In article m,
VX wrote:
On Thu, 8 Sep 2005 20:35:27 +0100, Nick Maclaren wrote
(in message ):

It might be a good alternative, if you regard a lawn as something
to look at, and JUST possibly allow the occasional visitor to walk
on barefoot. There is nothing that is less hassle than grass for
a lawn if you every have anyone walking on it in shoes.

I have to ask- what happens if I occasionally walk on it? I would normally
walk on this hypothetical lawn once or twice a week, wearing some sort of
footwear, to do some watering and dead-heading of what is around it. And of
course to do other gardening around it. Maybe I could manage all that by
having stepping stones around (within) the circumference and down the
centre....

Shoes tend to be hard, and it is the crushing that causes the damage.
Stepping stones could well work.

I'm thinking it HAS to be better than a grass lawn simply because the
existing very badly neglected and 30% bald grass lawn hasn't b een mown by
me at all since I moved here in March- my physical limitations make mowing
pretty much off-limits and so it just hasn't been done. I can't get others to
mow it because when I can get help there is always other stuff that is more
important. So a non-mow juniper or chamomile (?) lawn is still looking like a
better alternative to the awful neglected exciuse for a that lawn I currently
have.

Hope springs infernal.

Such lawns are more effort, as you HAVE to weed them. Thyme is good
in poor, dry soil, as that will help to keep weeds down - and the
answer to datsy is "In Scotland?" Remember that, whenever people
say that something HAS to be better than what they have, they are
about to learn a bitter lesson.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.