“I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.” -Walt Whitman

This section describes my first California native garden project: The Grama Greensward & Meadow.

Suburban lawns. Manicured grass turf covers 50,000 square miles of the United States; that would be covering 1/3 of the entire state of California! Green lawns are gorgeous in late summer. Summer after summer, father-in-law wins, hands down, THE BEST LAWN on the block award. Voluptuous curves have nothing on this green space. Lush. Soft for children toes. Lawns “provide a suitably grand stage for the proud display of one’s own house.” (Pollan cited by Bornstein, 1) And they’re great; in wet, warm climates. But in the arid West, especially here in southern California where Chinatown delivers water, is it wise or even moral to allocate oceans to the seldom-used living carpet?

So while the Sahara mulch slowly devours our property’s lush lawns, the blank slate our seasonal weed carpet – the back yard – offers the perfect place to start a “green” yard project. This will be a rejection of the traditional lawn which is unsustainable and reflects “the way humanity treats the environment influences the way it treats itself, and vice versa.” To live within our means, within local rainfall limits, is part of what I want to accomplish. To “go green” in a little corner of my world.

In order to protect nature, it is not enough to intervene with economic incentives or deterrents; not even an apposite education is sufficient. These are important steps, but the decisive issue is the overall moral tenor of society.

If there is a lack of respect for the right to life and to a natural death,
if human conception, gestation and birth are made artificial,
if human embryos are sacrificed to research,
the conscience of society ends up losing the concept of human ecology and, along with it, that of environmental ecology.

It is contradictory to insist that future generations respect the natural environment when our educational systems and laws do not help them to respect themselves.

The book of nature is one and indivisible: it takes in not only the environment but also life, sexuality, marriage, the family, social relations: in a word, integral human development. Our duties towards the environment are linked to our duties towards the human person, considered in himself and in relation to others. It would be wrong to uphold one set of duties while trampling on the other. Herein lies a grave contradiction in our mentality and practice today: one which demeans the person, disrupts the environment and damages society. (Caritas in veritate, 51)

What does an encyclical from Pope Benedict have to do with Blue Grama Grass? Well, it’s easy: bouteloua gracilis, the foundation of my greensward/meadow, is a California Native that is green grass AND requires little water once established! Not a water-guzzling lawn, but dry and soft enough for bare feet. Save the water, save the world!

1. PREPARATION

GREENSWARD: a sweep of grass, sedge, or other grasslike plants that provides a surface accessible to varying degrees of foot traffic. It can fulfill most of the same functions as a traditional lawn and, when mowed or trimmed into a short, dense mat, it is in fact a type of lawn. A managed greensward takes on a formal appearance similar to turfgrass, yet requires less water, less fertilizer, and fewer other chemicals.

MEADOW: a kind of grassland or prairie, devoid of trees and shrubs but characterized by an open expanse of grasses, sedges, annual and perennial wildflowers, and bulbs.

What’s the difference? Many meadow plants do not tolerate regular foot traffic, so greenswards are better choices for more intensive activities, like outdoor play. (section adapted from Reimagining the California Lawn: Water-conserving Plants, Practices, and Designs. Bornstein, Fross, and O’Brien. Cachuma Press, 2011.)

Lawns

• The Tree of Life Nursery with their super cool sticker, “I Killed My Lawn, Ask Me How”
• Claremont’s “Lawn Removal Club” ask: “Can you EAT your lawn?” Which is YES, if you’re a goat. Or dog.
• Yerba Buena’s Lawn Alternatives
• The California Native Grass Association has workshops and a great PDF!
• A PDF from

Blue Grama, California Natives, Meadows, Greenswards

• Barbara E. hosts what Weeding Wild Suburbia, the single most comprehensive personal blog with amazing resources on California Natives. She’s near the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains.
• Keyword: Native Grasses
• Native Grasses, Sedges, and Rush for the Garden, with a special focus on Blue Grama!
• Yerba Buena has eighteen weeks of meadow pictures!
• “My California native meadow in June” Sue Langley wrote the blog posts I’m imitating, except in southern California!
• Search blue grama or bouteloua gracilis!

Reasons for choosing blue grama: When choosing the grass to serve as the foundation of this space, blue grama stood out first for passing the “wife test”; she rejected many other native grasses but liked this one for its short, neat look. Then we saw it at the Santa Barbara Botanic Gardens in full glory and were sold: this is beautiful green, warm-season grass!

Greensward/Meadow at the Santa Barbara Botanical Garden

Second, blue grama grass is a California native. Its deep roots make it best adapted for California’s wet winters and dry summers. 1. Saves water. 2. For native animals. 3. Saves water.

Blue Grama's Deep Roots

Third, its seed-head looks like an eyelash! And it’s color is green-blue. Looks great.

Fourth, was price. A pound of seed is only $20-30 from web-site seed sources. I bought Hachita, a variety of blue grama, from Western Native Seed in Colorado.

Fifth, is that it is low-growing. Mowing is optional!

- jfm

P.S. For some of this typing, I was one-handed. A 2-day-old in one arm!

P.S.S. An English teacher, I cannot leave you without this. Read!

Walt Whitman:

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass…

Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat,
Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not even the best,Only the lull I like, the hum of your valvèd voice.

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Before planting, there was some experimentation with blue grama grass in Fall 2010 and a lot of reading about greenwards and meadows leading up to planting in Summer 2011. The following posts will show accomplishments, failures, and pictures.

2. MATERIALS & SITE PREPARATION, next

3. SOWING, WEEDS, FIRST SUMMER, forthcoming

Sowing 'Bouteloua gracilis'