The Pros and Cons of Grass

A pro-grass post: We have a Carroll Gardens brownstone with a fairly large back yard (20 x 60). When we moved in Spring 2002 the back had a small cement patio and the rest was completely covered with giant rosebushes and azalea with an extremely narrow cement walkway from front to back. We tried to salvage what we could (some rosebushes), but ended up paying a gardening service to tear most of them out and had a mason dig up the narrow cement walkway. Then we hired a “landscaper” on the cheap to lay sod down. (Maybe $500-600). He did a horrible job — instead of taking away the excess sod, he just laid double layers of it in places, so the ground is all uneven and lumpy . However, the grass took fantastically — we have an incredibly lush 20 x 50 lawn of thick grass and the neighbor’s teenager mows it with a very good weedwhacker. We planted some shrubs on the the side as well, but the backyard is still pretty bare. However, you can’t beat it for kids to run around and play (5-year old and friends). They can kick soccer balls, play catch, and we’re even thinking about getting some kind of swingset. I get pangs of envy when I see friends’ beautifully landscaped backyard — lots of grass definitely isn’t nearly as attractive, but when the kids are still little, you can’t beat having it. And it’s nice to have a respite from the local parks and playgrounds (which we love) where kids can play outside (in barefeet, even) but you don’t need to watch them every minute. (And, there are no “grass” playgrounds in the neighborhood anyway.) By the way, we’ve never fertilized or done anything to the grass in the last 3 years except mow, so don’t know if we got lucky that the sod took so well.

don’t give up on grass. ours is thriving. we don’t use any chemicals or fertilizers. every so often we throw a bit of compost on it, but not much because we never generate much. we weed by hand because we don’t have much grass. we got a fabulous tool for poking the dandelions out. and our grass is in a reasonably shady spot (3 hrs direct sun max.) so it can be done! this is the time to do a really thorough raking, throw some dirt in the areas that are patchy (thanks squirrels) and put down some seed and keep it reasonably wet until the grass comes in where it’s been missing. keep the faith.

I think one should really think about what they want to get out of their backyard. A bunch of plants are nice to look at, but if you want to entertain and put a big table out there, you want a big flat space. Also, if you have kids, you may want a swing set or kiddie pool… if it’s too landscaped, that’s difficult.
Finally, too much greenery tends to attract a lot of bugs/flies.

This will be our 3rd summer in our brownstone. When we bought the house the entire back was 6 feet hight in May when we moved in. The first year everything died out there. I pulled all the weeds up by hand, digging deep and extracting as many roots as possible. Each week I turned the soil over. It got healthier looking. Blacker. I also discovered someone had broken up concrete and buried it under a quarter of the yard. I dug that out too. Year two I continued to turn the soil weekly. Some things grew (morning glories, impatiens). Grass too started to sprout in patches (I never seeded). I pulled out a few patches and put them in different places. This spring I was shocked as I saw 50 per cent of the back sprouting grass. I am eventually going with pavers, and defined areas of planting. My neighbors have a garden like that with a nice 10 by 15ft field of grass. It is a nice contrast. All grass is boring.