I'm thinking of taking up, what's rest of my lawn, and putting beautiful
plants in its place.

How many would agree or disagree to this proposal?

Draven

In article , Draven
writes
I'm thinking of taking up, what's rest of my lawn, and putting beautiful
plants in its place.

How many would agree or disagree to this proposal?

It's up to you, isn't it? Some people like immaculate pure grass lawns
and are willing to spend enough time to make them like that, some people
want grass for sitting on, playing football on or whatever. I hate
mowing, and find dense planting much easier and more fun to maintain.

We've removed all the grass from the front garden and replaced it by
plants and ponds, and are really pleased with the result - lower
maintenance and much more to look at. And the piece at the back is now
less than half the size it was. It's not a big garden, but you now have
to walk around it to see everything of interest rather than taking it
all in at a glance.
--
Kay
"Do not insult the crocodile until you have crossed the river"

"Draven" wrote in message
. uk...
I'm thinking of taking up, what's rest of my lawn, and putting beautiful
plants in its place.

How many would agree or disagree to this proposal?

Draven



We opened our garden up to the public this year on a fund raising day. More
than one person remarked 'Thank God 'someone' still has a lawn'

Mike

"Draven" wrote in message
. uk...
I'm thinking of taking up, what's rest of my lawn, and putting beautiful
plants in its place.

How many would agree or disagree to this proposal?


Grass is fine if you have 5 acres and grazing animals, otherwise I'd stick
to the varieties that are 2 inches in diameter and 20 foot tall :-)

(I can't recommend PINK pampas though (it was wrongly labelled) - mine looks
like rags on sticks after the first bit of autumn weather)

..

"Draven" wrote in message
. uk...
I'm thinking of taking up, what's rest of my lawn, and putting beautiful
plants in its place.

How many would agree or disagree to this proposal?

We opened our garden up to the public this year on a fund raising day. More
than one person remarked 'Thank God 'someone' still has a lawn'

Mike

Personally, I don't have much interest in creating one of those
carefully nursed, showcase areas of grass. I'm probably a gardening
philistine but I've never really understood the point of them. They
also bring back painful childhood memories of those expanses of perfect
grass that we weren't allowed to play football on.

If Mike is opening up his garden to the public, he is a different sort
of gardener from me. My household is just too anarchic to tolerate a
true lawn. We have patches of bumpy grass that we like, but even these
I would be happy to see replaced in time with more interesting plants.


In short, I don't dislike lawns but I prefer other people to have them.

"Draven" wrote in message
. uk...
I'm thinking of taking up, what's rest of my lawn, and putting beautiful
plants in its place.

How many would agree or disagree to this proposal?

Draven
My wife but I would not...have been trying to convince wifey for many many
moons to get rid of the grass....H

"Kay" wrote in message
...
In article , Draven
writes
I'm thinking of taking up, what's rest of my lawn, and putting beautiful
plants in its place.

How many would agree or disagree to this proposal?

It's up to you, isn't it? Some people like immaculate pure grass lawns
and are willing to spend enough time to make them like that, some people
want grass for sitting on, playing football on or whatever. I hate
mowing, and find dense planting much easier and more fun to maintain.

We've removed all the grass from the front garden and replaced it by
plants and ponds, and are really pleased with the result - lower
maintenance and much more to look at. And the piece at the back is now
less than half the size it was. It's not a big garden, but you now have
to walk around it to see everything of interest rather than taking it
all in at a glance.
--

Our front garden is the same, easy to look at and easy to maintain, and I
think that the simplicity of the front garden, was what the visitors
expected of the back, but with the shrubs, flowers, trees AND the bit of
lawn, as one person said as they walked round the side of the house and saw
the back garden "WOW!!"

:-))

Mike

On 30/10/05 10:19, in article
, "Draven"
wrote:

I'm thinking of taking up, what's rest of my lawn, and putting beautiful
plants in its place.

How many would agree or disagree to this proposal?

If you're not going to use your lawn to sit on or for children to play on,
then getting rid of it is certainly an option. But do take into
consideration what sort of house you live in, too. Some older houses do
really beg for a lawn and would look rather lost without one. For example,
our is a Victorian vicarage and the lawn in front of it is a key to the
whole garden, IMO. In old-fashioned terms, the lawn was the 'heart' of the
flower garden and everything worked round it, whatever the size of house or
garden.
Just digging it up and shoving in more shrubs without looking at the overall
structure with the plants or beds you have now, would be a mistake, IMO. I
like Kay's idea of putting in ponds and perhaps focusing the planting in
that way.
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
(remove the weeds to email me)

Carefully take up and stack the grass turves upside down in an odd corner to
rot. Cover with porous black sheeting to prevent growth of weeds and in a
year or so you'll have a great fibrous soil compost

Skim off the topsoil progressively across the area and put it in raised beds
placed where you decide. You may need to add peat and/or grit.

When all the area is populated with the raised beds you decide on, surround
with 14 mm gravel chippings about 100 mm deep. Large areas of gravel can be
populated with small wooden planters (like the raised beds) but just having
dishes and flower pots in them. DO NOT have any membrane under the gravel.
Polythene sheeting really is no good and a porous membrane, although it
prevents weed growing upwards, it does not stop wind blown seeds growing
downwards and gripping the membrane with their roots making large
weeds/grass difficult to remove. If you work out the cost, I dare say deep
gravel without membrane is cheaper that half the depth of gravel with
membrane!

That's what I did with most of my front 20 by 8 metre front lawn. Each side
of my 300 mm raised beds are made of two lengths of 150 mm gravel board
held together with 300 mm lengths of small sized roofing battens cut at
45deg. and nailed with vertical spacing the width of a batten . Painted a
terra cotta colour on the outside with bitumen paint on the inside, they
look a treat and many people have said how good the garden now looks. My
two 1.2 X 2.4 metre beds are planted with various coloured heathers and
three approx.1.5 m square beds have small trees and springtime bulbs in
them.

A narrowish herbaceous border (h.b.) surrounds the area and is separated
from
the gravel by 150 mm gravel board similar to the raised beds. That almost
completes the picture except that one larger h.b. is now planted with a
variety of shrubs, bulbs, primroses and cyclamen poking through a mulch of
bark chippings to keep weeding to a minimum. There's also two small pea
gravel mulched 150mm high 450 mm square raised beds on the larger h.b. -
they have minarett apples in them.

I would have sent you a picture but your ISP does not allow attachments.

Regards

Geoff

The message k
from Sacha contains these words:

Just digging it up and shoving in more shrubs without looking at the overall
structure with the plants or beds you have now, would be a mistake, IMO. I
like Kay's idea of putting in ponds and perhaps focusing the planting in
that way.

Indeed - but my garden is rather narrow and fairly long, and a pond is
difficult, especially as I've a fair number of shrubs, and there's a
line of Lombardy poplars at the back, all shedding leaves into ponds at
this time of year.

I do have a plot lined up for a pond though, and strangely (to keep on
topic) it's the 'lawn' - about eight feet by ten feet of dank, creeping,
unkempt stuff which only gets much sun in high summer.

Along the south of the ten feet is a dense six foot hedge and a winter
viburnum, the west is bounded by Cotoneaster horizontalis trained
through 90°, and only the eastern aspect is unenjungled. However, ATM it
has a *BIG* black polythene orange juice container blotting out the sun
until I can find (and construct) somewhere to place it. (Rainwater
collection...)

--
Rusty
Men love women, women love children, children love hamsters.
(Alice Thomas Ellis)

"martin" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 30 Oct 2005 11:42:06 +0000 (UTC), "Mike"
wrote:

as one person said as they walked round the side of the house and saw
the back garden "WOW!!"

As she trod on a flayed dead cat?
--

we don't have cats, dead or alive :-))

we have an electronic gizmo which is marvellous :-))

AND, we have lots of wild birds, we have already had Robins, Wrens,
Greenfinches (quite a family of those), Goldfinches, Bluetits, House and
Hedge Sparrows, Starlings, b****y Collard Doves and Pigeons which I have had
to rig wire netting up over the seed feeders for or they pinch the lot
:-(( and some I am not quite sure of, but I think may have been Coal Tits or
Great Tits. We are not sure, but we think we may have had a Siskin as well.

All because the cats are away and we feed them and we have plenty of bushes
and shrubs for them to dart into :-))

Mike

"Sacha" wrote in message
.uk...
On 30/10/05 10:19, in article
, "Draven"
wrote:

I'm thinking of taking up, what's rest of my lawn, and putting beautiful
plants in its place.

How many would agree or disagree to this proposal?

If you're not going to use your lawn to sit on or for children to play on,
then getting rid of it is certainly an option. But do take into
consideration what sort of house you live in, too. Some older houses do
really beg for a lawn and would look rather lost without one. For
example,
our is a Victorian vicarage and the lawn in front of it is a key to the
whole garden, IMO. In old-fashioned terms, the lawn was the 'heart' of
the
flower garden and everything worked round it, whatever the size of house
or
garden.
Just digging it up and shoving in more shrubs without looking at the
overall
structure with the plants or beds you have now, would be a mistake, IMO.
I
like Kay's idea of putting in ponds and perhaps focusing the planting in
that way.
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
(remove the weeds to email me)

I'm thinking of taking up, what's rest of my lawn, and putting beautiful
plants in its place.

How many would agree or disagree to this proposal?

Draven

"Sacha" wrote in message
.uk...
On 30/10/05 10:19, in article
, "Draven"
wrote:

I'm thinking of taking up, what's rest of my lawn, and putting beautiful
plants in its place.

How many would agree or disagree to this proposal?

If you're not going to use your lawn to sit on or for children to play on,
then getting rid of it is certainly an option. But do take into
consideration what sort of house you live in, too. Some older houses do
really beg for a lawn and would look rather lost without one. For
example,
our is a Victorian vicarage and the lawn in front of it is a key to the
whole garden, IMO. In old-fashioned terms, the lawn was the 'heart' of
the
flower garden and everything worked round it, whatever the size of house
or
garden.
Just digging it up and shoving in more shrubs without looking at the
overall
structure with the plants or beds you have now, would be a mistake, IMO.
I
like Kay's idea of putting in ponds and perhaps focusing the planting in
that way.
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
(remove the weeds to email me)

I would really like more space for plants and veg.
ATM I'm confined to growing veg in containers and then I look at my uneven
lawn and try to imagine rows of beetroot, onions etc. ;O)

Draven

I'm thinking of taking up, what's rest of my lawn, and putting beautiful
plants in its place.

How many would agree or disagree to this proposal?

Draven



But your garden is what YOU want. I am not a gardener and would concrete the
lot and paint it green. There would be tubes sunk in here and there to put
appropriate, ie in season, plastic flowers in.

BUT,

as my wife is a gardener and I enjoy the results of the work she puts in, we
have lawns, flower beds, pots, a patio for deck chairs, paths etc etc etc.

However, you might not like our garden :-))

See what I mean?

Mike

"Janet Baraclough" wrote in message
...
The message
from "Draven" contains these words:


"Sacha" wrote in message
.uk...
On 30/10/05 10:19, in article
, "Draven"
wrote:

I'm thinking of taking up, what's rest of my lawn, and putting
beautiful
plants in its place.

How many would agree or disagree to this proposal?

If you're not going to (snip- good advice)

Sacha

I'm thinking of taking up, what's rest of my lawn, and putting beautiful
plants in its place.

How many would agree or disagree to this proposal?

How many times would you like us to repeat our replies? :-)


Janet

Oh dear :-((

Draven you have the wrath of the Barrowcloth. You might as well exit this
newsgroup for good :-((

Happy Gardening.

NB to all new poster.

If you engage the wrath of the 'owners' of this newsgroup, forget it, find
another hobby :-(( like knitting lamposts

Mike