Replacing a Turf Lawn, Part I: Why?

My house in Fort Worth came with what I call the Standard Fort Worth Yard.

A postage-stamp green lawn with some plants right in front of the house, and a couple of nice oak trees in the setback. It looked OK in summer, though pretty boring, with no sense of depth or space. I don’t find turf grass very interesting. In winter it went dormant and looked brown and dead. The oak trees lost all their leaves so even they didn’t add interest to this winter dead-zone. Most people in my neighborhood of Fairmount have this kind of yard. The back yard had a similar landscape but is fenced in. I think this type of yard with Bermuda or St. Augustine grass makes sense if you have kids or dogs that would love to run around on it, but there are a lot of reasons to not have this kind of landscape, besides the fact that it’s boring.

Reduce Dumb/Annoying Maintenance

Any kind of landscaping you do will have some kind of maintenance, but I hated the kind of maintenance involved with a turf lawn. Who likes cutting the grass? OK, there are some sickos out there, but I think they’re mostly just trying to escape their wives. Not only is cutting the grass just an uncreative, dumb chore, but unless you buy an old-fashioned push reel mower – which I used for years and strongly recommend if you have a fairly small, flat property – then you have to buy and maintain the lawn mower, including burning gas and oil. But wait, there’s more! You need a weed wacker to handle trimming, and likely a leaf blower. And then there’s weeds that invade your lawn. You can’t pick out individual weeds so you’ll end up spraying some heinous weed killer whose chemicals destroys bees, butterflies and you too. Even if you do all this, any lawn eventually requires aeration, another dumb chore that you have to buy or rent more equipment for. Of course you could pay someone to do all this. Whether you do it yourself or pay someone, one thing is for sure: it has to be done. If you skip cutting your lawn during the heart of summer you’ll have a total mess in a very short period of time. If your lawnmower is even able to handle the long grass you’ll have to rake and bag all that long grass, otherwise it will smother your lawn.

Stop Noise (and other) Pollution

If spending all that dough indefinitely doesn’t phase you, and you don’t care about the environment, then think about the annoying noise that maintaining these dull landscapes requires. Maybe you’ve been sitting in your office reading a book when suddenly you hear a lawnmower engine roaring from across the street. After a half hour or so all is quiet. Then the weed wacker starts up, followed by the leaf blower. Sheesh! What’s next, a chain saw? Some US towns have banned this kind of maintenance and here’s a good article on this from the Atlantic. Besides noise pollution – well, you don’t need to buy and burn fossil fuels to have a beautiful landscape. I’d rather be part of the solution than part of the problem.

Save Water and Money

Turf lawns require a lot of water. In much of the country, and the world, this means supplemental irrigation is necessary. There’s no way you’re going to maintain a healthy lawn in San Diego or Fort Worth without adding a lot of water. The price of water is much higher in San Diego than Fort Worth, which has already led to thousands of people choosing drought-tolerant plants and drip irrigation over thirsty grass. I see a trend starting in Fort Worth as well as water prices rise along with demand, and people gain awareness about the tragedy of wasted water. The Tarrant County Regional Water District promotes drip irrigation and other techniques on their savetarrantwater.com website.

Support a Rich, healthy, Environment

A landscape with diverse plants attracts and feeds butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds. It’s continuously evolving and provides never-ending wonder and interest, yet in many ways is easier to maintain than a turf lawn because, while there is always something to do, you never have to do something like cut the grass. Shrubs and trees grow over years and decades, and seeing these changes unfold is a slow-burn adventure that brings enormous satisfaction.

I am just getting started but here is a taste: