Beautiful no-mow yards 50 amazing lawn alternatives

Review by Booklist Review

Mow No Mo'! may be the rallying cry of those who spend more than they like of their leisure time steering a lawn mower yet to whom the idea of a grassless lawn seems a horticultural oxymoron. Granted, there are landscapes for which a lush carpet of green is the appropriate choice. But there are an equal number in which an alternative would be just as alluring, especially given the negative environmental impact the upkeep of lawns entails. Not that Hadden is advocating the sort of unkempt snakepit of weeds that will outrage neighbors. Instead she offers 50 replacement lawns designed to keep everyone happy. Ranging over the options, from swaying sedges to creeping ground covers, Hadden demonstrates how creatively rewarding it can be to forgo the fescue. Precise instructions on preparation, construction, and maintenance, along with dozens of plant recommendations for every site, make this an invaluable guide to the lawnless lifestyle.--Haggas, Carol Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In many American towns and cities, the steady hum of lawn mowers and gasoline-powered weed whackers constitutes a summer symphony. Neighbors often vie with one another to grow the greenest and lushest lawn, free of dandelions or crabgrass, and often shun those neighbors who choose an alternative to the orderly, closely cut patches of grass or sod. Experts now recognize lawns as the largest irrigated crop in the United States, and the chemical pesticides and fertilizers we use on our lawns have polluted our surface water and contaminated our groundwater. Drawing examples from expert gardeners from around the world, garden design expert Hadden (Shrink Your Lawn) suggests a number of ways that lawns can be replaced by meadow and prairie gardens, rain gardens, or edible gardens, among others. She then takes us step-by-step through the process of converting a lawn to a garden and maintaining it, offering very thorough recommendations for a significant variety of plants that thrive in various types of gardens. With refreshing zeal, the author urges us to rethink our yards, helping us to see that a lawnless or a less-lawn landscape can fascinate us with its beauty, complexity, and variability. (Feb. 7) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

Maintaining a traditional lawn is time consuming, expensive, and a poor environmental choice, but few can imagine other options. Hadden (founder, LessLawn.org; Apprentice to a Garden) has designed this book to encourage us to rethink our yards. Her introduction explains the benefits of smaller lawns or even no lawn at all, while the heart of the book is meant to serve as inspiration by detailing 11 gardens from around the states. Hadden goes on, in Part 2, to examine the process of removing a lawn and designing, planting, and maintaining a new garden; in Part 3, she provides a small sampling of ground-layer plants. For those frightened to remove an entire lawn, she suggests developing a smaller "habitat hedge," creating a visual focal point and a welcoming place for butterflies and songbirds. VERDICT Novice and expert gardeners will find this well-written and engaging work, enhanced with color photos and other illustrations, useful for all sizes of projects. Because it will appeal to a range of gardening enthusiasts, it will fit nicely into public library gardening collections.-Lisa A. Ennis, Univ. of Alabama at Birmingham Lib. (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Introduction For the past century, we gardeners have loved our lawns. They have grown from an occasional play area (or status symbol) for the richest among us to a ubiquitous "affordable" groundcover. But the tide is turning. For a variety of reasons, from our changing environmental awareness to our changing lifestyles, some of us are shrinking our lawns. Others are leaving them behind altogether.   In different areas of our diverse land, the local climate makes it hard to grow a healthy lawn. It may not be practical or worth the cost to give traditional turfgrass the care it needs to grow in those places, especially when we realize that drinkable water is becoming more scarce and water restrictions are on the rise. One easy first step to conserving potable water is to stop irrigating our lawns with it. Instead we can spread succulents, desert flowers, meadow and prairie gardens, and other dry-adapted landscapes across the drier midwestern, intermountain, and southwestern regions of this continent. We can hang a hammock in the shade of a vine-clad arbor and watch hummingbirds feasting on nectar and battling over all the new nesting sites we created by planting native shrubs. Those of us who have the good fortune to live near a lake or stream are coming to understand that mown lawns can direct pollutant-laden runoff straight into the water, and are restoring our shorelines to naturalistic wetlands and woodlands. We hear the difference in the varied voices of waterbirds that repopulate those refurbished shorelines. They now have perches, cover, and food supplied by insects on land and water, plus fish that flourish in the clean water. Through our successful efforts to help monarch butterflies by planting milkweed "waystations" all along their migration routes, and to bring bluebird populations back from the brink of extinction by building special houses for them, we have seen evidence that even one landowner on one small city lot can make an enormous difference to the survival of other species. Every one of us can take action in our own yard to help conserve global biodiversity, expand our urban forests, mitigate climate change, and at the same time make life richer and more fulfilling for our families and ourselves. It used to be that only serious gardeners would take on the challenge of straying from the default home landscape of lawn and foundation plantings. Well, more of us are serious about gardening nowadays; a number of folks who might not lift a finger for an ornamental plant are determined to put in the effort of growing some of their own food. And luckily, even busy non-gardeners who don't have the time or desire to learn can find local resources and examples to help them exchange their lawns for satisfying alternative landscapes. Lawn alternatives have always been around, but now with the tools and materials available--not to mention skilled experts for hire--there are more reasons than ever to bypass a lawn and choose something else. Whether you remove all your lawn or just a part of it, you can add new beauty, comfort, and ease to your life.   Excerpted from Beautiful No-Mow Yards: 50 Amazing Lawn Alternatives by Evelyn Hadden All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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