With spring in full bloom, Mike and I have turned our attention outdoors. The yard we inherited with our house is kind of a mess with no real plan or aesthetic. We have ugly box hedges, tree roots popping up everywhere and not much in the way of plants. The only thing we’ve done since moving in is to install a playset for Sofie in the backyard.
We don’t care about nice grass. Not in the way my father did. He was a big fan of fertilizer, weed killer and anything that might achieve the lush green lawn of suburban euphoria. Often my sisters and I were not allowed to play on it because chemicals had just been applied or he feared we’d “ruin” the lawn.
In contrast, my message to Sofie: Yards are for fun! Run around, play ball, enjoy digging. That picture-perfect lawn isn’t environmentally friendly anyway since it’s usually composed of species like Kentucky bluegrass that require too much water and fertilizer to maintain.
Sofie and her Lolo dig out space for a vegetable garden
With my father-in-law’s help last weekend, we dug out an area in preparation for a starter vegetable garden. I’m a food-growing novice, so I’m starting small and hoping to get Sofie involved and excited about growing our own veggies. She surprised me by picking up a hoe and joining her grandfather in working the soil. (She looks so grown up here!) The plan is that each year we’ll expand the garden until it takes over most of the yard. Like I said, we don’t care much about grass.
We’ve also discussed creating a Japanese-style rock garden in the front yard, an area where nothing much will grow due to the abundance of tree roots from our neighbor’s large maple. The tree roots have also caused uneven ground that slopes slightly toward our foundation.
With the devastating March floods and with climatologists predicting increasingly rainy weather for the Northeast, we’ve decided to make drainage and stormwater management a priority.
This led us to (finally!) hook up our rain barrel and to meet with a green landscape architect about our sloping lawn. We discussed French drains, underground tanks and rain gardens (download a how-to PDF here). Once we solve the drainage issue, we can then focus on making our yard look pretty with low maintenance native plants.
Download Bay-Friendly Backyards, a guide I designed when I worked at Save The Bay. It’s chock full of green landscaping tips, plus a list of native plants for southern New Englanders.
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hey, that rain barrel link includes a brochure created by your awesome sister!