As part of our overall landscaping design, we wanted a significant portion of our property to be native grasses and wild flowers. Why? It’s pretty. But it is also a very sustainable choice compared to lawns. It requires no fertilization (no chemicals), no irrigation (saving water), no mowing (saving energy), and is sort of a return to how the land used to be — its natural state.
Don’t get me wrong – we still wanted some lawn. A well-kept lawn is also pretty, kids and grown-ups can play on it, and it fits in better with the neighbors’ landscape. It’s more generally accepted to have just grass outside. So we were trying a mix of both.
A native wildflower/grasses area takes 3-5 years to establish itself. It also takes a lot of time to keep the weeds out. We were out of town earlier this month, and I came home with a case of the shingles, so I wasn’t exactly staying on top of the weeding. Then the City of Minneapolis put the kabosh on our attempt at native landscape design (see earlier post on Everyone Must Have Mowed Lawns?).
I didn’t want the city coming to cut everything down because they would have destroyed the wild flowers (and fined us). So we hired someone to do it. Here is the video of our goodbye: Bye Bye Native Grasses