With the official start of spring only about a week away, you might be thinking about your lawn. It probably need some tending to, and you are probably remembering how difficult it was to take care of: all of the weeding, watering and lawn cutting takes valuable time away from your relaxation time.
Image: Anthony Rossos / Flickr
But not only the lawns difficult to take care of, they are also not very environmentally friendly. It takes a lot of chemicals to maintain them, energy to mow them, and we have to perpetually pull out natural weeds from what is usually a non native grass type.
There are other options, however. There is Eco-Lawn, for starters. Eco-Lawn and similarly eco-friendly grasses grow so gradually that you don’t need to cut the grass very often – about every month or so – and it doesn’t need much watering. It is also resistant to weeds.
If you are looking for something a bit more colourful, there are also some local groundcovers and flowers that can add a splash of imagination without requiring a lot of maintenance. Some of the more common ones that grow naturally in Canada are wild strawberry, artemisia, and sweet woodruff. You do, however, want to avoid some of the non-native types like periwinkle – they are so aggressive that they may begin colonizing all of the lawns in your neighbourhood.
If you are thinking of going this route, make sure that you only buy commercial varieties. It may seem more environmentally friendly to just transplant flowers you find in the wild, but many of these flowers are weeds, and will spread throughout your neighbourhood.
Getting rid of your old lawn is also fairly easy. Cover your lawn with newspapers, pile some compost on top, and leave it be for six months. Since it requires a bit of time, the best time for doing this is in the fall. The compost and newspapers will slowly decompose, replenishing the soil’s nutrients. After you’ve waited six months, simply till the soil and plant your new lawn.
The benefits of getting a new natural lawn extend beyond the environmental ones. If you do it right, you’ll gain more time, and you can use that to spend more time enjoying your garden, rather than working on it.
Heleen Jacobsen
Broker of Record with InfoMarket Group GMAC Real Estate
www.infomarketgroup.com
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