Lawns in Central Florida seem to be a little closer to brown lately as they struggle with the scorching heat, the lack of steady rain and stingy governmental water allowances.
Homeowners say they're being squeezed between watering restrictions and homeowners association landscaping requirements.
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It's a vicious cycle. Homeowners groups, concerned about property values, have been known to send out letters chastising residents for having dying lawns. So residents start their sprinklers. Then city and county workers show up with warnings, and residents shut off their sprinklers.
Front yards are withering, and nobody's happy. What to do?
Some homeowners have the answer. They are yanking out the high-maintenance grass and replacing it with gardens, fake grass and even concrete. No more pushing the mower on Saturday mornings for these folks. No more weeding and fertilizing. No more watering in secret. Instead, they can smugly sit back and relax while the rest of us are sweating over our carefully manicured -- or sickly looking, as the case may be -- lawns.
Yasmin Mohammed, for example, transformed her west Orange County front yard from a typical grassy lawn to a concrete space suitable for festive family get-togethers.
"I knew I wanted to do something different," she says. "Grass looks like a lot of upkeep and money."
The single mother of three sons moved into the home in March and quickly replaced the grass with stamped concrete that stretches from a courtyard area at the front door to the street. To soften the space, she added a swing in one corner of the yard and surrounded it with a bed of mixed flowers. Decorative lighting adds drama to the space in the evenings.
In New York City, where Mohammed lived for years, homes often were surrounded by a sea of concrete, she says, and diners paid big bucks to gather for meals at sidewalk cafes sitting on, of course, concrete.
So it didn't seem like a far-fetched notion to her to design a concrete patiolike landscape in her front yard where she can set up tables and chairs, light Tiki torches and celebrate special occasions. She's not one of those people, she says, who celebrates "behind closed doors."
The creative use of alternative materials in yards may have neighbors shaking their heads at first, but environmentalists are hoping it will become a trend. After all, they've long argued that lawns are bad for the environment because they require use of polluting mowers, fertilizers and pesticides.
Changing city and county rules may give homeowners that extra push toward innovative approaches to landscape design.
Volusia County last month became the first in Central Florida to approve an ordinance that mandates residential landscapes with limited watering zones and more efficient watering systems.
According to the new rules, only half of the landscape can be outfitted with high-volume sprinklers; other areas are broken into medium- and low-volume watering zones. This means that although homeowners still can put sod on their yard, it will now have zones that would be better served by less thirsty plants or even hard landscaping.
Restrictions aside, it's about time we all rethink our love affair with the lawn, says Liz Primeau, author of Front Yard Gardens: Growing More Than Grass.
"I just don't understand why people are obsessed with having a perfect lawn," she says. "I think they're boring. We feed it, we water it, we give it too much care, and we're always competing with our neighbors for the perfect lawn."
For nearly a century, she says, there has been an unwritten rule that well-groomed grass would be the main attraction of the yard -- especially the front yard. Neighbors with patchy or unmown grass were frowned upon.
Primeau says it's possible to achieve curb appeal without grass dominating the landscape. To achieve a yard that offers visual appeal and is environmentally friendly, she suggests homeowners use a combination of native and low-maintenance plants and hard landscaping materials such as brick and stone.
The Toronto resident gradually replaced her lawn with a cottage garden of flowering plants, shrubs and cacti that require no chemicals and far less water and upkeep. The only grass remaining is a small patch at the edge of a maple tree, she says, and that soon may be gone as well. She installed a curving path of flagstones set in pea gravel that leads to a cobblestone driveway.
Primeau suggests homeowners visit local nurseries and consult with experts for advice on what will thrive in their area. Consider using ground cover and planting in a tapestrylike pattern, she says, for added interest. To bring more life to the space, choose flowers and plants that draw butterflies, birds and other wildlife, she says.
Casselberry resident Joanne Borges has enjoyed watching the grass gradually shrink from both her front and back yards to make room for lush, colorful plants such as golden dewdrop, marigolds and hibiscus that attract butterflies. She added a birdbath that attracts cardinals and blue jays.
The only grass in the back yard is a slender swath -- barely more than the width of a mower -- that separates a center island of wildlife-friendly plantings from the ferns and other greenery that border the property.
"I got so tired of the grass dying and the weeds, I said to my husband, 'I'm taking all of this out. If this grass dies, it's going too,' " Borges says.
The front yard contains a larger patch of grass, but it's being replaced bit by bit with such colorful plantings as azaleas, crape myrtles and bromeliads.
Winter Park resident Michele Fudo hadn't necessarily planned to do away with the grass in her front yard, but remodeling her home gave her the opportunity to consider other options. After enclosing the carport, Fudo replaced the driveway that had led to it with a circular gravel driveway bordered by brick.
"We didn't have any good grass left after construction," she says. "Grass has never been my cup of tea. It's a lot of work, and next thing you know the weeds have taken over. I thought, 'There's no way I'm going to sod this and keep it nice.' "
So Fudo dug up old plants and added blooming and nonblooming varieties such as plumbagos, Aztec grass, caladiums and amaryllis.
She put down black rubber mulch topped by steppingstones between the house and the driveway. "The mulch keeps the weeds down considerably," she says. "We don't have to spend hour after hour out there in the yard."
She says she doesn't miss the grass.
"I've got plenty of parking and it looks nice," she says.
Homeowners who live in neighborhoods not governed by homeowners associations can be just about as creative as they want to be, but residents in governed communities often face restrictions on how they can landscape.
Don't fret, says Paul Wean, attorney at Wean & Malchow in Orlando. An attractive water-conserving landscape design likely won't be that difficult to get approved by the homeowners group.
"I'm not aware of any association who is being unrealistic," he says.
But don't try to use watering restrictions as an excuse to let your property become unkempt, he says. Homeowners associations are well within their rights to make residents keep a yard that is "consistent" with the neighbors.
Consistent doesn't necessarily mean exactly alike as Valerie Harris will attest. Harris is installing fake grass, called turf, in portions of her yard as a water-conserving measure. The turf looks very much like grass, she says, and she has met with no resistance from her homeowners group. In fact, she says, her neighbors are jealous.
Minimal upkeep, lower water bills, and it never turns brown. Could be the grass of the future.
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