Replacing Your Lawn With Native Plants

Replacing Your Lawn With Native Plants

The first step in replacing your lawn can be a challenging one. You need to KILL YOUR LAWN.

Why should you ‘Kill Your Lawn’ ? By removing some or all of your turf you will:

• Reduce water use dramatically
• Reduce or eliminate fertilizer and associated polluted runoff
• Eliminate weekly maintenance labor and expense
• Free up square footage for more attractive and beneficial native plants!

HOW TO KILL YOUR LAWN

Step 1: Identify the type of turf you have

• Cool season grass: Fescue, Marathon, Bluegrass and grass blends that stay green in the winter
• Warm season grass: Bermuda, St Augustine, Zoyzia and any rhizomatous grass that is brown in winter

Step 2: Determine a strategy for removal based upon these factors

• Grass type
• Season of removal
• Timeline

Step 3: Kill your lawn!

COOL SEASON GRASSES: Hard To Grow, Easy To Kill, Quick To Replace

• Smother with mulch, no plastic
• Strip and flip using a sod-cutting machine, mark and avoid sprinkler heads that may be retrofitted for the new garden.
• Rototill, only if no rhizomatous weedy grasses are present
• Herbicide- typically not necessary with cool season grasses

WARM SEASON GRASSES: Easy To Grow, Hard To Kill, Slow To Replace – DO NOT ROTOTILL

• Hand removal by weeding, digging out roots (difficult)
• Herbicide- controversial but effective, each gardener needs to make their own cost/benefit analysis of this method

GROW AND KILL

• Glyphosate-based herbicides (Roundup, Rodeo, others) low toxicity, short residual
• Non-selective herbicide, tailor application method to site conditions to avoid damage to desirable plants
• Seasonal- most effective and fastest when plants are metabolically active, warm season for these grasses
• Exhaust stored food reserves in their extensive root systems by repeated cycles: water, grow, spray, kill.
• Dormancy resembles death. Premature planting of your new garden will mean years of follow-up hand pulling. Patience and diligence are required to eliminate these types of grasses.