Home » Plants & Animals » Virtual Gardening » The (Garden) Path to Successful Lawn Elimination

The (Garden) Path to Successful Lawn Elimination

© Carol Wallace

I know of a woman whose husband had an inordinate love of his lawn. She, on the other hand, loved flowers and gardens. She wanted more garden space; he refused to give up any more grass. So she took to widening her flower beds, surreptitiously, one inch at a time.

He never noticed. What he did notice was that the fronts of her beds looked a bit bare. Magnanimously he would tell her to buy herself a few plants to spruce it up. So they were both happy - although he was happier than she.

My husband has an inordinate love of our lawn. Every time I plant something new, he looks at it, ponders for a moment, and then asks "But how am I supposed to mow around it?" My answer, of course, is always, "Don't. We'll just enlarge this area and plant more flowers." It doesn't make much of an impression.

I was about ready to imitate the one-inch-woman when I hit upon an even better strategy. Paths!

I reasoned that my husband was not a turf fanatic. He neither weeds nor does he fertilize. What we call lawn is more hawkweed than grass, which has certain advantages - it stays green in a drought. But green, in nice swathes, seems to be all he requires.

I, on the other hand, need places for more plants.

So, taking husband in hand one fine summer evening I stood him at the end of the driveway, in the area leading toward our gazebo and spoke of the beautiful ribbon of green that would lead straight to that gazebo, turning it into a focal point. All it would take is a little narrowing here, a widening of the beds there, a little curve yonder, perhaps a shrub here to create a peek-a-boo effect for the casual wanderer - and - this was the clincher - he could deal with it in a single pass of his lawn tractor.

It worked. It helped that my husband was absolutely crazy about the plantings I'd made in the 18" strip of garden he had formerly allotted me. Very misty, it was - lavender and dusty miller, ornamental kale in purples and green, silver sage, artemesia, purple Marine heliotrope and pale pink daylilies for color, fronted with a ribbon of lambs ears. He gladly widened that with the stipulation that I plant more of the same, and actually got somewhat miffed when one of the daylilies (mislabeled) bloomed a pale soft yellow instead of pink. But I gained a lot of garden space there, and twice as much on the other side where he enlarged the island around our 5 huge conifers in order to create the "path" effect. Then I had room for more rhododendrons, hellebores and hostas.

The copyright of the article The (Garden) Path to Successful Lawn Elimination in Virtual Gardening is owned by . Permission to republish The (Garden) Path to Successful Lawn Elimination in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.