The American lawn is a proud tradition. There’s nothing prettier and more satisfying than a verdant carpet of healthy turf beneath your bare feet. But if you’ve had a lawn for more than a season, you know how difficult it is to grow perfect grass.
In Nashville, the situation is especially troublesome. Wet, cold winters and scorching summers combine (with a little help from clay-heavy soil) to produce lawns that are less than luscious.
If you’ve been continually frustrated with the quality of your lawn, you should know that there are alternatives for you. Green grass lawns, it turns out, are pretty inconvenient for everyone. Not only that, they require huge amounts of water and fertilizer to support, both depleting the soil and contributing to chemical fertilizer pollution in the water table. What’s more, lawns don’t do anything. If you want your property to earn its keep, or at least be less demanding, the Parke Company has three alternatives for you to consider.
Three Alternatives to Lawns
Gardens.
In nature, an open patch of grass would eventually turn into a forest, given adequate water and sun. Grasses would grow long, putting down roots that pull nutrients from deeper in the soil. This would improve the soil and make it a habitable place for shrub and tree seeds to grow. With time, forestation would be the natural result.
We don’t want our lawns to become overgrown, but preserving them in the juvenile grass state is a constant struggle. Turning your front yard into a garden will eliminate this problem, and also create beauty and food for you to enjoy. You can create flower gardens, herb gardens, fruit tree plots, or vegetable gardens. You don’t have to get rid of all your grass, either. Reducing grass area for gardens will mean far less lawn upkeep, as well as more manageable water and fertilizer requirements.
Non-Living Landscaping Elements.
Who says a lawn has to be covered in finicky, helpless grass? Stones, ponds and other non-living landscaping elements are a classic way to make a maintenance-free yard that’s also beautiful to look at and spend time in.
Combination Living/Non-Living Landscaping.
If you don’t want to get rid of all of your grass, why not opt for ambitious landscaping? The Parke Company can create amazing landscaping out of Perennial shrubs and trees which will require little maintenance, in the midst of stones, ground-cover, or mulch beds.
Combining large areas of the above with smaller patches of grass will make your lawn both impressive and easy to maintain. Landscaping is an investment, but it will save you lots of time and money in the long run (not to mention saving you the trouble of pushing around a lawnmower on a July afternoon).
The Parke Company can create any landscaping idea you can concoct. If you’re tired of unappreciative grass that takes your hard work and doesn’t give anything back, it’s time to replace it with more modern lawn design. If you’ve got questions about how this could work for your Nashville home or property, get in touch with the Parke Company today.