Requiem for a lawn

Native gardening is very rewarding, but can also require a lot of work. Sometimes it helps to have friends, especially if they like plants, soil, and manual labor. It turns out that I’m one of those friends, and Margaret and I have been collaborating on her yard restoration project for over a year now. When Margaret told me she was starting a blog about California native gardening, I thought it was a great idea, and I asked her if I could write some posts. She said yes, so now it seems her blog is also a collaborative effort!

I’ll save the details for later posts, but let me give a bit of my gardening history. My yard is located in Irvine, about 5 miles west of Margaret’s. After my wife Karen and I bought our property a few years ago, we decided that watering and maintaining a lawn was not our style. I’m an ecologist, and Karen works for a non-profit that studies water quality, so we were already aware of some of the problems with lawns. Furthermore, the grass never looked happy anyway. On March 22, 2008, we killed our lawn. The remains—2+ metric tons of sod—went out in pieces in the trash. Next week we celebrate the 2 year anniversary of the death of our lawn. Take a look at the before and after pictures (above and below). Do you miss it? We sure don’t. Nor do the dozens of native plant species, bees, caterpillars, moths, butterflies, hummingbirds, and other critters that now call our yard home. Who knows, maybe some morels will pop up under our aspiring manzanita tree? The native strawberries (Fragaria californica) in our back yard are just starting to ripen into red bursts of tangy fruit candy. Talk about “locally grown.”

Check in later for more native gardening inspiration!