The Wild Lawn Handbook: Alternatives to the Traditional Front Lawn - Softcover

Stevie Daniels is the former editor of Organic Gardening magazine.

In recent years, environmentalists, gardeners, and harried homeowners have begun to question the validity of the American lawn as the major feature of most landscapes. As traditionally tended, a lawn in most parts of the country demands a great deal of time, money, and effort to maintain. These two books offer greatly differing strategies for handling this problem. The Balls (Yardening, LJ 12/91) recognize that most people want to keep their grassy lawns but with a lot less effort. Readers of Smart Yard will quickly realize that the subtitle's 60-minutes-per-week claim will only take effect a year or more after they make the initial investment in time and effort to renew or replace their lawn by improving the soil, choosing appropriate grass varieties, aerating and dethatching, eliminating most herbicides and pesticides, and assuring frequent but "tall" mowing that leaves the grass around two inches high. The result will be a healthier lawn that will resist drought, diseases, and pests and ultimately demand less pampering. In contrast, Daniels explains how and why to replace turfgrass with other plants to create an entirely new kind of lawn. Examples include prairie and native grass lawns, meadows, moss lawns and woodlands, ground covers, and front-yard gardens. Since many antilawn mavericks have gotten into trouble because of local ordinances and homeowners' associations, Daniels (a former editor of Organic Gardening) includes a chapter on how to deal with such opposition. The Wild Lawn Handbook will find a much smaller audience than the more mainstream Smart Yard, but it gathers together a great deal of specific, practical information that may be hard to find elsewhere, as well as examples of successfully installed alternative lawns. Both books are highly recommended for most gardening collections.
Beth Clewis, Prince William P.L., Va.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.