LAWNS
Changing the Conversation
By Bobbie Schwartz, FAPLD
In previous articles, I’ve asked the question of how much lawn we really need. Then, just recently, while participating in the APLD virtual conference, the issues of climate change and sustainability were discussed repeatedly. One of the lecturers wanted to know if our clients were raising the question of lawn or whether it was an issue that we, as designers, were discussing. It’s not a question of all or nothing. We, as landscape designers and members of the green industry, see that plants are blooming earlier and that plants are being stressed by weather extremes. Therefore, I believe that it is incumbent upon us to counter these stresses by educating our clientele and incorporating changes into our designs that will help the environment. We know that lawns don’t need to be “perfect” but we need to try to persuade our clients that there is a different type of beauty that includes clover and other broadleaf plants in the lawn. If we
are eminently successful, we may get them to eliminate lawn altogether. I’d like to share the designs for five clients that delineate the gamut of doing away with all the lawn to only partial replacement. In some instances, it had never occurred to the clients that some or all of the lawn could be used for other purposes but they were not difficult to persuade once they understood the possibilities. As you will see, there are many variations of lawn usage in these examples. Please use these examples to persuade your clients that they really don’t need so much lawn. Bobbie may be contacted at bobbie@bgthumb.com. Photos courtesy of Bobbie Schwartz.
Let’s start with partial replacement. The first client’s directive was to take as much lawn as I needed since the ultimate objective was to pull the eye away from an ugly house. (This was a client ahead of her time, i.e. 1989). As you will be able to see from the before and after photos, I took about 3/5 of the lawn. The client is still in her house and the bed lines remain the same although, naturally, we have tweaked the design since then.
This is the front of the house as I initially saw it. onla.org
The flow of the bed lines pulls the viewer’s eyes into the beds and hides a great part of the house. November/December 2020
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