Let your yard Grow Natural. Health is Most Important. Chemlawns are toxic to people and environment around us.
Gas powered Lawnmowers kill lizards, young trees and emit more Toxic Gases than terrorists. Get rid of it! Do Organic Gardening, it’s free, gives you food and is better for you, your family and your neighbors. Here's how:
Use only simple hand tools, gloves, a shovel and broom. You get exercise with hand tools that is better than driving to a gym. Get rid of Toxic gas powered machines in your garage. Get rid of all toxic pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers (dispose of safely) Never use them again. Don't get caught up in the consumerism of buying things like mowers, tillers, fertilizers, pesticides.
Leave the leaves to feed the soil naturally. Add leaves, free mulch from tree trimmers or city recycled brush programs. Some people will tell you that the free mulch has bugs and mold in it? But that’s a GOOD thing! Leaf mold is good for breaking down the mulch into organic nutrients to feed your plants. Insects & worms also help. Don’t worry if you see termites outside- they are lizard and bird food and if your home is maintained properly they wont eat your home. Termites in mulch is a myth, they need thicker wood than mulch to live.
Live Soil is what Organics is all about! Dirt is what conventional farmers grow their plants in. Compost is great fertilizer. Plant your seeds and rotting fruits and veggies. You will be rewarded. Its such a joy to find a watermelon growing where you spit the seeds but that can't happen when you mow. Don’t worry about drying out the seeds unless you are going to store them. Plant them where you want them, if the soil is good and you picked the right spot, they will grow. If they don’t they will compost nutrients to the soil.
Plants are free as cuttings or growing outside borders from your neighbors, myself, friends and gardening clubs or craigslist free section. Pay attention to where the plants were happy, was it sunny or shady? Was it wet? then put them in the same places. Plant them quickly and carefully, creating a damn around plant to hold water so it soaks into roots not runoff. Fill the dams with water daily for 30 days and continue heavy mulching.
Learn Appreciation & Tolerance for bugs and critters. Bugs are Bird and lizard Food. Birds will eat the bugs for you if there is a habitat for them to live in. If you poison bugs you are also poisoning birds, lizards and yourself! Healthy fertile organic soil is alive with bugs, worms and bacteria that are helpful to us all. Even the wasps have a place in our yards. If you leave them alone they will leave you alone & reward you by eating aphids, pollinating plants and feeding other creatures. For years I had a nest inside my front porch and when one came inside, I took a glass and covered it then slid paper under glass and took it outside and released them. Wonderful feeling to not use a sickening pesticide & respecting nature.
4. Don’t let city code inspectors bully you into mowing (destroying) your wildlife habitat. Tell them it is a xeriscaping project and you are maintaining it, picking up litter and you are not interested in their polluting methods. It is your constitutional right to "Life Liberty & the pursuit of happiness" and they should learn less polluting methods. Prairie Grass yards are beautiful. Lemon grass is beautiful & makes a great tea! Gardens in the front yard can be extraordinarily beautiful. Outdated city ordinances nationwide have fostered a polluting business of forced mowing and promoting unhealthy chemlawn methods.
5. Stop cutting out all your plants "for security sake" Instead focus on WHY crime happens and spend your time fixing that. When the police tell you cut all plants away so they can see you and your home, consider a smarter way: Put down mulch and leaves and plant more spiky thorny plants like bougainvillea where you don't want people walking. You will hear people walking on the leaves & crunching them and breaking little twigs that fall from the beautiful trees you have planted. You can't hear them walking on chemlawn grass. And don't light it up so much that they can see where all the guard plants are at night. I followed this method and never had a problem with anyone sneaking around my yard.
Twigs are useful & why pay to have a garbage truck haul them if you use them? They should be used to border gardens, build fences. make picture frames, decorations inside or outside the house or in the garden as stakes for plants to grow up on or to feed off them decaying in the gardens.
Here is a good link for native plants - http://www.nsis.org/garden/garden-native-annuals.html
Clover makes a soft beautiful ground cover that requires less water and no fertilization; ever. It fixes nitrogen in the soil and is beautiful. It also aerates and enriches heavy soils. It will not urine scald when dogs urinate on it. A heavy over planting of a clover suitable for your area will gradually choke out any and all weeds. You can mow your clover lawn, or let it bloom. Mowing will favor the clover over grass, as it encourages it to spread out instead of up. In the deepest drought, a clover lawn will be fresh and cool and green, while all around, the grass is brown and parched. Clover is NOT a weed. Most American lawns used to be primarily clover. The only reason we now consider it a "weed" is that so-called "weed and feed" products are not sophisticated enough to distinguish what its killing. Same goes for Dollar Weed with the week and feed paradigm people are in.
Outside Rooms are special places to live in. Create them by planting groups so that they create private spaces one can go and sit. Some extra concrete or hard scape can add a little extra stability to the room as a floor or bench. This helps define the room and make it more useful.
Contact Us if you still have questions.