Shifted green months
Most Dallas-area yards are green from March to about November. Our yard is green from October to June. That gives us the same number of "green months" per year, but with two great advantages: the grass needs little or no cutting during the hottest months; and the yard needs very little watering, because its growing season is synchronized to the rainy Dallas winter.We accomplish this trick through a mixed seeding every Fall. In September, we scatter a blend of annual rye grass seed, native Texas grasses, and native flowers. The rye grass sprouts quickly once the Fall rains arrive, and grows well through all but the coldest part of winter. (The first lawn mowing of 2001 took place in mid-February!) The rye helps to thicken the sod, prevents soil erosion, and stays green right through to the next Summer.
While the rye grass keeps things looking fresh through the winter, the native grasses and flowers slowly put down their roots in preparation for a strong start in the Spring. The natives plants have adapted to the hot, dry summer, and are quite capable of staying green without constant watering. As the native turf grasses establish themselves, the areas needing annual rye grass will shrink to just the shady portions of the yard - mostly on the north side of the house.
This is a view of our front yard, as of 7 July 2002. Admittedly, it has been a wet spring and summer, but the yard is shaping up nicely - without watering:
Native plants
Despite its movie image as a land of cacti and tumbleweeds, Texas is home to plenty of beautiful plants. We are enjoying a multi-year experiment to find out which ones are best adapted for the environments our yard offers. Also, the native turf grasses are mostly immune to the pests that afflict our neighbors' yards.Oddly enough, seed for native Texas grass costs more than the seeds of imports like Bermuda grass or Kentucky bluegrass. As in many of our other projects, though, the higher up-front cost of using "non traditional" (!) techniques adapted to our local climate is made up in the long term by lower cost of ownership.
Having spent five years in England, we are quite familiar with the art of the lush, landscaped garden. It fits naturally with the cool, wet summers over there. Despite the fact that Dallas summers are neither cool or wet, and despite the fact that the U.S.A. declared its independence from Great Britain over 225 years ago, almost everyone attempts to cultivate an english garden. On just one day in September, 2000, the residents of Dallas used over 800 million gallons of water, a good portion of which was consumed by automatic sprinkler systems in a (mostly failed) attempt to maintain yards full of ill-adapted foreign plants. Christians need to ask themselves whether this is the sort of good stewardship their god requires them to exercise over his creation, especially when there are plenty of hardy native species fully adapted to the local climate.
Long-term outlook
If it grows, it can stay. If it dies, it was not meant to be there.We make it a point to scatter a wide variety of plant seeds. It may take us a decade or more to reach a stable yard equilibrium - with a variety of plants occupying their various niches.
We also have planted a lot of trees. At the moment, most of them are just sticks. Rather than planting just fast-growing species (as often happens when builders want to create a neighborhood atmosphere quickly), we have opted for some slower growers, accepting that we may not be the owners who will enjoy their shade when they are fully developed decades from now.
There is more to your home than its immediate re-sale value, so take the time to envision what you want it to be like 10 (or more) years from now.
Self-feeding
Another amazing North Texas ritual is the saga of fertilizer. Most Dallas yards get hefty doses of fertilizer. With daily waterings from automatic sprinkler systems, the resulting bounty of grass needs to be harvested almost every week. And, with commendable fortitude for the mid-summer heat, this gets done every weekend. The bags of clippings, containing the bulk of the applied nutrients, are thrown out. Everyone starts over again next year.It may be just our ignorance of the way things work, but it seems worthwhile to find out whether we can save untold amounts of money, toil, and (yes) sweat just by mulching the clippings, so that the nutrients recycle into the soil.