Diary of a Suburban Ecological Restoration

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2021 Preparation

The property is a one acre lot on a busy road with a modest raised ranch, detached 3-car garage, and a large vegetable garden. It is bordered in the back by extensive woods with lots of deer and, otherwise, surrounded by similar houses. The goal was to reduce the lawn as much as possible to make more room for native plantings and perhaps an engineered bog and frog pond.

During the summer, I experimented with several mowing patterns and allowed the unmowed areas to grow out naturally. Several cues to care (neatly mowed sections) were included in the design:

• a 600sf area along the driveway for temporary parking and deliveries

• another 600sf area off the front step for outdoor seating or play

• turfgrass pathways to services and points of interest. These consisted of either 3' foot paths (2 mower passes) or 6' cart paths (4 mower passes). Eventually, I settled on a serpentine rather than linear layout for the paths, which I found to be much more interesting.

Also during the summer, I prepared about 500sf of new planting beds for shrubs and perennials. The existing turf was sprayed one time with glyphosate herbicide and covered with 2-3" of natural wood chip mulch, the plan being to start installing plants the following spring.

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