Planning for a Lawn-Free Future

We expect to get the keys to our new house sometime this week and will immediately begin doing a lot of work to it.

With the money from our 203k loan we're getting a new roof, new exterior paint, a new water heater, a new electrical panel, and a new sewer line. This will all be done by contractors.

There's also a lot that we plan to do ourselves, and near the top of the list is replacing the front lawn with native plants.

Neither of us has a great deal of gardening experience or expertise. Having never owned our own home, we have, for the entirety of our adult lives, always been at the vegetative mercy of our landlords. One thing we've learned is that we both dislike lawns. Not only do we dislike the hassle and cost of lawn maintenance, but we also don't think they're very interesting to look at, and then you have the negative environmental impact.

It's hard not to notice all the interesting things homeowners and businesses around town do with their outdoor spaces, and since we moved here 7 years ago we've suffered from garden envy.

I started noticing eco roofs shortly after we arrived and then started seeing other eco-conscious gardens around. I remember reading an informational sign posted at a bioswale on SE Division about five years ago, I think the first one I ever encountered (of course now they're ubiquitous on the inner east side of Portland).

I've never done much research on the topic, but by virtue of living in this community, I have gleaned enough information over the years to know that native plants require less work and provide a better natural habitat for wildlife than a lawn or a garden of exotic species. On top of that they can be quite beautiful (and suit my taste much better than a manicured yard).

Wanting to get some ideas, Robert and I road our bikes over to Portland Nursery to poke around. We saw a lot of things we liked, but realized we have no real concept of how to get started, so today we got some books from the library.

I just started reading How to Get Your Lawn Off Grass by Carole Rubin, former director of the West Coast Environmental Law Association and former chairperson of the BC Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides and Canadian Environmental Network's Alternatives to Pesticides Caucus. Robert is rotating among a few other books about native plants and garden planning.

We hope to eventually get rid of the lawn in the back, too, but that's a lower priority at the moment. I do want to start on a vegetable garden right away, though.

It's going to be a lot of work, but I'm really looking forward to putting time and effort into something that we'll actually be able to appreciate for a long time.