This has been a tough winter for reflecting on the pleasures of gardening. Leaving aside the political news, the weather has taxed my spirits. The deep cold spell we had, with frigid temperatures amplified by strong winds, made it hard to take long walks immersed in the stark beauty of winter, one of the season’s delights.
Still, it was a good time to add a layer of insulating mulch to garden beds, helping to keep them frozen and less susceptible to the freeze-thaw-freeze cycle that heaves plants out of the ground, damaging their roots and crowns. Every year when we retire our Christmas tree, I saw off its branches and lay them on the small perennial bed by the kitchen door, creating a wistful post-holiday vignette.
Beyond the kitchen door, the yard looks particularly grim now that the snow has melted. I have never cared much about lawns. I enjoy the springtime sprinkling of dandelions that make the lawn look starry-eyed. The white and purple violets have their turn to dazzle, followed by a carpet of purple ajuga. During the summer, the lawn gets mowed so that it stays more or less green. I’d rather spend my time working on my flower beds than cultivating lawn grass.
For years, there was a company called ChemLawn. It’s hard to imagine a time when that name seemed like a surefire way to attract customers. The company changed its name in 2007 to the more anodyne “TruGreen,” but it’s still in the business of creating perfect weed-free lawns.
I cringe when I walk my dog past lawns posted with those scary signs: Pesticide application— stay off. Who would spray their lawns with pesticide that could hurt a wandering dog or cat, not to mention scampering squirrels, who can’t read signs?
In 1989 Michael Pollan wrote a wonderful essay called “Why Mow? The Case Against Lawns,” in which he examined America’s unhealthy obsession with expanses of perfectly manicured green grass. According to Pollan, the supremacy of the lawn took root in the late 19th century, when Frederick Law Olmsted—he of the Great Lawn in New York’s Central Park—and other landscape architects were proclaiming new rules for landscape design. Pollan quoted Frank J. Scott, author of “The Art of Beautifying Suburban Home Grounds,” a primer intended to make Olmsted’s vision accessible to middle-class Americans. Scott pronounced that “a smooth, closely shaven surface of grass is by far the most essential element of beauty on the grounds of a suburban house.”
Pollan pointed out that unlike the English, whose lawns were secondary to garden beds and generally used for activities like croquet and lawn tennis, American designers saw lawns as ends in themselves. Scott advised homeowners to “let your lawn be your home’s velvet robe, and your flowers its not too promiscuous decoration.”
As Pollan explained, yards became neighborhood focal points, organized “to capture the admiration of the street,” in the words of a 1920s garden writer. Pollan had his own family history of resisting the “unmistakable odor of virtue that hovers in this country over a scrupulously maintained lawn.”
He recounted the story of his father’s outright rebellion against lawncare in the face of his suburban neighbors’ wrath. As he put it, “Stuck in the middle of a row of tract houses on Long Island, our lawn said turpitude rather than meadow, even though strictly speaking that is what it had become.”
Neighbors became unfriendly, even rude, and after someone came to talk to him about the state of his front yard, he fired up his old Toro mower and mowed his initials in the grass, never to mow again.
Pollan doesn’t say how this childhood experience affected him — I imagine the shame I would have felt if my parents had balked so strenuously at neighborhood expectations. But my quietly defiant mother did thumb her nose at our neighbors in a posh Washington, D.C. suburb where our street might have been featured in a ChemLawn advertisement.
Part of our front yard was fenced to accommodate our dogs, a basset hound and a Norfolk terrier. But then we got a new dog, a rangy hound mix who had no trouble climbing the chain-link fence and escaping. My mother’s solution wasn’t to install a higher fence or to otherwise restrain the dog, but to add an inward-facing overhang that gave the appearance of a prison yard. I was mortified. What would my friends think? Honestly, I don’t think they noticed, but I’m sure the neighbors were relieved when we moved out of the house a few years later.
One option for eliminating or shrinking lawns is to replace the grass with shrubs and perennials. While it’s true that these plants don’t need mowing, they require weeding, pruning, dividing, and other maintenance tasks. This practice is appealing in theory, but I already have more mixed beds than I can handle.
A lawn trend I’ve been following lately is adding clover to existing lawns. There are two types: Dutch white clover and microclover, a more compact version of Dutch white. Clover has many advantages. First, it’s a legume and thus nitrogen-fixing — meaning that it takes in nitrogen from the atmosphere and into its roots. Over time, that nitrogen will enrich the soil and provide nutrients to neighboring plants.
Second, if the clover is left to flower it will disperse seed and germinate readily, growing denser and choking out weeds as it spreads through the grass. Also, because clover has a tap root, it’s less susceptible to drought. Finally, it’s a boon for bees that feast on clover, an easy way to support our imperiled pollinators.
Of course clover mixed into a grass lawn is a non-starter for lawn purists. If you’re after a putting-green effect, clover won’t work for you. And some say that because it attracts bees it might be harmful to children and pets who might be stung. Advocates of clover lawns insist that it hasn’t been a problem. Another potential downside to clover is its spreading habit, which means that it can infiltrate garden beds if left unchecked. I will probably continue to neglect my so-called lawn, but if I do anything, I’ll add white clover. It will make nice company for the dandelions, violets and ajuga.
Mickey Rathbun is an Amherst-based writer. Her latest book, The Real Gatsby: George Gordon Moore, A Granddaughter’s Memoir, was published in 2024 by White River Press.