Are you thinking about installing a new lawn or restoring your tired, weedy one? If so, one of the first things you should do is step back for a minute and really look at your yard. Is your green space huge – or not big enough? What changes can you make to help your lot look better?
You can break up large lawn areas with sweeping flower beds.
Photo Credit: Mark A. Miller
Scaling the size of your lawn to your house is an important consideration when planting or restoring turfgrass.
Photo Credit: ©2000 Dolezal Publishing/Reed Estabrook
Your ultimate goal should be to achieve a good sense of proportion – of lawn to house and lawn to surrounding landscape. While a modest house swimming in a ballpark-size lawn may work in the country where properties are generally big, that same oversize lawn won’t have much appeal in suburbia. If you’ve got proportional issues – like a massive back yard framed by a scrawny border of flowers and trees along the fence line, or a lawn that’s literally swallowed up by surrounding landscaping – don’t be afraid to fix the problem! There are a number of ideas you can try.
If you’ve got too much lawn, try working in some flower beds, a spot for a small stand of trees or some well-placed garden sculptures. Consider drawing the eye away from your fence and border by adding an island planting bed in the middle of your turf. Breaking up your large lawn will help bring the yard into better scale.
Another option to help bring a too-large lawn into proportion is to carve out swaths of beautiful groundcovers in your turf. Not only does this keep the space green, it adds a nice change of texture.
If you’ve got too little lawn and too many flower beds, scale back your beds and extend your grassy areas. Consider creating transition spaces with groundcovers. Sketch out your yard on paper to scale (with ¼ an inch equaling 1 foot) or use a computer landscaping program to help you. Start playing with the key elements – trees, flower borders and lawn areas. Even the roughest doodles can give you ideas on how to bring your yard into balance.
As you work, keep in mind the scope of your project. The bigger the lawn, the more time-consuming and labor-intensive your project will be to install and restore – and the more care it will require once it’s in and growing. Be sure to plan your yard and garden so they work with you. If you do it right, you may even end up with some time to actually enjoy your beautiful new space on the weekends!
