Do More with Less Lawn

By Pam Penick

Lawn has long enjoyed its unique status as our country's default ground cover — rolled out like wall-to-wall carpeting around every house. The reign of grass is being challenged today, however, as widespread drought, increasing water costs, and awareness of the environmental costs of traditional lawn maintenance (chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides) have led many people to look for alternatives.

One easy alternative, which can save thousands of gallons of water a year and significantly reduce your maintenance costs, is simply to shrink the lawn to a size that serves a specific purpose. Reduced to a useful size for play or lounging, or as a calm spot to rest the eye, lawn can be part of a greener landscape — and I'm not talking about its emerald hue.

Good design plays a strong part in the success of a smaller, defined lawn. Like other living ground covers, lawn should be used as an intentional design element: Imagine an elegant, green throw rug rather than wall-to-wall carpeting. The resulting negative space is especially welcome in a busily planted garden.

The simplest way to downsize one's lawn is to carve out space for a generous patio near the back or front door, preserving half the lawn (or less) further from the house. If it turns out you want even less grass later on, simply expand your garden borders. Another way to design around a smaller lawn is to treat it as a calm spot amid a highly textured and lushly planted garden. This is an especially appealing approach for plant lovers; a quiet patch of lawn can ground a busy garden.

1. Replace half the lawn with a patio and garden bed. In my own former garden, I divided the open, grassy backyard into two sections: a flagstone patio with a container pond and a chiminea for the adult zone, and a rounded-off rectangle of lawn as a play space for our young children. I bordered the lawn with a mix of low-care perennials and ornamental grasses and set it off with edging to define it as an intentional design feature. Mowing time was significantly reduced by shrinking the lawn to a manageable and useful area.

2. Create a calm oasis of lawn amid a lushly planted garden. In her Portland, OR, bungalow's backyard, Loree Bohl shrank her lawn to a petite swath near the house and installed a sunken patio at the rear of the property. A golden necklace of Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra 'Aureola') edges part of the lawn; hostas and other low-growing plants encircle the rest, with taller shrubs tucked further back in the beds. Precisely aligned concrete pavers set in the lawn lead from the house to a sunken patio. In this jam-packed, plant-lover's garden, a simple patch of lawn can be an asset that sets off the textures and colors of surrounding beds.

3. Extend a patio with a bit of lawn. In Brianne and Trey Denton's Blue Lotus Garden in Dallas, a gray gravel patio and a remnant of green lawn ebb and flow in the middle of the backyard, with flat-stone edging marking the broad curves where they meet. It's a dynamic design that's perfect for entertaining: Guests can move freely from the patio to the lawn, but the flowing lines keep the space from reading as an empty expanse, the way a large lawn does. The green wedge of grass provides contrasting color and texture and it's sized perfectly for a backyard picnic, toddler play or putting practice.

4. Round out the garden with a circular lawn. Austin designer Jill Nokes created this restful glen in her garden by edging a small circle of turf with stone and positioning a simple bench on both sides of the entry path. Directly opposite the entry, a small chiminea serves as a focal point, drawing you into the space. The geometric formality is softened by the surrounding exuberant garden beds and playful hardscape materials, such as the blue-bottle edging and the pattern of river stones pressed into the concrete path.

5. Frame a picturesque rectangular lawn. Designer Mike Munsterman whittled a purely decorative lawn down to its essence in the shady front yard of his Dallas home. His pretty-as-a-picture lawn is matted and framed by a border of pea gravel backed by low ground covers and evergreen shrubs. The large concrete pad that crosses the lawn leads to the home's front door on one side and out to a sunny street-side garden on the other. The effect of this narrow, rectangular lawn near the front door is of a green welcome mat.