We have a 100-year-old farm house, fully restored. The house itself is quite beautiful, and I’ve described it here before. But as summer looms, we’re paying more attention now to the yard. Much like the house, the yard (1-1/2 acres) is beautifully landscaped. Reseeding annuals and perennials are planted all about in pine-needle islands, lined with stones. Beautiful flowering bushes line the curved sidewalk, and dwarf spruces stand like centurions on either side of the steps, while Nandinas and Azaleas and pretty purple things (we don’t even know that they are) frame the house. The long wooden porch, complete with rockers, swing, and metal roof, is replete with hanging baskets of ivy and petunias. Window boxes and copper kettles sprout a beautiful array of annuals. Dogwood, Crepe Myrtle, Japanese Cherry, Peach, red maple, and big old oak trees are everywhere.
So what’s the problem?
Our grass. Our soil is Piedmont red clay, which retains water very well, but the trees and other plants are so plentiful that they rob the grass of nutrients. (Or so says the gardener.) About an acre is developed (the rest is woods), and the grass is spotty, and overrun with clover (and a little crab grass). The back yard is much worse than the front, and is as much red dirt as it is grass. We are told that, for about $600, which we can afford, we can make our front yard into a year-round green carpet. (On preview, I guess I should mention that we cannot afford to retain the gardener for routine maintenance. We do our own mowing, trimming, watering, and so forth. He just does the tree-cutting, some new plantings, and things like that.)
But I have mixed feelings about this. I actually LIKE the rustic look of the patchy grass. And yet, I can’t help but wonder whether good grass would look better. On the other hand, there is already more to maintain than we can really do ourselves, and the new grass will require a whole new watering regimen of its own. (We cannot afford an in-ground watering system.) Plus, there are no guarantees. The grass might well come up just as patchy as before, or at least devolve to that.
So, I guess I’m really fishing for validation of my opinion. Must every lawn look like a green carpet? Doesn’t an old farm house need a rustic lawn? Am I just trying to avoid more work or the possible disappointment of a failed seeding job? Should I stop thinking about this and start thinking about world hunger? Or what…?