E-mail article     Print view

Embrace Brown

This summer, why not water down our perfect-lawn ambitions?

PREV |  of  | NEXT

JACQUELINE KOCH / SPECIAL TO THE SEATTLE TIMES While the unwatered lawn at the Crooks garden in Innis Arden browns out by mid-July, it greens up as soon as the rains start in autumn. JACQUELINE KOCH / SPECIAL TO THE SEATTLE TIMES While the unwatered lawn at the Crooks garden in Innis Arden browns out by mid-July, it greens up as soon as the rains start in autumn.

WE'RE COMING UP on the few months of the year when Seattle has less rain than Tucson, Ariz. With the lack of snow pack and the drought warnings, we cringe when we see a flip-flop sprinkler spraying merrily around a big lawn on a sunny day. So much precious water is wasted keeping a lawn green, let alone with overhead watering that is largely lost to wind and evaporation. Nevertheless, because of kids, dogs, croquet and the emotional attachment many of us have to that green outdoor carpet, lawns prevail around town despite their gluttony.

"We're lucky to have an inch of rain a month in the summer, so it'd be great to get to the point your lawn can get by on that," says Liz Fikejs, Conservation Program manager at Seattle Public Utilities. I'd say the greatest hope for saving water is to get our heads around the prospect of just saying no to that several inches of water a week the lawn needs to stay green and letting it go brown for a summery wheat-pasture look.

The folks at Seattle Public Utilities suggest these money- and work-saving techniques that keep a lawn healthy, even if not emerald plush in every month of the year:

• Start out in the spring with grass-cycling, which means leaving the clippings on the lawn. This improves the soil and keeps the lawn green longer into the summer. A mulching mower helps, but you can just use your regular mower and leave the rake in the shed.

• Raise mowing height to about 2 inches to shade the surface and encourage the grass roots to plunge down deeply into the earth in search of water. Aerating the lawn and top-dressing with an inch of fine compost, scattered and then raked into the holes, also encourages roots to delve deep.

Now In Bloom

Rosa 'Knock Out' is said to be the most shade-tolerant of all roses. An All-American Rose Selection winner, it is one tough shrub rose — drought-tolerant, long-blooming, hardy and highly resistant to black spot. Cherry-red flowers smother the dark-green foliage from spring through frost. 'Knock Out' is compact and tidy, growing only about 3 feet high and nearly as wide. This may be the only rose with its own Web page: www.theknockoutrose.com.

ILLUSTRATED BY paul schmid

• Don't fertilize until early autumn. Then use a natural organic or slow-release fertilizer to help your lawn build its root system over the winter.

• If you do water, do so deeply but infrequently, and only in the evenings and early mornings. Wet the whole root zone, then let the lawn dry out before watering again.

• Better yet, let your lawn go brown and dormant. Think of it as giving the lawn a rest during its most stressful time of year. To help autumn recovery, water dormant lawns deeply and slowly once each rainless month.

Like many of us, garden designer Stacie Crooks has taken up much of her lawn and replaced it with drought-tolerant plantings. But in her back yard she's left an expanse of grass for her terrier to romp and for her sons' trampoline. Stacie's husband, Jon, is the lawn guy, but there's nothing traditional about his approach. "Everything I ever wanted to know about lawn care . . . I learned from a horse," explains Jon, who grew up near pastures that were never thatched, aerated, top-dressed, watered, mulched or treated with chemicals. "The only care these pastures ever got was the natural mowing and fertilizing the horses provided," he says.

So how does this apply to our back yards? Jon mows like a horse eats, cutting the grass down short in the spring when it grows fastest, which cleans out thatch and new weed growth. When it warms up and dries out a bit, he lets the grass grow out a couple of inches. He uses a Honda rotary mower that mulches. And while we can't quite stretch the horse metaphor to fertilizing, Jon feeds the grass only enough to keep it healthy, using whatever organic fertilizer is cheapest. He waters minimally, which means less mowing, fertilizing and weed growth, as well as fewer pests. He points out that watering in hot weather creates a humid mini-ecosystem in the lawn where pests and mildew can grow. He never has crane flies in his lawn because they can't tolerate dry, hard ground, so they fly off to plague the nearest neighbor foolish enough to water in July and August.

For updates on the water supply, click the "Advisory" button at www.savingwater.org. For a free copy of "Natural Lawn Care" call 206-633-0224, or info@lawnandgardenhotline.org.

Valerie Easton is a Seattle free-lance writer and contributing editor for Horticulture magazine. Her e-mail address is valeaston@comcast.net. Jacqueline Koch is a writer and photographer living on Whidbey Island.