Replace Your Lawn Workshops all Month!

Image, and bumper stickers, from Tree of Life Nursery.  All Rights Reserved.

Is your 2011 resolution to finally get rid of your lawn?  Well, you are in luck!  Tree of Life Nursery in San Juan Capistrano is hosting "Replace Your Lawn" workshops every Saturday during the month of January.   And, it's all FREE!

Sadly, this post is too late for the first workshop, but three great workshops remain.  Definitely worth checking out for expert advice on re-imagining your front yard without lawn, and the opportunity to find quality native plants for your new outdoor space. Upcoming workshop descriptions are presented below.  But, don't worry, if you can't attend the workshops, Tree of Life has handouts for every workshop (see the link below the descriptions), and a great cheat sheet on 30 California Native Plants to help you get started: Thirty Basic California Native Plants.   Go Green - Plant Natives!

Replace Your Lawn!

Start the New Year right by getting rid of that expensive water-guzzling, care-intensive lawn, and make way for a gorgeous native landscape!  Back by popular demand, we are presenting our Replace Your Lawn (RYL) workshop series in a four part installment about the basics of converting your lawn into a beautiful, carefree, sustainable habitat.

These workshops will be held SATURDAYS at 10 AM in the month of January, beginning January 8, 2011.  This RYL series is unique because we will hold two sessions on plant selection covering evergreen native plants and flowering perennials seperately.

All of these workshops are FREE of charge and each session lasts about an hour and a half, (depending on questions!).  Hopefully you will be able to attend each of the sessions at least once.  No reservations are required.

Saturday, January 8, 2011 - 10:00 AM
Replace Your Lawn I: Kill the Grass

Step one - get rid of it!  This may be more involved than you would expect and the methods to get rid of a lawn are quite varied.  Avoid unnecessary labor and learn several successful methods for lawn removal, depending on you turf type, budget, and timeline. First in our popular four-part series.

Download the handout: Replace Your Lawn: Kill the grass!

Saturday, January 15, 2011 - 10:00 AM
Replace Your Lawn II:  Creating and Caring for Your Native GardenSecond in a four-part series about Replacing your Lawn. Now that you have killed your grass, what are supposed to do?  Mike Evans will share from our booklet, "Creating and Caring for your Native Garden", that you can download here.  Learn how to create a thriving native garden.

Saturday, January 22, 2011 - 10:00 AM
Replace Your Lawn III: Plant Selection - Foundation Plants Learn about the backbone of every native garden: neat, evergreen and carefree foundation plants.  While California’s flora offers a wide variety of flowering perennials to choose from, be sure to use plenty of hearty evergreen woody shrubs to provide an attractive backdrop to showcase your flowers as well as to keep your native landscape looking full, lush and neat.


Saturday, January 29, 2011 - 9:00 AM
Replace Your Lawn IV: Plant Selection - Flowering Perennials
After you have determined the look and feel you wish to achieve in your garden, the fun begins – plant selection!  We will present a group of plants we call our Thirty Plants.  These are the “must-haves” for any native California garden.  This selection of thirty plants represents a handsome mix of the most authentic native plants for Southern California gardens.  As we discuss the Thirty Plants, we will expand our knowledge of natives in general, and learn how to chose the right plants for any particular design theme.
Download the handout: Thirty Basic California Native Plants

Long Beach Turf Rebate

Image from LA Times.  All Rights Reserved.

News flash - rebates and outreach work.  Or, at least they do in Long Beach, whose recent turf reduction rebate program has been a rousing success.  As Emily Green from the LA Times reported a few weeks ago, the first two rounds of the program, which offers a $2.50 per square foot rebate for lawn converted to low-water garden, are complete, and have produced a number of compelling and interesting outdoor spaces for residents of Long Beach:

It stands to reason that clean-ocean advocates would appreciate how important it is to check the stream of pesticide and fertilizer pollution that runs into the Pacific from lawn-sprinkler overflow. But what has dazzled everyone familiar with the Beautiful Long Beach Lawn-to-Garden Incentive Program is how citizens of this beach city have been so ready to do their part. The first day that the Long Beach Water Department began accepting applications, conservation specialist Joyce Barkley said, “They were gone in 45 minutes.”

Hopefully these great results will not only further such programs but pay dividends in making LA a more sustainable city.  Some great photos and stories of homeowners taking advantage of the rebate can be found at Green's column.

Mar Vista Green Garden Showcase

This Sunday was the 2nd Annual Mar Vista Green Garden Showcase.  The tour is hosted by the Green Committee of the Mar Vista Community Council, and features over 80 different homes.  As the website describes:

This free, self guided garden tour is all about water conservation. These homeowners have all made choices to eliminate or reduce turf lawns and have created gardens that thrive in our Southern California climate while using minimal water. Many are investing the water they use to grow fruits and vegetables for their families to enjoy.

Fortunately, I live just down the road from part of the tour, so was able to hop on my bike, and enjoy the afternoon seeing about 10 houses that ranged from highly designed, horticultural gardens to self-described rock gardens.  Each garden provided a different look at water conservation, but all featured permeable surfaces, and low-water use plants.  Some of the yards had been converted to edible gardens, growing artichokes, lettuces, snap peas, chards, strawberries, and tomatoes among others.  I was also able to stop by the Venice High School Learning Garden, one of the more extensive school gardening programs in Los Angeles.  It was a great facility that features a range of demonstration gardens and plots tended by students at the high school.

Although I really enjoyed the aesthetics of some of the professionally or highly-designed gardens, there was something sort of wonderful about the home grown "rock people" and like-minded, willing amateurs who took a lot of pride in pulling out their lawn and putting in a few plants.  While the yards were certainly not showpieces, the owners took as much if not more pride in it as people might talk about their lawns.  But it wasn't simply about aesthetics, they felt a real sense of empowerment and pride about doing their part - displaying a sort of DIY ethos for sustainability.

Overall, it was a great event that not only provided inspiration for people to rethink their yards, but also a forum for community members to interact with each other.  Look forward to attending next year.

  Raised bed made out of straw waddles (erosion control devices)

  Traditional raised bed

 The Desert Garden at the Venice Learning Garden

UPDATE: The Lawn Police?

 (image from LA Times. All Rights Reserved)

The LA Times brings another update and a wonderful op-ed to the unfolding drama in Orange over the Ha family's decision to remove their lawn and replace it with a less water intensive alternative.  Still no final decision from the city, but the Has will have to appear in court on Tuesday for now.  Below are some of the more telling points from the article:

It's their yard, it's not overgrown with weeds, it's not an eyesore," said Cleek [Has neighbor], whose own yard boasts fruit trees. "We should be able to have our yards look the way we want them to."
. . . .

"Compliance, that's all we've ever wanted," said Senior Assistant City Atty. Wayne Winthers.
. . . .

Meanwhile, the couple said they had reduced their water usage from 299,221 gallons in 2007 to 58,348 gallons in 2009.

I am willing to cut the City some slack, but this is starting to look really bad as whole of LA sits in another year of drought.  While I agree that the Has could easily add some more low-water landscaping to satisfy the city (and perhaps provide some wider landscape benefits from their front yard), how can you argue with their results? (Or the continued support and goodwill of their most immediate neighbors - these are the people that could really complain about it and they don't!)  Their actions have reduced potable water use to over 1/5  their usage when their lawn was installed.  That is remarkable, and would presumably be an action to commend or promote, not punish for lack of compliance.  It will be interesting to see how the city resolves this, and whether they use it as a means to improve their codes beyond compliance to reflect instead landscape performance. 

The Lawn Police?

There is an interesting drama unfolding in the City of Orange right now, where a couple faces the possibility of criminal punishment for ripping out their lawn after an anonymous complaint by a neighbor.  KTLA  did a piece on it and the LA Times had a summary of the story this past week:

If you missed the KTLA link from The Times' home page, here's the story: While some cities in Southern California are calling for mandatory water conservation, officials in Orange are taking a family to court because their drought-tolerant lawn alternative is not up to code.

In what sounds eerily similar to the “yard cop” stories Steve Lopez has reported in the past, Quan and Angelina Ha have been going back and forth with the city for more than a year about their lack of lawn. Prompted by one neighbor’s anonymous complaint, the Has were cited for not having 40% of their yard landscaped, per city law.

The couple were contacted after they tore out their lawn and left the yard bare. They have since planted drought-tolerant landscaping, including some lavender, rosemary and native wildflower seeds, which they say are germinating under wood chips. You can see the current landscape on KTLA video here.

The Has have been summoned to court on Tuesday. The maximum penalty: six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Kind of an amazing story regarding our front yards, the public-private interface, and the power of the market and people's attachment to the lawn (or at least traditional front yard aesthetics).  On one hand, codes regarding landscaping serve to promote stable property values (ask any homeowner how the value of their house does when the neighbor next door doesn't care for their yard or property), and a minimum landscape requirement can help prevent dust, blight, and other potential nuisances from a truly barren landscape.  But the fact that someone could go to jail for 6 months and be fined up to $1,000 is unnerving, especially when the change could actually promote a more sustainable landscape.  It is also sad, but perhaps telling, that a neighbor no longer feels comfortable enough to speak to their neighbor about what is happening on their street, but rather feels compelled to place an anonymous tip.  To me the story underscores the strange dynamic at play regarding our front yards where private ownership interfaces with public perception, and in this case possibly public punishment.  In this residential landscape, challenges to the norm of the street are highly frowned upon - perhaps because of a lack of understanding, perhaps because market dynamics create a fear of non-conformance.  Whatever the reason, we are obliged by public perception and oft times regulation to find a commonness and consistency in our aesthetics with our neighbors.  The story begs the question - is this preventing sustainable changes in our lifestyles?  And, is it undermining, rather than promoting, a true community?  

(The Ha Family front yard in Orange.  Image from LA Times.)

Life Without the Lawn? - Front Yards

Today's post in the running look at "Life Without the Lawn?" is a quick look at alternatives to the front lawn.  Presuming we decide to get rid of the lawn as our front yard, then what replaces it?  What does the front yard, that space where the public and private interface, on our streets become?  Here are some approaches I found in my neighborhood.  While each varies in how successfully it may improve sustainability or aesthetic interest over the typical lawn, what I found most interesting is how each approach feels unique.  Each alternative has  its own personality and a sense of place that enriches the residential landscape through their diversity.  Houses are set apart from one another, as opposed to conforming to a green norm of the lawn,  and begin to reflect the styles, interests, and lifestyle choices of their occupants.      

Life Without the Lawn? - Right of Ways

So what exactly does life in Southern California look like without the lawn?  Given that lawn is the ubiquitous ground cover here, what other visual prototypes exist for our front yards and interstitial spaces?  Below are some visual examples of that most interstitial of spaces, the public right of way on residential streets.  Usually covered in lawn with some street trees (we hope), the right of way exists as a public owned entity with no real public use.  So, assuming sustainability concerns pushes the lawn out of Southern California, what other aesthetic options exist?  A quick stroll through my neighborhood produced these non-traditional right of ways.  While not all of these may be great solutions aesthetically or sustainably, it was interesting to think about what the right of way could be beyond a green carpet. 

Life without the Lawn?

Increasing water scarcity, rising concern for native habitats, and the need to reduce energy use and greenhouse gases are threatening the very existence of lawn in Southern California. And, while many would see this as good riddance, it also poses the question: what is life without the lawn?  This is the first of I am sure many posts considering the ramifications of our life with the lawn in Southern California, and what it might look like potentially without it.  First off - issues with lawn:. ASLA's The Dirt shared this report this week from the New York Times:

The New York Times’ Dot Earth blog reports on a new study on urban green space from Geophysical Research Letters, a publication of the American Geophysical Union, which contends many urban green spaces emit more greenhouse gases (GHGs) than they absorb. This is due to the high amounts of emissions from lawn irrigation, fertilizer, mowing, and leaf blowing. The study argues: “Turfgrass lawns remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and store it as organic carbon in soil, making them important ‘carbon sinks.’ However, greenhouse gas emissions from fertilizer production, mowing, leaf blowing and other lawn management practices are four times greater than the amount of carbon stored by ornamental grass in parks.”

Claudia Czimczik, a researcher at University of California, Irvine, and a co-author of the study, told Dot Earth: “Lawns weren’t initially invented to store greenhouse gases — they have a lot of other purposes such as recreation. But there is a lot of recent political discussions about lawns as carbon sinks, and if that is the case we need to consider the whole package.”
According to Dot Earth, the researchers looked at four parks in Irvine, including open lawns and athletic fields. Open lawns which use fertilizers emit “heat-trapping nitrous oxide,” which “offsets 10 to 30 percent of the carbon dioxide captured and stored.” Additionally, the fuel used in mowing and leaf-blowing ”releases four times more carbon dioxide than the lawns soak up. Athletic fields fare even worse because they require more maintenance.”
Czimczik said Californian parks may be a special case because park officials maintain their parks year round. More research needs to be conducted on the emissions of green spaces in other regions. She added that push mowers should also be considered.


Dot Earth points to the EPA’s GreenScapes program, which can encourages homeowners to think about land, water, air, and energy use in their lawn maintenance. Unfortunately, the article leaves out the Sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES), a comprehensive new rating system, which addresses all of these issues (see earlier post).