instead of expensive dead sod.

The next spring Mister was working crazy long hours, I was working days and attending college in evenings, and the drought was still holding strong. We decided it to refresh the pinestraw and call it good.

I am using our front garden as part of my project for this course- and it has really gotten me thinking about how nice it has been to not mow a lawn. We have the ubiquitus strip of grass between the azaleas and the street so Mister gets his bi-monthly fill of mowing. I am in charge of mowing our back garden; a mixture of grass and clover mixture that the dogs enjoy running through- clover doesn't get that tall so if I am not in the mood to mow it doesn't really matter to anyone but the chihuahua. She can be pretty vocal if the grass/clover gets too tall, but I can be pretty deaf to her if I have to.

All of this time of not mowing the pinestraw has spoiled me; I don't want to start mowing the front garden. I have been checking out no-mow lawn alternatives this week. Many of the homes in Atlanta have very little grass, the greenery is provided by groundcover such as ivy, liriope, or moss.

 

Dwarf mondo grass used in place of grass. Photo found on Walter Reeves' "Gardening in Georgia" website.

 

 

Another photo from Walter Reeves' "Gardening in Georgia."

 

 

I have also been looking at clips on HGTV's website of garden makeovers and what can be done without using grass. One clip that has the feel I like is Mondo Man, he does go too far for my taste (the reason I am looking at dwarf mondo grass is because I don't want to spend all that time tending to the lawn) but I like how he adapted his garden to what successfully grows well.

 

Ivy is another green alternative we are looking at, and one Mister likes better, so we will try to fill in the area under the large trees with it. A local garden center was having an end of summer sale and I picked up a flat of ivy to get things started. I would have picked up more but an ivy shopper beat me to the sale. I hope to get the ivy planted this upcoming weekend.

 

The descriptions don't sound like much, but I am actually starting to have a better idea of how I want the front garden to look...