Grow A Low-Maintenance, Environmentally-Friendly Lawn

By Gregg Robertson

Lawns. You love 'em or hate 'em. I'm in the middle. I look at lawns as an easy-to-care-for landscape alternative until I can get to planting something else.

Our tendency to over-fertilize, over-pesticide and over-water our lawns leads to run-off that can foul streams and rivers. It can also drive you into a cycle that seems the harder you work, the worse your lawn looks. Not good for you or the environment!

A properly managed lawn can play useful role in landscape design and your backyard ecology if incorporated into your landscape plan with sensitive attention to plant selection and wildlife needs. Your yard doesn't have to all meadow or woodland to play a useful role in your neighborhood's ecological system. Besides, without a lawn, where would you play volleyball or croquet?

Here are 11 tips for growing and maintaining an environmentally-friendly lawn that can also cut down on your maintenance time:

1. When putting in a lawn for the first time, pay attention to soil preparation. A lawn planted on soil that has organic matter incorporated into the top three or four inches will require less fertilizer and will be able to keep weeds at bay without the excessive use of herbicides. If your lawn is established, you can top dress it with compost, peat moss or top soil.
2. Aerate your lawn with a plug aerator every year or two to loosen soil and allow nutrients to penetrate to the root zone. Don't use spike aerators, as they can compact soil even more.
3. Mow on the highest setting on your mower -- at least 3 inches. This gives the grass plants more leaf area to grow good solid roots. It also allows the grass to shade and crowd out weeds. Mowing too low stresses the grass plants, and can make them susceptible to disease and drought damage. Mowing low also lets light reach the soil, encouraging weed seeds to germinate.
4. Keep your mower blade sharp. When you cut with a dull blade, it shreds the tops of the grass blades causing them to loose more moisture and making them more susceptible to disease. It also looks bad as the damaged blade tops turn brown and die.
5. Use a mulching mower that returns grass clippings to the soil. If you bag your clippings, you waste an enormous amount of nitrogen in the clippings. You don't have to worry about thatch if you use pesticides sparingly. Little critters live in the grass and quickly break down the clippings into compost. If you kill the critters with pesticides, you disrupt that little ecosystem that can keep your grass healthy.
6. Fertilize in the fall with a balanced fertilizer to stimulate strong root growth. Over-fertilizing can lead to run-off and pollution. Over-fertilizing with a high nitrogen fertilizer in the spring can lead to excessive top growth, extra mowing and grass that is weakened when the dry, hot summer months come along.
7. Weed by hand, or if you must use an herbicide (weed killer), use a spray bottle and just hit the weeds. Broadcasting herbicides with fertilizer can lead to run-off and many herbicides are harmful to aquatic life, fish and amphibians.
8. After your lawn is established, let Mother Nature supply the water. The grasses we grow for our lawns, like fescue and blue grass, are cool weather grasses that will naturally go dormant in dry, hot weather. By watering your lawn in July and August, you are forcing it out of dormancy, wasting water and weakening your grass. Except in the most extreme conditions, your grass will bounce back and green up when the cool fall weather returns. Your lawn wants to go brown and rest when it is hot and dry. Let it!
9. Try to stay off the lawn when it is hot and dry. Because the grass is not growing, it can't repair itself from damage caused by foot traffic. You don't have to be fanatic about this; just don't schedule a week-long volleyball tournament on your lawn when your grass is dormant and expect there to be no damage.
10. Use pesticides sparingly to kill bugs on your lawn. Many pesticides are wide spectrum, killing beneficial insects as well as the target pest.
11. Relax. Be tolerant of a lawn that is less than a perfect green carpet. Develop a personal esthetic that delights in a patch of clover, an occasional dandelion or some violets.