by Barbara Anderson

Created on: February 23, 2009

Many people dream of a home in the suburbs surrounded by an elegant sea of green lawn. But what if you don't have the time or desire to spend hours each week maintaining that lawn to putting green perfection. Or, you can't afford, or don't want, to spend the money to hire someone else to manicure your lawn for you. You surely don't want to "pave Paradise and put up a parking lot" as Joni Mitchell lamented back in the 70's. Fortunately, there are many alternatives to grass alone.

First, you need to decide what the yard is mainly used for. If it is just a play area for the kids, you can replace all or part of the lawn with a layer of pine or cedar bark. This is especially effective under a swing set. You can even get re-cycled rubber mulch or nuggets which last almost forever. You might also add a large playhouse and sandbox (that can be covered when not in use), and a child-size picnic set. And remember to leave a sunny area for a kid-sized vegetable and flower garden for growing giant marigolds, personal size watermelons, and "Baby-Boo" pumpkins for Halloween.

On the other hand, if your yard is used mainly as a doggy play area, you might consider replacing most of the lawn with smooth pea gravel. It's easy to clean up after the dog, and most dogs can be trained to "do their business" in this area. You can even periodically spray the graveled area with a bleach and water solution to sanitize it and kill any odors. Just leave a small shady patch of lawn for your dog to rest during a hard day at play.

Of course, if you prefer your yard to be your own personal sanctuary after a hard day at work, there are lots of ways to replace all that lawn.

To start, if you don't already have a patio for a sitting area, pick out a spot for this first. Your patio can be something as simple as an area of gravel contained with a frame of railroad ties or stone, or something more elaborate such as a floor of elegant interlocking pavers. If you like a more natural look and feel, you can create your patio out of large paving stones of various shapes, laid with gaps between the stones. There are dozens of low growing plants sturdy enough to be planted in these gaps to give you a unique looking patio. A few examples of these are Irish moss, Mazus reptans, and wooly thyme.

Once you have set up your main sitting area, you can give some thought to how you want to transform the rest of your yard. Do you like to putter in the garden? You could set aside a sunny area for a nice vegetable garden.

Do you like a lot of flowers? You could replace the lawn with beds of wildflowers, with paths of gravel, paving stones, or mulch meandering through the flower beds.

Do you prefer something more formal looking, yet still low maintenance? Plant evergreen and flowering shrubs and perennials in borders, and replace the grass with low growing ground covers such as creeping rosemary, creeping Jenny, or sedum. As long as there is not a lot of foot traffic, these ground covers will look great and require almost no maintenance.

Do you still want to have the look of a grassy area without all the work? Replace your lawn grass with beds of ornamental grasses. Ornamental grasses need no weekly mowing, and there are many low growing varieties such as blue fescue and Catlin sedge which provide the appearance of a lawn when grown closely planted.

So, have your elegant sea of green grass if that is what you really want. But, if you choose to replace your lawn with something else, you have a lot of different choices to consider.

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