In Search of a Lovely but Subversive Lawn Aesthetic

At no time do I understand better the phrase "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" than when I contemplate American lawns, with their rigid borders and carpets of lush grass. Even before we moved to the dry West, I was struggling to create lawns that winked and nodded at our national obsession with shortly-cropped grass while incorporating more subversive landscaping--planting or just encouraging native flowers and grasses, with their shaggy beauty; incorporating gardening in border areas of a front yard; leaving dandelions to grow in grassy areas and ignoring those brown spots caused by disease or insects. But I always left enough lush green grass to prevent the neighbors from assuming I was an anarchist --or something. 

The American lawn is an Industrial Lawn:

Plant diversity is minimized; grass predation by insects is controlled by insecticides; weed species are controlled by herbicides; new, genetically-altered grass strains are designed to withstand applications of potent weed killers; fungal attacks on grass are thwarted by fungicides; the addition of fertilizers substitutes for naturally occurring nutrient cycling; droughts are avoided by irrigation; and mechanical soil aeration compensates for the absence of a soil structure that promotes natural aeration. (F. Herbert Borman, Diana Balmori, and Gordon T. Gaballe. Redesigning the American Lawn: A Search for Environmental Harmony. Yale University Press, 2001)

In other words, the American lawn is pretty much an environmental disaster-- all that run-off of pesticides, fungicides, and fertilizers and the demands of irrigation from 20 million acres of residential lawns. 

The America lawn also communicates socioeconomic class, status, maybe even patriotism or political leanings --or even the mental health of the home's inhabitants. Neighbors often make assumptions about homeowners by the state of their lawns. Most of us want our neighbors' goodwill, and so we submit to the the demands of the "Majoritarian Authoritarian" lawn. If social conformity doesn't work, there is often formal law to make us give obeisance to the European aristocratic ideal of a well-kept lawn:

...[I]n a great many jurisdictions of the United States, formal law, otherwise known as local public ordinances and private land use deed restrictions, regulates the length of grass or "weeds" in the front lawn. Chances are if the front lawn measures more than six inches in height, a violation from the public weed inspector or the homeowners association is soon to follow. Oftentimes, these grass or weed height ordinances do not make exceptions for alternative landscapes such as wildflowers. (Asmara M. Tekle, "Law and the Authoritarian Aesthetic of the American Lawn." Art Lies: A Contemporary Art Journal, 2011. Online)

I am all for democratizing my lawn, but I'm not ready to open the borders to all the seeds blown into my property in this very windy country. I'm searching for a lawn aesthetic that does less damage to the environment while still being pleasing to the eye--or at least pleasing to me. Here in an area that receives only 10-12 inches of annual precipitation and that is also experiencing a moderate drought, that means wise irrigation. The person who built our house in the 1980s put in an extensive irrigation system that subsequent owners did not maintain. Pipes swelled and burst, leaking water under black landscape plastic and gravel that a subsequent owner had installed. We have abandoned all of that broken system except the lines to the vegetable garden and a small apple orchard and have placed drip hoses in our garden and in flower beds along the house, where more water-thirsty plants also get additional run-off from the roof. Currently, I'm also catching precipitation run-off in buckets; I want to replace those with rain barrels or maybe even a cistern if we get ambitious.

But what about the lawn? 

We have a small front lawn planted with fescue which we mow occasionally. Tom is thinking of slowly replacing the water-thirsty grass with a native, drought-hardy grass, but that will take time. In the meantime, I'm giving my attention to the back yard and one side yard, leaving the other side yard to fate for the time being: the soil there has been compacted by previously parked automobiles and now serves as our wood lot.

Here is the a look at the backyard, as of yesterday morning:

partial view of our backyard

and turning around to take a photo in the opposite direction

We live in an ancient volcanic field, and the ground is full of rocks, with thin soil above. To put in the foundation of cross ties for the chicken house, Tom had to use a pickax to dig out the rocks. Digging in the backyard recently to plant some purple coneflowers, I hit rock within three or four inches. My plan is to amend the soil enough along the back fence (which our property shares with a pasture) so that I can plant fairly drought-hardy flowers that will need occasional watering with an irrigation hose I will place along the fence. In the meantime, I am trying to identify native flowers and plants that grow with very little water and that have propagated naturally. My standard: if I like the looks of the plant, I'll not pull it up. 

The green plants along the fence are a type of annual (native) sunflower. Neither Tom nor I have been able to identify the white flowers, but they look like a type of brassica. Pollinators love them.

close-up of what we think is a brassica but which we have been unable to identify

I tried planting wildflower seeds I purchased online from a garden supply store in Santa Fe, New Mexico, but the seeds sprouted poorly, probably because they needed a lot more water than I provided. Those I planted in flower beds next to the house which have better soil and receive more water, sprouted and thrived. The thin top soil dries out very quickly here, which is why I'm planning to amend the soil along the fence and let the rest of the back yard fill with native plants that require little or no watering. The landscape naturally remains brown here until the monsoon season starts in July.

A species of low-growing Erigeron (fleabane) grows in the disturbed areas of the front and side yards. I'm encouraging these. The flowers close in the evening and open as the sun warms them up.

I love this species of globe mallow, which I am encouraging in many areas of the yard.

I am less fond of this member of the mallow family (Malvaceae)--Cheeseweed or Little Mallow (Malva parviflora)--lower right-hand corner of photo. It's low-growing and very invasive. The seeds sprout everywhere; the flowers are white.

Cheesemallow (see photo above) was introduced from Europe and, according to A Field Guild to the Plants of Arizona, by Anne Orth Epple, is "a common weed of fields and open lots" and is "boiled and eaten by Native Americans." I would like to have a bit more information than the author provides on that last claim, though.

Another plant introduced by Europeans that I thought I would like because it remains green for so long and is very drought-hardy, is horehound. A great crop of it grew in the backyard until I realized just how invasive it is and how irritating are its clingy, sticky seed pods. I dug a lot of it up, but the seeds sprout by the thousands, and plants still remain in corners of the yard and along the edge of the pasture next door. The herb is "highly unpalatable to livestock" according to Wikipedia.

horehound (Marrubium vulgare)

Common purslane (Portulaca oleracea), another plant introduced by Europeans and now naturalized, grows well here, too. I'm just not sure how much of it I want to grow in the wilder areas of the yard; I've been digging it up in a front yard flower bed. I know that it can be eaten as a salad green, and as a teenager, I tried it once.

Common purslane

One flower that blooms brightly in pastures and along roadsides during the rainy season is what I think I have identified correctly as Paperflower (Psilostrophe tagetina). I've found only one bunch on the edge of our front yard, but I hope to introduce more into the backyard. Anne Orth Epple describes it as being "a many-branched, aromatic, rounded plant" which is also "poisonous to sheep." We don't have any sheep, so no worries there.

Paperflower (Psilostrophe tagetina)

In Georgia, I grew a lovely tall species of native Gaura, and here in Arizona, I have found a couple of species in our yard--Scarlet Gaura and Lizard-Tail Gaura--but I have yet to take an adequate photo of the Lizard-Tail Gaura. The stems and flowers are very dainty and not very conspicuous, but I'm tending a patch in the side yard near the apple orchard, and it's growing naturally with other grasses and native flowers between the chicken yard and pasture fence.

Scarlet Gaura (Gaura coccinea), also, Scarlet beeblossom, plains gaura, butterflyweed

a patch of Scarlet Gaura growing in the side yard near the apple orchard

Anne Orth Epple notes that these flowers are pollinated by moths at night. I'm hoping that these moths aren't the same ones that begin as tomato hornworms, which we have been pulling off our tomatoes and feeding to our chickens--poor hornworms! The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center describes these as "rather weedy plants," but I like to think of them as "ethereal." That's my aesthetic, anyway.

I have noticed in our yard two of the nineteen species of verbena that can be found in Arizona, but I haven't accurately identified the most prolific one, which reminds me of cultivated verbena. I am encouraging these flowers, as well as what I think is a horse-mint. 

I think this is New Mexico Vervain (Verbena macdougalii), but it might be another variant of vervain. "Picture-booking" plants is neither an easy nor accurate enterprise.

A second purple-flowering Vervain is in the lower right-hand corner of this photo. I am also encouraging the plumed grass, which I have not identified yet.

Horse-mint (Agastache pallidiflora)

The flowers of the horse-mint are inconspicuous, but I have a soft spot for horse-mint as it grows prolifically in areas of my home state of Texas, where I have fond memories of first identifying it.

There are other volunteer plants in my yard that I have yet to identify but which I like for various reasons--the color or shape of their stems, the smell of their leaves when crushed. My plan, at this point, is to identify as many plants as I can, encouraging the growth of those I like, transplanting more to fill in bare areas. In the back yard, I'm arranging a pathway that will meander through plants that will never be mowed, though I will certainly have to tend them by weeding or thinning. In the side yard near the apple orchard, I hope to have a little meadow of wild flowers that I will mow only around the edges, near my cultivated flower beds. That's the plan, anyway.

I love the color and shape of the silvery-stemmed plants in the background (a type of sage?)

Volunteer wildflowers in an untended area at the edge of the front lawn--globe mallow, Lizard-tail Gaura, fleabane (flowers not open yet for the day), pink evening primrose

A quote attributed to May Sarton reflects what I feel about gardening: "Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace."

Gardening and writing have long been for me ways to combat loneliness, a consequence of moving often and of a personal tendency to seek solitude.