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How many Saturday mornings have you awakened to the lazy buzz of the lawnmower? Lawns are part of neighbourhood life whether your neighbourhood is urban, rural or suburban. Until recently, lawns have been the only choice for front yard landscape design. Theories abound about why North American front yards have been dominated by the lawn. These vary from whimsical speculation that our love of lawns is embedded in our DNA to research into the history of garden design that traces the origins back to the mid-nineteenth century "gardenesque" movement which led to the invention of the lawnmower. For gardeners toying with the idea of making a break from the lawnmower, converting lawn to ground cover plants is an easy step towards viewing the front yard as not so much lawn, but as a garden.
1. Do the neighbourhood kids use your lawn as a sand box? 2. Have you taken out a loan to pay off last summer's water bill? 3. Are the spike soled shoes you wear to aerate the lawn more comfortable than your track shoes? 4. Do you get threatening letters whenever the chemical lawn care truck parks in your driveway? 5. Have you perfected your dandelion wine recipe? 6. Are you toying with the idea of buying a camper trailer for your easy-rider lawn mower? Starting from the ground up To remove all traces of the previous lawn, you can do one of two things: dig it out by hand, conserving the good topsoil that clings to the roots of the sod; or, before winter sets in, smother the lawn with newspapers, landscape cloth or black plastic sheeting. Remove the covering the next spring and the grass will have withered away. Once all signs of grass and weeds have been removed, till the soil, digging in compost, peat moss, and good garden loam. At this stage, I usually add an organic slow-release fertilizer. The enriched soil should be about six inches (15cm) deep. Allow the soil to settle a week or so, picking out any weeds that take hold in the newly-tilled soil. How far you space plants from each other depends on the mature spread of the plants you're using and how quickly you want to cover the ground. The rule is to space plants slightly less than their mature spread. For quick cover, space them closer together. To calculate the number of plants you'll need, divide the area of your yard by the mature spread of the plant you're using. For example, Cotoneaster horizontalis has a mature spread of about three feet (1 m). To cover a 100 square foot area (30.5 sq.m), you'll need about 33 plants (100 รท3 = 33.3). For a smaller ground cover like deadnettle which has a maximum spread of only 12 inches (30cm), you'll need as many as 100 plants - more if you space them closer for quick cover. Go To Page: 1 2
The copyright of the article Convert your lawn to groundcover in Southern Ontario Gardens is owned by Lorraine Flanigan. Permission to republish Convert your lawn to groundcover in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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