"Warwick" wrote in message
...
In article ,
says...

"Joe" wrote in message
. ..
On Fri, 2 Jul 2004 at 18:21:16 Les &/or Claire
wrote:

Reading back through the posts over the last few months
I'm still
puzzled by peoples need for a mono-culture lawn. I can think of
nothing
more
boring in a garden than a "perfect" lawn. The amount of work,
feed and
weedkiller it takes to produce a "bowling green" type lawn must
be
horrendous. Not to mention the expense of turf, seed and water.
To my
mind,
the plants, fungi and moss ( a mossy lawn in bare feet in the
summer.....
delicious! ) that arrive if you just mow an area are much more
interesting,
beautiful to look at, harder wearing, better for the
environment and more
practical than a luminous green, over fed, fragile, artificial
lawn.
I would hate a garden without daises, dandelions and fairy
rings.
Plus,
a mixture of plants in a lawn attract many beneficial insects
and help to
preserve bio diversity, a thing much undervalued in our
gardens.
So, throw away the moss killer, weedkiller, lawn feed,
roller and
raise
the blades on your mower a few inches. Let nature back in and
let your
lawn
be part of nature, not apart from nature!

Les )


We all have our individual likes and dislikes: some of us enjoy
growing
vegetables, others are obsessed with organic methods, some like
hard
landscaping, others prefer a more rustic environment. There's
nothing
wrong with a perfect lawn ... I admire them, and if I had the
time, I
would strive to perfection also.


Quite right - if someone wants a 'perfect' lawn, good luck to
them. As for
all this 'Let nature back in and let your lawn be part of nature,
not apart
from nature!' stuff, it sounds good, but is pretty meaningless,
really. If a
gardener were to really 'let nature back in', he/she would have to
just stop
gardening altogether and let things take care of themselves.
Pretty soon,
there'd be no lawn, beds, or any recognisable 'garden' at all. A
lawn with
long grass and a few 'weeds' tolerated isn't much more 'natural'
than one
with short grass and fewer 'weeds'.

Yes, but there are 'acceptable' lawn plants IMHO and grass is just
one
of them. Th lawn I acquired with the house only held grass and dock
in
the main and I wasn't going to tolerate dock, but there was
something
missing that my inner child demanded and I'm actually actively
working
on. We're up to 6 patches of thriving clover spreading their way out
and, to make for the most bizarre side of greenhouse staging in the
UK I
am growing daisies and splitting them as often as I dare to get them
into the lawn before the end of the year.

Thymus serpyllum is an excellent plant fot a mixed lawn If you mow
irregularly enough, you are rewarded with a carpet of flowers. It
propagates as easily as falling off a bar stool.

Franz