July 27, 2005
another lawn experiment
Berkeley Hort had a nice selection of creeping thymes when I was there yesterday (dropping wads of money) and I decided to engage in a small (very small) experiment to see if I could start a thyme lawn. There is just a small mottled patch of grass-like substance in the back garden--unlike the front which does it's three-foot high wild thing and seems appropriate for the native California plant border.
But in the garden I need a small open area with defined edges to make things look less chaotic. Much as I despise the typical American lawn with it's unvarying squareness and dullness I do think there is a place in most gardens for a relieving swath of plain green. But it does not have to be grass. The native California grasses, in fact, mostly grow in clumps or bunches and wouldn't be suitable. The ones that grow en masse are very tall.
Many years ago I set out to banish the turf lawn in the backyard. It was a rectangle that didn't add much charm to the already too-geometric dimensions of the garden. I spent one spring trying to dig it up intending to scatter sow "wildflower" seed. Ha! The ingenious evil of the turf manufacturer was a green plastic netting upon which the bluegrass had been grown. This was set down on barely graded adobe--on a slope too. When I attempted to hack up the grass with my shovel I hit the plastic netting. And when I tried to pull up clods of grass and netting I found it embedded in the sticky adobe. I succeeded only in removing some patches of the turf-and-net. Then I filled the ugly holes with new dirt which sort of floated on the wet, gummy adobe.
The "wildflower" lawn seed turned out to be mostly clover, a lot of English daisy and some white yarrow. The English daisy has become a nuisance and is a magnet for rust, the bane of my roses. The yarrow is rather nice but gets lanky in flower. The clover fails to compete successfully with the indominatable Bermuda grass and hardy dandelion. At least I destroyed the rectangle though mostly by throwing bags of redwood chips in a kidney shape in the middle of the lawn patch. Eventually I dug up some corners and rounded the edges off.
This time I have simply dug out a handful of clover and bermuda grass and installed the two clumps of thyme--T. praecox arcticus (white flower and dark green leaves) and T. pulegioides (pink flower and golden leaves. Easy, except there is the problem of the racoons who come almost every night now to dig substantial divots in the clover sward looking for tasty things. I have come to use those wire "hanging basket" cages for plant protection. They work nicely if secured with a couple of landscaping "pins" that work sort of like large hairpins. I also use patches of chicken wire cut into appropriate shapes and tucked around the plant base--and also secured with pins.
We shall see...
old t-shirt scarecrow