Your lawn is a source of pride or pain, the crown jewel of your block
or the dirty black mark nobody wants to talk about. You want your lawn
to look as beautiful as the ones you see on television, in magazines,
and even down the street, but you don't have hundreds of dollars at
your disposal.
If you have the right knowledge and tools at your disposal, you can
turn your grass into that ideal vision you've always dreamed about! You
just need to know a few key points about fertilization, soil selection,
growth, aeration, and some others, and then you can go on to build that
lawn of your dreams.
It's not as overwhelming as it seems even from the paragraph above. The
information is the key point, and what you do with the information is
what will save and upgrade your grass.
Get information about building a lawn from the ground up AND how to
keep it as gorgeous as it looked when it was first installed. Plus,
detailed and illustrated section about the dangers of erosion and how
to prevent this common problem!
But.....
If you think that building your dream lawn will take years...
If you think that you'll be bored out of your mind reading a book about
grass growing...
If you think that your money is better spent just trying to make your
yard look passable...
You're Positively Wrong.....
You've seen that huge section of lawn and garden books at the bookstore
and library.
They look like encyclopedias and read like them, too! They contain
information about so many different types of plants and grass that it's
nearly impossible to figure out exactly what you need to do in your
particular situation. You need something that goes step-by-step in
creating yard utopia.
http://lawncarerngn.blogspot.com/#

Methinks too many of us are obsessed with the big lawn. What does it
accomplish? Is anyone really impressed by a neat lawn, other than
recognizing that another neighbor has traded in one of his kids to
invest in a crop-less comodity?

But then, why do we buy large lots in the first place? Is it a status
symbol, like a luxury vehicle? If we need a status symbol, why not be
the first in your block with an ostentatious native plant garden in
front of your house?

In case you're wondering, no I don't think there is such a thing as a
native lawn. If I'm wrong about this, please correct me?

Raycruzer
weeder
---
Cover your lot with things bugs can eat...


william london wrote:
Your lawn is a source of pride or pain, the crown jewel of your block
or the dirty black mark nobody wants to talk about. You want your lawn
to look as beautiful as the ones you see on television, in magazines,
and even down the street, but you don't have hundreds of dollars at
your disposal.
If you have the right knowledge and tools at your disposal, you can
turn your grass into that ideal vision you've always dreamed about! You
just need to know a few key points about fertilization, soil selection,
growth, aeration, and some others, and then you can go on to build that
lawn of your dreams.
It's not as overwhelming as it seems even from the paragraph above. The
information is the key point, and what you do with the information is
what will save and upgrade your grass.
Get information about building a lawn from the ground up AND how to
keep it as gorgeous as it looked when it was first installed. Plus,
detailed and illustrated section about the dangers of erosion and how
to prevent this common problem!
But.....
If you think that building your dream lawn will take years...
If you think that you'll be bored out of your mind reading a book about
grass growing...
If you think that your money is better spent just trying to make your
yard look passable...
You're Positively Wrong.....
You've seen that huge section of lawn and garden books at the bookstore
and library.
They look like encyclopedias and read like them, too! They contain
information about so many different types of plants and grass that it's
nearly impossible to figure out exactly what you need to do in your
particular situation. You need something that goes step-by-step in
creating yard utopia.
http://lawncarerngn.blogspot.com/#

Good points, Ray. I hope you don't mind that I'm rearranging your post
to fix the top-posting...


raycruzer wrote:
william london wrote:
Your lawn is a source of pride or pain, the crown jewel of your block
or the dirty black mark nobody wants to talk about. You want your lawn
to look as beautiful as the ones you see on television, in magazines,
and even down the street, but you don't have hundreds of dollars at
your disposal.
If you have the right knowledge and tools at your disposal, you can
turn your grass into that ideal vision you've always dreamed about! You
just need to know a few key points about fertilization, soil selection,
growth, aeration, and some others, and then you can go on to build that
lawn of your dreams.
It's not as overwhelming as it seems even from the paragraph above. The
information is the key point, and what you do with the information is
what will save and upgrade your grass.
Get information about building a lawn from the ground up AND how to
keep it as gorgeous as it looked when it was first installed. Plus,
detailed and illustrated section about the dangers of erosion and how
to prevent this common problem!
But.....
If you think that building your dream lawn will take years...
If you think that you'll be bored out of your mind reading a book about
grass growing...
If you think that your money is better spent just trying to make your
yard look passable...
You're Positively Wrong.....
You've seen that huge section of lawn and garden books at the bookstore
and library.
They look like encyclopedias and read like them, too! They contain
information about so many different types of plants and grass that it's
nearly impossible to figure out exactly what you need to do in your
particular situation. You need something that goes step-by-step in
creating yard utopia.
http://lawncarerngn.blogspot.com/#

Methinks too many of us are obsessed with the big lawn. What does it
accomplish? Is anyone really impressed by a neat lawn, other than
recognizing that another neighbor has traded in one of his kids to
invest in a crop-less comodity?

But then, why do we buy large lots in the first place? Is it a status
symbol, like a luxury vehicle? If we need a status symbol, why not be
the first in your block with an ostentatious native plant garden in
front of your house?

In case you're wondering, no I don't think there is such a thing as a
native lawn. If I'm wrong about this, please correct me?

Raycruzer
weeder
---
Cover your lot with things bugs can eat...


What is the natural analog to the lawn? It's a savannah, a short-turf
grassland. Yes, there are places where the natural landscape looks
quite a bit like a lawn. Four such places come to mind. They may look
similar, but in fact they are quite different ecologically.

The first is the Scottish moors. Grazing animals keep the grass short,
and shrubs scarce. This was probably true even before the introduction
of any grazing animals which had been domesticated by humans. The
original golf course was likely a natural landscape. With modest
temperatures and rainfall, with fertilizer provided by animal manure,
and lawn-mowing services provided by those same animals, the ecology of
the Scottish moors is self-sustaining.

The second grassland prototype is the savannah of sub-Saharan Africa,
such as you would find in the Serengeti Plain of Kenya. Even though
the temperature and rainfall patterns here differ a lot from those in
Scotland, the combination of climate and the presence of grazing
animals produces the same effect. It's a favorable habitat for
land-based predators. You can see a long way, and you can run without
tripping. Some scientists have speculated that humans have a natural
affinity for a savannah habitat, because Homo sapiens got its start in
just such a location. This may influence our gardening choices.

The final two grassland habitats I will mention are both in the United
States. There are, of course, more grasslands around the world than
those I mention here, but the ones I discuss should be sufficient to
advance my argument.

In the central United States, west of the Mississippi River, grasslands
dominated. What little remains of those grasslands in our day takes
the form of "tallgrass prairie" and, as such, we are not likely to see
it as an analog to a lawn. But there was also a lot of SHORT-grass
prairie -- and it owed its existence to the buffalo. When we hunted
the buffalo to near-extinction, we also eliminated a habitat which we
would have found to be a reasonable starting point for "a lawn."

Finally, there are grasslands in California. While grassland terrain
is common here, little of it is natural. No bovine animals lived here
until the Europeans came. The introduction of cattle to California
displaced the native grazing animals -- deer, elk, and antelope. The
native animals were "top-browsers" -- they chewed the first few inches
of a plant's extremities, and left the rest. Cattle and buffalo much
plants straight to the ground. Not every plant can handle that.
Cattle browsed the California native perennial grasses and the more
tender chaparral shrubs to near-extinction. The seeds of annual
Mediterranean grasses contaminated the feed of the first cattle to be
brought here, and these spread into the spaces left empty after the
cattle had come through. Still, there are known relic grasslands here,
places which the cattle never reached.

So, are there "natural lawns?" Yes, there are. Here's the problem.
American gardening is inherited from its dominant cultural influence,
England. We don't just want grass -- we want *English* (i.e.,
Scottish) lawns. We want golf courses. We don't care whether any type
of lawn is supported by the local climactic conditions. And we
certainly don't want sheep, goats, cows, and deer in our yards. We
don't care that the Scottish heath is actually a polyculture, with
leguminous plants to fix nitrogen, and animals to eat the plants and
spread manure. We don't care that an English gardener can get away
with eliminating some of the components of the Scottish heath and still
achieve a reasonable effect, because the climate is similar. No -- we
are determined, one way or another, to make that bright carpet of
monocultured golf-course turf grass appear, wherever we live.

You mention native plants. I live in California, where the interest in
native plants is relatively high. Adventurous gardeners are making
efforts to emulate the native grasslands in their yards. Such
grasslands do tend to look different -- they favor bunch grasses over
running turf grasses -- but you can walk on (or through) many of them,
and you can mow them. Of course there are compromises -- most people
do not have deer (or elk or antelope) to mow their native grasses.
Still, for the most part, you don't have to water these native
grasslands. If you let them go dormant in the summer (a strange
concept for you gardeners in non-Mediterranean climates, I know), they
will come back when the winter rains begin. Creeping red fescue
(Festuca rubra) is gaining a following out here.

If you lived in the central United States, you might consider growing
(surprise) Buffalo grass, Buchloe dactyloides. My Uncle in New Mexico
planted a large swath of buffalo grass. Like fescue, it's more of a
bunch grass than dense turf. But it is fairly uniform, and low -- and
this captures a lot of what people seem to like about lawns.

If we want "grassland" in our gardens, we would do well to consider
alternatives which match our native environments. A little flexibility
in our concept of "a lawn" can go a long way.

If we are still determined to live on a Scottish golf course, we should
move to Scotland.


+-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-+
| Ladasky Home Solar, Inc.: blowing sunshine up your |
| power grid since March 24, 2005. Fiat lux! |
+-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-+
| Uptime Downtime kWh generated kWh consumed |
| 633 days 6.5 hours 11413 11996 |
+-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-+

On Dec 18, 10:12 am, "John Ladasky" wrote:
Good points, Ray. I hope you don't mind that I'm rearranging your post
to fix the top-posting...





raycruzer wrote:
william london wrote:
Your lawn is a source of pride or pain, the crown jewel of your block
or the dirty black mark nobody wants to talk about. You want your lawn
to look as beautiful as the ones you see on television, in magazines,
and even down the street, but you don't have hundreds of dollars at
your disposal.
If you have the right knowledge and tools at your disposal, you can
turn your grass into that ideal vision you've always dreamed about! You
just need to know a few key points about fertilization, soil selection,
growth, aeration, and some others, and then you can go on to build that
lawn of your dreams.
It's not as overwhelming as it seems even from the paragraph above. The
information is the key point, and what you do with the information is
what will save and upgrade your grass.
Get information about building a lawn from the ground up AND how to
keep it as gorgeous as it looked when it was first installed. Plus,
detailed and illustrated section about the dangers of erosion and how
to prevent this common problem!
But.....
If you think that building your dream lawn will take years...
If you think that you'll be bored out of your mind reading a book about
grass growing...
If you think that your money is better spent just trying to make your
yard look passable...
You're Positively Wrong.....
You've seen that huge section of lawn and garden books at the bookstore
and library.
They look like encyclopedias and read like them, too! They contain
information about so many different types of plants and grass that it's
nearly impossible to figure out exactly what you need to do in your
particular situation. You need something that goes step-by-step in
creating yard utopia.
http://lawncarerngn.blogspot.com/#

Methinks too many of us are obsessed with the big lawn. What does it
accomplish? Is anyone really impressed by a neat lawn, other than
recognizing that another neighbor has traded in one of his kids to
invest in a crop-less comodity?

But then, why do we buy large lots in the first place? Is it a status
symbol, like a luxury vehicle? If we need a status symbol, why not be
the first in your block with an ostentatious native plant garden in
front of your house?

In case you're wondering, no I don't think there is such a thing as a
native lawn. If I'm wrong about this, please correct me?

Raycruzer
weeder
---
Cover your lot with things bugs can eat...What is the natural analog to the lawn? It's a savannah, a short-turf
grassland. Yes, there are places where the natural landscape looks
quite a bit like a lawn. Four such places come to mind. They may look
similar, but in fact they are quite different ecologically.

The first is the Scottish moors. Grazing animals keep the grass short,
and shrubs scarce. This was probably true even before the introduction
of any grazing animals which had been domesticated by humans. The
original golf course was likely a natural landscape. With modest
temperatures and rainfall, with fertilizer provided by animal manure,
and lawn-mowing services provided by those same animals, the ecology of
the Scottish moors is self-sustaining.

The second grassland prototype is the savannah of sub-Saharan Africa,
such as you would find in the Serengeti Plain of Kenya. Even though
the temperature and rainfall patterns here differ a lot from those in
Scotland, the combination of climate and the presence of grazing
animals produces the same effect. It's a favorable habitat for
land-based predators. You can see a long way, and you can run without
tripping. Some scientists have speculated that humans have a natural
affinity for a savannah habitat, because Homo sapiens got its start in
just such a location. This may influence our gardening choices.

The final two grassland habitats I will mention are both in the United
States. There are, of course, more grasslands around the world than
those I mention here, but the ones I discuss should be sufficient to
advance my argument.

In the central United States, west of the Mississippi River, grasslands
dominated. What little remains of those grasslands in our day takes
the form of "tallgrass prairie" and, as such, we are not likely to see
it as an analog to a lawn. But there was also a lot of SHORT-grass
prairie -- and it owed its existence to the buffalo. When we hunted
the buffalo to near-extinction, we also eliminated a habitat which we
would have found to be a reasonable starting point for "a lawn."

Finally, there are grasslands in California. While grassland terrain
is common here, little of it is natural. No bovine animals lived here
until the Europeans came. The introduction of cattle to California
displaced the native grazing animals -- deer, elk, and antelope. The
native animals were "top-browsers" -- they chewed the first few inches
of a plant's extremities, and left the rest. Cattle and buffalo much
plants straight to the ground. Not every plant can handle that.
Cattle browsed the California native perennial grasses and the more
tender chaparral shrubs to near-extinction. The seeds of annual
Mediterranean grasses contaminated the feed of the first cattle to be
brought here, and these spread into the spaces left empty after the
cattle had come through. Still, there are known relic grasslands here,
places which the cattle never reached.

So, are there "natural lawns?" Yes, there are. Here's the problem.
American gardening is inherited from its dominant cultural influence,
England. We don't just want grass -- we want *English* (i.e.,
Scottish) lawns. We want golf courses. We don't care whether any type
of lawn is supported by the local climactic conditions. And we
certainly don't want sheep, goats, cows, and deer in our yards. We
don't care that the Scottish heath is actually a polyculture, with
leguminous plants to fix nitrogen, and animals to eat the plants and
spread manure. We don't care that an English gardener can get away
with eliminating some of the components of the Scottish heath and still
achieve a reasonable effect, because the climate is similar. No -- we
are determined, one way or another, to make that bright carpet of
monocultured golf-course turf grass appear, wherever we live.

You mention native plants. I live in California, where the interest in
native plants is relatively high. Adventurous gardeners are making
efforts to emulate the native grasslands in their yards. Such
grasslands do tend to look different -- they favor bunch grasses over
running turf grasses -- but you can walk on (or through) many of them,
and you can mow them. Of course there are compromises -- most people
do not have deer (or elk or antelope) to mow their native grasses.
Still, for the most part, you don't have to water these native
grasslands. If you let them go dormant in the summer (a strange
concept for you gardeners in non-Mediterranean climates, I know), they
will come back when the winter rains begin. Creeping red fescue
(Festuca rubra) is gaining a following out here.

If you lived in the central United States, you might consider growing
(surprise) Buffalo grass, Buchloe dactyloides. My Uncle in New Mexico
planted a large swath of buffalo grass. Like fescue, it's more of a
bunch grass than dense turf. But it is fairly uniform, and low -- and
this captures a lot of what people seem to like about lawns.

If we want "grassland" in our gardens, we would do well to consider
alternatives which match our native environments. A little flexibility
in our concept of "a lawn" can go a long way.

If we are still determined to live on a Scottish golf course, we should
move to Scotland.

+-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-+
| Ladasky Home Solar, Inc.: blowing sunshine up your |
| power grid since March 24, 2005. Fiat lux! |
+-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-+
| Uptime Downtime kWh generated kWh consumed |
| 633 days 6.5 hours 11413 11996 |
+-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-+- Hide quoted text -- Show quoted text -

Thanks, John, for an excellent and informative piece on the culture of
lawns and native substitutes.

I'm glad that there are people in various regions who are creating
beautiful native gardens over spaces that were once monoculture lawns.
Some samples of lawn conversions are also identifed at the Ergonica
World of Weeds website. Another encouraging movement is the
Permaculture ideology that is currently fermenting a number of ways of
creating sustainable lifestyles with no waste, and in a sence, no
weeds. Many weed solution providers, like myself, would be out of a
job if weeds were welcomed in every garden. But I suspect, some
uninvited plants would require removal in one way or another.

Perhaps what the lawn conversion movement needs is for some clever
entrepreneur to bag some seeds that you can sprinkle over your lawn and
convert it to a native grass or alternative groundcover without the
need to dig it up. Just sow the native seeds over your lawn and stop
mowing or watering!

Then, I don't want to point the finger at the horticulture industry
without also enearthing the dirt of agriculture. If anything seriously
threatens the diversity of species on this planet, second to a giant
metiorite or earthquake, its our everyday practice of agriculture.
Even organic agriculture focuses too much on monoculture to the demise
of any other species in the fields.

Help!

Raycruzer
weeder
-----
"On the Semantics of Evolution"