In drier climates or ones subject to drought, its water-guzzling habit makes you the scorn of neighbors or even brings the authorities down on your back.
And don’t get me started on lawn care companies. Sure, they take the pressure off, but not only do they cost an arm and a leg, they have no respect for your other plantings. Every year I have to lodge a formal complaint about the herbicides they spray (illegally!) on my neighbor’s lawn, because they manage to poison the flowerbeds that border my property.
And that’s not all: if you listen to the “experts” (i.e. the people who have products or services to sell you), your lawn also needs to be fertilized several times a year, treated for pests, weeds and diseases, rolled, dethatched, aerated, and so on. If shrub or perennial beds required that much work, you would have abandoned them years ago!
I repeat: your lawn is your worst enemy. Keep that concept in mind even if you’re not yet ready to accept it, because one day it will completely change the way you garden.
Because the solution “to the laidback gardener’s greatest enemy” is simple enough: remove the lawn, if not entirely, at least most of it!
Do you really need a flat green surface that requires so much care? A surface which, basically, goes entirely unused most of the time? I’m not so sure! For me, a lawn is a placeholder for future developments, scheduled sooner or later to disappear under a sea of other plants.
At my place, the front lawn disappeared years ago, turning into flower beds and a restful shade garden. I do have a tiny lawn out back (I still need a “peepee corner” for my dog Maggie!), but it doesn’t get much care. And it is simply a mowed surface, not a traditional all-grass lawn, a surface where lawn grasses mingle with flowers and plants (spring bulbs, violets, groundcovers, etc.). I never aerate it, fertilize it or give it any special care. Nor do I get upset about “weeds”. I let anything grow there, as long as it isn’t prickly (thorny plants get yanked on principle: one should, in my opinion, at least be able to walk barefoot on a lawn!).
In my “long-range plan” (mostly in my head, by the way), what little lawn is left is marked “water garden” and “vine-covered pergola”. In other words, I plan to completely eliminate it one day (we’ve decided that the still spry Maggie, 8 years old, will be our last dog).
If you want a beautiful yard without all the hassle of a lawn, I recommend you do the same.