Having the perfect lush, weed-free lawn, like anything else in life, comes down to a matter of priorities. And supreme priority is usually children.
Having the perfect lush, weed-free lawn, like anything else in life, comes down to a matter of priorities. And supreme priority is usually children.
So when Jim Hole of The Enjoy Centre dropped by my Woodlands home this week to help evaluate the conditions of my lawn, one of the first items he keyed on was the swing hanging from an eight-foot-long branch that shades a significant part of my small backyard.
“That branch should come out but there's no way you can take that out,” Hole said. “What are the most important things to you? The kids, right? The swing is far more important than making the lawn look good, and they're mutually exclusive. Maybe when the kids get older you can take the swing out.”
We moved into the home last May, and by the time we had unpacked our bric-a-brac, it was too late in the summer to perform any kind of maintenance of the front or back yards. As a self-professed ‘lawn guy,' I was bothered by the state of the grass. The grasses in the front yard were thin – so thin in fact you could see patches of dirt through them. Moss grew in places across the front and back yards and grew back after heavy raking. I dropped some topsoil and seed on some of the worst parts of the front lawn and watered religiously, but very little of it took. And I couldn't figure out why.
Suspecting deficient, compacted, sterile soil or some other problem I could not comprehend, I asked Hole if he could drop by to have a look. Within 30 seconds of standing on my front lawn, he easily deduced the problem, pointing to the 20-foot spruce towering over the front lawn, the two large maple trees and the enormous willow in the back.
“Moss is really kind of indicative of two things: shade and compaction of the soil,” Hole said. “You can eliminate the compaction, but it's hard to eliminate the shade. There is absolutely no substitution for sunlight. Sunlight is plant food.”
In the early morning hours, the spruce in the front casts an enormous shadow over a good 10-foot-square portion of the lawn, the exact part that is thin, mossy and reluctant to grow. By the time the sun moves west enough to shine over the spruce, it is behind the house, which casts the same shadow in the same area for most of the afternoon.
The backyard has the same problem with shade. The willow has one branch – with swing attached, that extends halfway across the yard. It's already starting to bloom and subsequently blots out significant stretches of sunlight.
In fact, some parts of the lawn have been reduced to dirt from a combination of high foot traffic and shade. There is one small patch where Hole estimates I could grow some really good grass, but that's about all.
“There's a bit of a fighting chance in the spring before the leaves come out to put down some seed,” Hole says for the area around the willow. “You'll get a bit of establishment but then it will just fade away.”
Rethinking the yard
For the areas of the lawn that receive enough sunlight, Hole recommends the usual treatment, starting with core aeration to relieve the soil compaction. But as he digs down to examine the soil more closely, Hole says he's surprised at its quality – dark, crumbly, stretching down six inches.
“It's not so much about the chemical components in the soil, it's more about the organic matter and texture,” he says.
Once the lawn has been aerated, Hole recommends top-dressing the area with a half-inch of topsoil, followed by a healthy sprinkling of a good lawn seed with a high content of Kentucky bluegrass. The ‘shade tolerant' mixes, which contain more red fescue seeds, will help in some of the shadier areas, but in those almost totally deprived of sunlight, no seed is ever going to grow.
And that's where Hole suggests re-thinking the perfect lawn. The trees look good, so why not enhance them? For the spruce out front, why not add some trim and cedar mulch? For the areas in the backyard starved by the enormous willow branch, why not consider a raised bed? Plant some ferns or hostas, plants that are very tolerant of shade, he suggests.
“Again, how much lawn grass do you really need? You might decide you want one really well done circle of grass,” he says. “Then you can convert other parts to something else, like a raised bed or container gardening.”
The perfect lawn, therefore, is not necessarily a rich, green, soft, weed-free blanket. It is symbolic of what you value. If you value your kids and your yard, there's a way to combine the two, if you're willing to think about your lawn differently.
