Like painting with movement and light

22 June 2010 Prev Next

Lawn is what most of us do when we make gardens,“ John Greenlee said in a talk at the San Francisco Flower and Garden show in March. But ”if you show me the best lawn in the neighborhood, I'll show you the worst eco-citizens,“ because of the unrestrained herbicide and pesticide use and the noise, pollution, and energy use of weekly mowing, blowing, and edging.

”It's not just about us anymore,“ he said. ”It's about the other creatures“ on the planet and the next generation.

A better alternative is meadows, which have a complex ecology and are found ”wherever you go on the planet“: the South African veldt, the South American pampas, the midwestern American prairie. A small area in a natural grassland might have 40 different plants. ”Many of our most treasured ornamentals are found in grasslands,“ he said. Imagine billows of grass moving with the breeze, punctuated with swathes of colorful spring wildflowers or bursts of summer-flowering bulbs.

”Why have a crummy looking lawn when you can have a great-looking meadow?“ Greenlee said. ”Why have a boring lawn when you can have a fabulous meadow?“ Because the plumy stems of flowering grasses catch sun and wind, growing grasses in the garden is ”like painting with movement and light.“

Greenlee has been designing ”grass ecologies“ in gardens for 26 years. To obtain the grasses he wanted to use, he started a grass nursery in southern California.

His rule of thumb is ”don't fight the site.“ For a site with heavy clay, use grasses that like to grow in heavy clay. Amending is okay for food gardens, he said, but ”to decorate the planet, work with the ecology....Learn the plants so that the plants do the work for you.“ Once the matrix of grasses is established, you can go back and fill in with bulbs and other flowering plants.

Greenlee's new book, The American Meadow Garden, shows gorgeous meadows planted with a wide palette of grasses and flowering plants. He classifies meadow plants by their uses:

groundcover grasses form the foundation of a meadow, covering 45-65 percent of the area
fillers are bulbs, grasses, or flowering plants that hold the meadow together, 15-30 percent
background plants are tall grasses or flowering plants that frame the edges or anchor the space,
20 percent
accents provide texture, flowers, or seasonal interest, 3-40 percent
natural lawns, used for lawns and paths, are short grasses or sedges that stay walkable with little or no mowing

Native grasses can fill all of these niches. Blue grama grass, Hall's bent grass, California bent grass, and fescues are some of Greenlee's favorite grasses to walk on. Blue grama is also one of his favorite groundcover grasses, and its ”eyelash" flower heads make it a good accent plant as well. Western meadow sedge and California dune sedge are popular groundcover, filler, and natural lawn grasses.

Additional groundcover/filler grasses include red fescue, june grass, California melic, and purple needlegrass, some of which have flowers showy enough to use as accents. For more dramatic accents, try deergrass in sunny areas or California fescue in dry shade.