Shortly after beginning the Lawn Alternatives Demonstration Area in August 2024, we entered our first winter with several key features already in place: areas demonstrating turfgrass smothering and mulching as removal techniques, as well as a planting of native grasses set in a bed of woodchips to showcase an ornamental alternative to traditional lawn. We also planted a Winter King hawthorn (Crataegus viridis), surrounded by a groundcover of creeping phlox (Phlox stolonifera), with a paper sheet mulch layer to suppress weeds while the groundcover becomes established. 

2025 was a busy year with several new areas  created.  We added a perennial bed with a Robin's plantain, Erigeron pulchellus, green mulch. A deck was built by Baltimore County Master Gardener Paul Dorsey as not only an alternative to lawn, but as a viewing platform from which to view all the alternative strategies from a central location.  A dry riverbed was installed to feed water runoff into a new rain garden.  A mulch path leads guests to the deck. And, finally, a section of Pennsylvania sedge, Carex pensylvanica, was added between the deck and the rain garden.