I think the first place you need to look is your local community or city ordinances and find out what is allowed. The next stop is figuring out what is natural for your area - I live in a semi-arid area, and if you don’t have natural prairie grass, you probably have something that takes far too much water and maintenance to keep it looking proper. From this site:
The Kentucky Bluegrass that is your most common lawn is not appropriate everywhere (it certainly isn’t here); a much better choice is area-appropriate shrubs and flower beds with minimal, low-water use grass in between the beds. I’m working on developing a business as a landscape designer, and this is one of my mandates - try my best to create area-appropriate yards.
Regarding the fence - there are also ordinances regarding fencing of yards, usually dealing with how high the fence can be. Front yards often are much lower than back fences.
I got the feeling, from my friend, that her cousin was worried her neighbors would be angry their view was now obstructed, which seemed odd. Your explanation does make more sense.
From my own perspective, If I lived in the country or suburbs, I would see fences as desirable (good fences make good neighbors etc.).
But I’d also have these planted right next to my fence so it’s obviously not a subject I know anything about.
See, I find this a fascinating topic (I’m assuming you’re talking about something similar to xeriscaping). So much so that I’ve been thinking of taking a class on it despite the fact that the most planting I can do is a window box. There seems to be so much waste in lawn maintenance/ care for what boils down to some pretty unimpressive plots of land.
In the Northeast, very seldom will yhou see a single-species lawn. Far more often than not, a lawn will be comprised of a number of different grasses. My front lawn in suburban Cleveland had several different varieties of Kentucky Bluegrass, ryegrass and fescue.
Single-species lawns tend to be far more common in the deep south and Texas, where there are fewer viable grass species. When I lived in Orlando, my lawn was comprised of just St. Augustine. Here in Austin, lawns will be either Bermudagrass, zoysia or St. Augustine; you can’t mix them.
I know what a real leaf problem is. In our last yard, one year, we bagged 160 extra large leaf bags (we used one box of bags over and over) to take to the community compost bin. This was out of a 1/4 acre area. We would still do another 10 or so bags in the spring because some oaks drop their leaves n the spring.
A different year we tried to mulch with the mower as they fell and we had an even layer of about 6 inches of mulched leaves covering the entire yard. That kind of leaf layer is not going to disappear for a long time and it encourages mosquitoes to breed.
Again, I disagree. I took the entire rakings of 3 mature trees, put them in a pile and mowed them to confetti dust. It was the healthiest spot on the lawn the following year. Obviously one pass with a mulching mower isn’t going to do it but given the labor of raking and bagging it’s less work. It just makes sense to use some or all of the labor into making a nuissance into fertilizer.
Agree with this on clover. It used to be included in grass seed mixtures because of the nitrogen aspect - but once broadleaf herbicides came out and gained popularity, they were removed. Not a good marketing scheme for the grass companies to include something in their product that would die during what became normal maintenance. So rather than fight the battle of educating the public, it was just easier to remove the seeds. You can often find clover seeds at garden centers to mix in with grass mixtures.
But I think JKilez point does have some validity - if left untamed, clover can take over. However, I’d much rather be fighting clover than crabgrass.
Yup, xeriscaping is another word for it. I agree - a yard with a lawn, a tree, a shrub, and a flower bed is not much to look at for all the work it takes. Public education is a slow process, but we’re working on it here, getting people aware of the idea that the plants you choose should do most of the work; you shouldn’t need to slave over your yard (and waste tons of water on it) (and that a golf green isn’t the only look you can have in your yard).
Are you even bothering to read these posts? Your situation is not the same as everyone else’s. 3 trees? That’s a trivial amount of leaves.
And don’t assume that everyone is tossing their leaves out. As I mentioned earlier I put aside a small portion for composting and gardening. I can’t use them all because they are just way too many. They are useful, but one can have too much of a good thing.
If you’re only dealing with three trees, then mowing works fine. However, the people who are saying mowing doesn’t work for them have rather a lot more than three trees to deal with.
In our postage stamp front yard, we have a couple of 25-foot rose of sharons, a 20-foot crepe myrtle, a similarly tall maple, and a fully mature walnut tree. That’s not counting the leaves that blow across the driveway from the neighbors’ monstrous pecans and their dogwoods, or the stuff from the guy across the street, or the other neighbor, or the shit from the woods up the hill.
I haul three trees worth of leaves out of my freaking patio every few weeks.
Depends. I’ve got a pretty substantial area of woods behind the house, and another wooded strip between my house and one of my next-door neighbors. On the other side, I’ve got a fair number of trees as well, but there’s grass and shrubbery under them instead of undergrowth, so while it’s not woods, it generates about the same volume of leaves.
The lawn’s too small to bother with owning a lawn tractor (I can mow the whole thing in just over an hour with a regular mower), but there generally comes a time of year when the leaves come down too thick and fast to be mowed under - I mowed the lawn on Saturday, but by next weekend I’d be surprised if I’m able to mow more than about half the yard due to the depth of the leaves. So I’ll blow the leaves into piles, rake them onto tarps, and haul them into the woods. It’ll take 2-3 hours to deal with the leaf raking/blowing/hauling, but that’s once a year.
I have about twenty freakin’ trees in my yard, front and back. Three? Ha, what a joke.
But I rake because I rent and the landlord asks us too - although the guy comes around with the machine, so at least I just need to get them into piles.
I made several piles last week. Now the ground I cleaned up is covered again. Fucking oaks.
I kind of have to do a combination of both. I get so many leaves that if I raked and bagged them would fill 60+ bags.
I run the mower over them to chop them into a fine mulch. That does leave a heavy mulch on my lawn so I do run a rake over that which helps get the finer particles down to the soil. I end up having to bag maybe 3-4 loads of excess mulched leaves. Sure beats the 60+ bags though.
No one rakes around here, thanks to the wind. It’s really, really flat where I live, and with no natural barriers, the wind just roars on through without hindrance. So, there’s no point in raking, because the wind eventually carries all the leaves away anyway.
Upsides and downsides to the wind. It’s a pain to have days that are so windy you can’t do anything outside, but on the other hand, we never have to rake, and we’re the largest city I know of that has zero concern about air quality, because all pollution gets whisked away on a regular basis. I try to look on the brighter side, don’t ya know…
I’m a firm believer in mowing the leaves in if at all possible, but my Dad’s old property in Michigan was a case of far too many. We’d mow 'em under the first week, (had to mow each day) and spread a lime and fertiliser mixture half way throught he week. After that, we had to blow them to the curb. The pile at the curb woudl reach over my ehad 2-3 times per Autumn.
Clover lawns look like the perfect alternative to me. There’s even a study in progress which may (I hope!) prove that they’d be useful in capturing carbon. But does anybody know how the clover looks in the Winter? Does it stay green thoughout the cold months? I haven’t been able to find any info at all on that.
As for the front-yard fence, it’s verbotten in my area. The back yards are almost all fenced, but the HOA rejects front fencing. The reason given is that it “breaks up” the look of the neighborhood, making all the yards look smaller and thereby (theoretically) lowering the property values. Just another result of the house-as-investment-over-home way of thinking.
Apparently looks fine, as I’ve never noticed it looking bad. We’ve had a dense patch right by our patio for at least a couple years now, and I’ve never noticed it look any different from the rest of the lawn. I’ll keep an eye on it over this winter.
It might depend on where you live. I live in Michigan, so the lawn is green until it gets and stays cold, then it’s tan/brown. (One year, we had a large snowfall before the grass turned tan. The following January, I think it was, we had a thaw and all the snow melted, and the grass was still green, but only for a day or two.)
At least one tree disease, marssonina leaf spot (on poplars, aspens and cottonwoods) overwinters on fallen leaves. A recommended method of fighting the disease is to do a good job of cleaning up leaves in Fall.
“Marssonina survives the winter on fallen leaves that were infected the previous year (Figure 9). With spring and warmer, wet weather, the fungus produces microscopic “seeds” or spores that are carried by the wind and infect emerging leaves. Early infections are rarely serious, but if the weather remains favorable, spores from these infections can cause a widespread secondary infection. Heavy secondary infections become visible later in the growing season and cause premature leaf loss on infected trees.”
We blow our leaves and haul them to the community compost (we self compost some, but not all). We can mulch them in with the mower (and sometimes do), but have in the past had mold issues with the grass when that happens. We have a few large trees, and frequently get heavy snowfall. Its actually easier to blow and bag than mow and mulch our yard.
Clover doesn’t handle traffic well and is something the neighbors are trying to keep out of their grass. Don’t plant invasive weeds - they become your neighbors problem. Clover is a step up from creeping charlie or dandelions. All have their place and can be very charming - outside of the suburban lawn.
Fences can be an odd thing - in a cul de sac neighborhood there is sometimes the concept of the “shared back yard” - all the kids are out playing between the houses. Fences make that difficult - and can make you look antisocial - like “I don’t want your kids in my yard” (and are often put up by the family who has the kid who is always poking around other people’s yards).
I took care of our leaves this last weekend. We have woods on two sides of our 1-acre property, plus about 15 other oaks and maples in the yard. We had so many leaves in the yard that you couldn’t see grass.
I started off trying to bag them with our riding tractor, but was having to empty the three bags every 50 feet of mowing. After I spent two hours working on the first third of the lawn, I decided to mulch the rest (including the heavier sections in the back yard), then went back for a second pass with the bagger attachment. With this strategy, I was able to cut my dumping frequency in half. (Even after mulching, there were piles of chopped-up leaves in the yard.) After bagging again, the worst of this was removed, but there is a fair amount of chopped up leaves that are visible up close if you look. This tends to add a lot of acidity that is not good for the grass, so I’m going to to have to hit these areas with extra lime.
All in all, it took about 6 hours of mowing and dumping yesterday to clear the lawn of leaves. Why do we do this? Because otherwise it will kill the lawn.
Well, I think you could debate it, but to say that it is “downright wrong” would in itself be incorrect. Do not conflate things that are good for the soil with things that are good for competing plants. If a plant blocks sunlight and absorbs water that another species would otherwise use, it will have a detrimental effect on the other plant. Some legumes that are used for ground cover/crop rotation such as Crown Vetch are known for taking over an area an starving out competing species. The plant is great for replenishing nitrogen in the soil, but is an anathema to grasses (while it is alive).
The white clover often found in grasses *looks *nice, no doubt. Because it is a broadleaf plant, it provides a good deal of green for the buck and can really help fill out a struggling lawn. It is not as ideal, however, for the “walk barefoot on” or “kids play on everyday” type environment. For those types of uses, a dense grass cover is ideal.