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I conducted my sometimes annual lawn ecology survey yesterday (May 25), results shown in the image at right.
The Ratio of Weed Intolerant to Weed Tolerant (& pollinator-friendly) front lawns is similar to that I have found in past years (going back to circa 2010) when surveys were were conducted on older neighbourhoods on peninsular Halifax. This was the first off-peninsula/newer neighbourhood survey. Continue reading
Bill Freedman in his all native plant front yard garden some years back
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So advises Dalhousie University Faculty of Agriculture Prof. Paul Manning in an article entitled “How greenwashing can lead us astray in the pursuit of wildlife-friendly gardens” published in The Conversation, a kind of academic blog whose byline is “Academic rigour, Journalistic flare” on May 1, 2023.
From the Intro: Continue reading
Couple battling municipality over ‘nuisance’ wildflower garden
Stu Mills · CBC News · Posted: Jul 20, 2020 “La Pêche, Que., couple says their vegetation is a habitat for bees and butterflies”
View ‘Not just weeds’: how rebel botanists are using graffiti to name forgotten flora
In the Guardian, May 1, 2020.
A rising international force of rebel botanists armed with chalk has taken up street graffiti to highlight the names and importance of the diverse but downtrodden flora growing in the cracks of paths and walls in towns and cities across Europe.
Also view their Wild Cities page.
I guess this is a next step from Guerilla Gardening!
Lawn overseeded with clover
There are many benefits to having clover in lawns:
– Combined with mulch-mowing, the clover can supply most or all of the turf’s needs for nitrogen. Clover and other legumes are infected by soil bacteria which form nitrogen-fixing nodules on the roots. Nitrogen fixation can contribute the equivalent of 2 lbs of nitrogen per 1000 square feet annually (1 kg N/100m2 ). .
– Providing nitrogen inputs via legumes and recycling of residues (grass clippings) reduces leaching of all nutrients; requirements for lime may be reduced by 75% or more.
– Grass/clover turfs maintain greenness through mid-summer droughty periods when straight bluegrass turfs go into dormancy unless well watered..
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‘Saw lots of lawns like this on May 5, 2019
Crows are said to be the culprits. Well really it’s the grubs they are after that are the problem.
I have noticed a lot more crows on peninsular Halifax this spring and am wondering if disruption of the roost at Mt. St Vincent last fall has anything to do with it.
Racoons are also reported to do it as well (at night), and we have lots of those.
One solution – let ’em do it, re-seed it when they are through, and then you shouldn’t have them the next year.
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Clover Lawn
It was established on shallow soil, there are tree roots through it and from late May on it is shaded by Norway Maple.
Every now and then the city digs part of it up for water and sewer stuff or sidewalsk and replaces the old topsoil with sandy “manufactured topsoil” which makes it even more droughty.
I will get around to diversifying the area with garden beds, but in the meantime, if it’s looking particularly ratty in the spring, I spread clover on it in April or early May.
A pound of Dutch white clover seed costs about 13$ at Halifax Seed; that’s enough, they say, for about 1500 sq ft of lawn.
The big challenge is how to spread the very small seed evenly and not too heavily.
Here’s my recipe:
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Here is a coverage in the media:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/city-bees-allotments-gardens-help-arrest-decline-study
& Apr 23, 2019:
To Nurture Nature, Neglect Your Lawn
By Margaret Renkl in The New York Times. “Why poison the earth when you can have wildflowers at your feet and songbirds in your trees without even trying?”
The red maples were a match for the Japanese maples in Halifax on Oct 30, 2018
Red maples left, Japanese maples right, Halifax, Oct 30, 2018
In “Let’s stop being such environmental dunces” (Chronicle Herald, Oct 2, 2018), columnist Ralph Surette cited bottled water and our use of lawn chemicals as prime examples of “low-hanging toxic fruit that is environmentally, economically and logically idiotic — and that must be picked if we are going to make sense of anything.”
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