Letting go of lawns
With water districts across the state calling for conservation, more Wine Country homeowners are transforming thirsty front lawns into dramatic gardens with native wildflowers, aromatic herbs and drought-resistant ornamental grasses and shrubs.
Photos by MARK ARONOFF / The Press DemocratPublished: Saturday, July 19, 2008 at 3:40 a.m.
Last Modified: Saturday, July 19, 2008 at 5:57 a.m.
Ever since Edwin Bunting developed the first reel-type lawn mower in the 1830s, Americans have pursued the perfect turf.
By the post-World War II suburbia boom, virtually every tract house had its requisite patch of grass, spawning a massive $8.6 billion lawn industry to maintain all that green.
But there is a countermovement afoot, particularly in parched California where water districts are calling for conservation. They're jacking up the rates on high water users and, in Sonoma Valley and Santa Rosa, offering "cash for grass" as a reward for ripping out lawns.
It's having an effect.
In the North Bay and beyond, front yards are being transformed from a prosaic patch of lawn, edged by a few bushes, into dynamic gardens of waterwise natives, ornamental grasses and Mediterranean perennials. Fruit trees, edible herbs and in some cases even vegetable gardens are cropping up within full view of passing traffic.
Hank and Nancy Schultz began pioneering the look in front of their Sonoma bungalow in the mid-1990s and now have an explosion of native grasses, shrubs and perennials. They've kept a patch of lawn to one side only as a counterbalance and to keep things from looking overgrown.
But a block away, Gary Edwards dumped his lawn completely, becoming one of the 52 residents who have taken advantage of the Valley of the Moon Water District's "cash for grass" program. He got 50 cents a square foot, which translated into a check for $400. Now instead of lawn and juniper, he has eight olive trees, two figs and almost every type of herb imaginable.
"Last year I harvested 200 pounds of tomatoes out of the front yard and about 40 pounds of potatoes," said Edwards, estimating his water savings at about 20 percent. "We have more people who come by and compliment us on our front yard. I'm sure some people think we're a little crazy, but there's nothing better than to be able to go out and pick a little lettuce and not have to run to the market."
Planting not just perennials but veggies in the front yard may seem radical, but it's the most natural thing in the world for humans to grow their own food, said architect and artist Fritz Haeg, who has been crisscrossing the continent with his "Attack on the Front Lawn" project. Haeg parachutes into unlikely communities, rips out the front lawn of a chosen demonstration family and replaces it with edibles, all in a weekend.
"I look for strategic locations surrounded by other lawns so that when it goes in it will be a shock and contrast to everything around it," Haeg said in a recent talk before the National Garden Conservancy in San Francisco.
Occasionally neighbors, fiercely wedded to the conventional postage stamp of green surrounded by neat planting beds, will howl at the site of a vegetable garden out for the world to see, Haeg said. But mainly, the visibility leads to more neighborhood interaction, with curious passers-by eager to share tips on growing tomatoes or to share their abundance of zucchini.
The primary motivation for ripping out lawns is to conserve both water and personal energy, since low maintenance goes hand in hand with low water use. The result is a dramatically changing aesthetic, where plain turf can look blah and dated next to the exuberance of tall grasses, wildflowers and masses of aromatic lavender and rosemary.
Greg and Nadja Levesque turned their front yard, also in Sonoma, into a European-style courtyard with opalite gravel surrounded by low-water-use plants. Some 60 percent of the yard is edible, with everything from pear, apple and fig trees to strawberries, rosemary and many herbs. Green beans coil up a trellis and a wall of sunflowers provides privacy from the street on their corner lot.
On one side of the house, in full view of passers-by, is the veggie garden, robust with melons, peppers, six kinds of tomatoes, Japanese eggplants, parsley and basil.
Watering? Levesque figures he spends only about 15 percent more on water in the summer than winter and when the heat isn't searing he can get by with 15 minutes of watering once a week, by hand in front and in back with soaker hoses.
"I'm not locked in my back yard," he said one recent warm evening, while relaxing at his bistro table with a glass of wine and occasionally looking out to the now quiet street. "The back yard is nice, but it's a lot better to be able to be where people are."
Frequently, the effort can be contagious.
Ed Mount of Santa Rosa devoted the better part of his vacation this month ripping up not only his own lawn but his next-door neighbor's turf as well. The two toiled as a team. Mount first let the lawn die off as much as possible without water and then rented a sod cutter. Both yards had lawns plagued by grubs and crows. Mount, a personal trainer, was loath to apply chemicals.
They got most of the combined 1,200 square feet of lawn removed in a day and a half.
He'll be replacing it with sun-loving, drought-resistant plants like Indian paintbrush, agapanthus and bulbs, leaving just a single two-foot strip of sod to soften the hardscape. It will all be seamlessly incorporated with his neighbor's yard.
Remembering the drought of the 1970s, a water-conscious Mount five years ago ripped out his back lawn and replaced it with a large deck, framed on all sides by walkways and narrow planting strips. So doing something similar with the front was a natural next step.
"We don't want to water for more than 10 minutes every other day, three times a week," he said of the revamped yard. "That's what I do with the current plantings in back and it flourishes."
When Dale Englehorn and Gordon Harsaghy began creating a sustainable garden of natives and wildflowers in front of their west Santa Rosa home last year, neighbors Brien and Kathy Farrell just couldn't resist following suit, joking that next to the wonderland materializing next door, their lawn had become an embarrassment.
The Farrells had done something similar in their back yard five years earlier. And this spring they got aggressive, applying Roundup to kill their front turf, removing a hedge and replacing that dull green expanse with a lively mix of plants like cactus, rosemary, lavender, dogwood and little Santa Barbara daisies.
Englehorn and Harsaghy use soaker hoses on their naturalistic landscape, running them for about 20 minutes three times a week.
The Farrells have noticed an even more dramatic change. Before, they had to water their lawn 20 to 25 minutes daily during heat waves. Now they only need to water every other day for about 10 minutes.
"I was really surprised when I got my water bill and saw that it was half of what it was last year," Kathy Farrell said.
The unexpected bonus, added Englehorn, was connecting with the community. So many people have walked by to comment and chat.
Many who stop, she said, "seeing this dramatic side-by-side and pretty darn quick conversion, remark that they're now motivated to remove their lawns and go more green and native as well."
You can reach Staff Writer Meg McConahey at 521-5204 or meg.
mcconahey@pressdemocrat.com.
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