| Backyard • Orchard • Frontyard • Sideyard Tire Garden |
Frontyard Lawn to Garden (Updated August, 2008)
Why we are changing our front lawn into garden:
French
aristocrats popularized the idea of the green grassy lawn in the eighteenth
century. In order to show that they had more land than they needed, they
planted the agricultural fields around their estates to grass. In England
by the 1800's, many of the wealthy had sweeping green lawns across their
estates. Americans with enough money to travel overseas returned to the
U.S. with images of the English lawn firmly planted in their imaginations.
By 1915, the U.S. Department of Agriculture was collaborating with the
U.S. Golf Association to find the right grass—or combination of
grasses—that would create a durable, attractive lawn suitable to
the variety of climates found in America.
Today, Americans spend billions every year to maintain over 23 million acres of lawn. The lawns in the United States consume around 270 billion gallons of water a week—enough to water 81 million acres of organic vegetables, all summer long.
Lawns use ten times as many chemicals per acre as industrial farmland. These pesticides, fertilizers, and herbicides run off into our groundwater and evaporate into our air, contributing to the pollution that is already beyond carrying capacity for the planet. In addition, the pollution emitted from a power mower in just one hour is equal to the amount from a car being driven 350 miles. Lawns use more equipment, labor, fuel, and agricultural toxins than industrial farming, making lawns the largest agricultural sector in the United States.
With the rising shortages in water, lawns are seriously proving to be a highly inefficient use of space, water and money, and carry devastating ecological impacts.
So we are now changing our front lawn into a productive and beautiful garden, which will need less water, create habitat, enhance the the environment, and provide us with nutritious organic fruits and veggies. And the 'lawn' area we are continuing will be planted with clover instead of grass, it thrives in dry conditions, puts nitrogen nutrients back into the soil, and it looks great!
The Front Yard - Step by Step
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| Original Lawn: we started collecting rocks. | Original Lawn from the front. |
| APRIL, 2008 | ||||
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| Walkways and gardens are outlined as we begin the work. | Once lawn was removed, we began to outline the gardens and walkways, and placed cardboard over the future clover areas. | Walkways outlined and covered in bark mulch. | ||
| MAY, 2008 | ||||
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| After removal of the lawn, we began to mulch. Here we have covered the exposed soil with newspaper. | Now covered with compost from a local horse ranch. | Sheetmulching around the tree. | ||
| JUNE, 2008 | ||||
Our front yard is in a Wind-tunnel. It is also facing SW. We can get blasted with 40+ mph winds every other day, it seems. After a month of attempting to grow clover, and Sun scorching it before it can take hold and the Wind blowing the seeds away, we have reworked the plan.
First, establish Windbreaks and shade from the Sun. But as it is now becoming Summer, anything we plant along the Wind/Sun line will be blasted. So we have made some shade contraptions, and given each shade 4 poles to deal with the wind. If these perennial berry bushes take, they love full sun and will expand 6 to 8 feet. Once Fall comes, we will remove the shade cloths and see how they do. Also, as we have a slight downgrade slope in the front, we have terraced behind the shrubs, which also provides windbreak and some shade for the seedlings planted below. These are now starting to take. |
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| Mulching garden beds. Building soil and planting cover crop to stop the endless hassle of Bermuda Grass. | We have gotten parts growing, but are still collecting the outline cement for the larger garden. Top left, soil not yet mulched is covered in tarp until we get to it! | After Sheetmulching and seeding, as we are building soil for tree planting in the Fall. Veggies are starting to sprout... | ||
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| The front walk. With all the heat and Sun, we decided to mulch down the front walk for corn and beans. Here is cardboard and paper trash as a means to cover the weeds and grass. | Assorted compost and soil replacement is added over it. Then seeds galore. | Corn and bean seedlings amidst clover, flaxseed and buckwheat. | ||
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| Our first 'official' vegetable planted where lawn used to be... A zucchini seedling in the center of clover and buckwheat. Teepee set over to deal with the relentless Sun until it is strong enough to hold its own. | The front left of the house... (Original photo) Two-year Yellow Clover has flowered, which brought bees at last. One of our neighbors told us our front yard reminds him of Oregon - what a compliment! | Squash seedling planted within the wilting die-off of Spring Vetch and Clovers. They will shade the seedling until the Squash rises above them and uses them as mulch. | ||
| AUGUST, 2008 | ||||
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| Compare this to the original photo! | ||||
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| The beds have grown beautifully, despite no true shade protection... Center bed around tree is now finally built. | Shot of diversity, hard to imagine this was all grass 4 months before! | Amaranth, clovers, buckwheat, radishes, beets and squash line this walkway... | ||
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| The front walk, corn growing well, though the winds are tough on them... | Mulching and seeding clover in July... | The result... | ||
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| After all July, with hardly any bees, they have come back full force! | A new pond, built by the Ars Terra PDC course, is just beginning to take... | Fish doing well, with a solar oxygenator and plants... |
