by Glory Lennon

Created on: March 01, 2011   Last Updated: March 05, 2011

The time may come when you no longer want to care for a lawn. Perhaps you’re getting on in years, you find the lawn boring or you simply lead a very active life with little time to devote to the constant feeding, watering and cutting involved in keeping the lawn presentable. So, what do you do when you no longer want to care for a lawn? Here are a few ideas.

Minimize

Regardless if you have several acres or a tiny patch of lawn, you can always minimize what you have. If it is taking too much of your time to care for a lawn, it stands to reason, if there is less of it, you’ll spend less time on it. To shrink the size of your lawn, think of other uses for that land. You could increase the size of a driveway for example. Pavement might not be as nice as lawn but it surely is easier to manage. Here are a few other, more attractive ideas for minimizing lawn space.

Flower beds

You can take some of that lawn space and create flower beds. This can be done anywhere. Any space can be a flower bed. The front lawn can be completely done away and replaced with a cottage garden type look. Packing in flowers so that no weeds can sneak in will also minimize any extra weeding. Plant perennials which like to spread, reseeding annuals, and mulch all very well and the garden will be able to go on its own without much bother from the gardener. This type of self-sustaining flower bed is so much prettier and much less effort is needed to make it look great at all times of the growing season.

Shrub borders

Shrub borders are just a fancy way of saying a collection of shrubs planted in such a way as to provide a lovely background for the rest of the landscape. These shrubs could all be the same kind but it would be more visually pleasing to have a mix of evergreen and deciduous shrubs. Flowering and fruiting types are also wonderful to provide a lovely spring time show. Shrubs which produce fruit could attract wildlife such as song birds, butterflies and pollinating honeybees. Planted along a fence these shrub borders could take up quite a bit of lawn space, as much or as little as the gardener wants.

Plant trees

You may not think that planting trees will take up much lawn space but they can if you incorporate a garden underneath them. Ornamental or even large shade trees with large rings of mulch around the drip line will do two things. You won’t have to grumble about cutting the awful looking grass underneath the tree and any protruding tree roots won’t be damaged by the lawn mower.  Plus, you’ll have another place for lovely shade loving plants or easy to grow ground covers. 

Garden features

There are all sorts of garden features which will take up some of that lawn space. A simple bird bath could be placed on several paving stones. A fountain could be surrounded by potted plants. A statue would make a lovely focal point for a bed of annual flowers. A small pond once surrounded with plants and small scale shrubs would also take up a good chunk of lawn space.

All these things will decrease the amount of lawn. Less lawn means less time, work and money to care for it. The more trees, garden features and flower beds you plant, the more grass is removed. With less grass to cut, you’ll have plenty of time to actually enjoy your landscape. You’ll even want to stay out in the yard more because you’ve transformed it from a boring grass patch to an engaging retreat. It might actually be a good thing when you no longer want to care for a lawn.

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