National Arboretums Grass Roots: A brighter future for the lawn

The lawn is the Atlas of our times, bearing its keepers and their children, dogs, cats and, if mine is any measure, whole armies of squirrels and chipmunks.

The lawn can bear this burden, with some periodic help, but it has also had to support a much tougher load that of societys conflicting expectations.

Up and down the land, local ordinances enshrine the front yard as a place where neatly mown lawns framed with low or no fences could speak of a communal respectability, openness and uniformity. With suburbia came and remains an enforced neighborliness. There was a time when every block had at least one greensward hobbyist, usually male, in unbridled pursuit of the trophy lawn. This mania probably has dissipated now that we inhabit Screen World.

To other eyes, the lawn is no trophy but a throwback to a time when its symbolic probity came at a cost not only to our individuality but to the health of the planet.

For a generation at least, environmentalists have been railing against the lawn for its addiction to scarce water, to polluting fertilizers and to life-killing pesticides.

My view? In our watery part of the world, the lawn is a welcome feature in many (though not all) gardens, but as one considered element of a landscape. Cultivated with care and knowledge, the lawn is a net environmental asset in its ability to check storm water, filter pollutants and generally cool the heat island.

Others might not regard the turf as kindly, and the debate lingers, but the lawn itself has moved on: Better practices and improved grass varieties now enable greater success with this ubiquitous land form. That is the central message of a living exhibition, Grass Roots, that opened this month at the National Arboretum and will be around for a few years.

Anyone with a lawn in these parts should make a point to see it for the simple reason that we live in a climatic cusp that makes turf cultivation particularly challenging.

I asked the experts behind the exhibit, Scott Aker and Geoffrey Rinehart, to rattle off some of the most common lawn blunders. You may know them already, but theyre worth repeating:

Mowing too short: If you mow cool-season grasses too short, youre inviting disaster. The grass will become stressed and die back, and the void will be filled with weeds. Keep your mower at its highest setting.

Here is the original post:
National Arboretums Grass Roots: A brighter future for the lawn