It’s another sizzling summer day and you can just feel the sun’s rays burning into your lawn and browning the grass blades on contact, the heat desiccating your prized annuals and withering your water-loving shrubs. You grab the hose—or better yet—launch the sprinkler and let it run full throttle until the plants appear fully satiated. Yet, it’s mid-day and the water just evaporates into the hot air. You consider the consequences—once your grass and plants becomes dehydrated, they will be compromised; the grubs will invade, the weeds will prevail, and you will lose ground against Mother Nature. Why is she undermining your arduous efforts and making your yard the eyesore of the neighborhood?

In an attempt to beat her, you grab the 50 pound bag of fertilizer, search for the spray tubs of insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides, and go out to the field in full protective gear, ready to wage full war. But, something catches your eye—a lovely spiderweb that has been woven between your perennials, a cute wiggly earthworm squirming under a stone, a flittering, friendly little ladybug landing on your arm, the birds—and their glorious songs—soaring through the air. You realize that the collateral damages could be devastating; environmentalist extraordinaire Rachel Carson would turn over in her grave. You just can’t do it. You fall to the lawn chair and release a long sigh of failure… resigned to having a mangy, wilted, brown garden after all.

But wait! It CAN be easy being green and going blue. And it doesn’t have to involve killing local fauna, polluting the land and sea, and depleting the town’s water reserve. With a practice that is commonly being referred to as “greenscaping,” you can obtain a healthier, eco-friendly landscape with far fewer headaches (and less expense). Fewer figurative headaches because you are spending less time fighting against your garden, and fewer literal headaches because you aren’t exposing yourself to toxic fumes!

First thing first, get rid of some of that lawn area. Lawn grasses are difficult to maintain, especially bluegrass, the most common but most fragile lawn grass. If you are trying to grow a uniform culture of bluegrass and it fails, the lack of a back-up grass will leave your yard bare and susceptible to weeds. If you intend to keep your lawn (or portions thereof), over-seed the existing grass with a mix of grass species to help maintain diversity and create a varied resistance to different diseases and insects. A grass mix that contains fescue grasses is a wise choice. Fescue grasses can survive through droughts and resist insects, hold no particular bias for sunny or shady areas, and won’t tarry over growing in various soil types. Not only does this make them easier to maintain, but since they require less water, fertilizer, and pesticides, fescue grasses make for a healthier natural ecosystem. As for fertilizing lawns, grass clippings that remain on the lawn after mowing will break down and add nitrogen and organic matter to the soil. Another obvious benefit to this is that you don’t have to bag it and haul it away. If you find that additional nutrients are necessary to supplement the soil and feed the lawn, choose an organic, slow-release, water-insoluble fertilizer and use sparingly.

Second, work with the landscape, not against it. Use plants tolerant of your local conditions, keeping in mind water requirements, sun/shade tolerance, insect resistance, and temperature suitability. Native plants (i.e., those that originally grew in this area) are adapted to local conditions, and as a result require less maintenance, watering, fertilizer, and pest control than introduced species. Because natives thrive in the local conditions, they may also out-compete and control unwanted invasive species, such as oriental bittersweet, Japanese knotweed, or goutweed—all of which tend to take over and require a lot of pulling and weeding to keep a tidy appearance.

By incorporating these native plants into your garden, you are taking an important step toward making your life easier and minimizing your costs. But what you might not realize is that you are offering a shared benefit to the ecosystem around you. Native trees, shrubs, groundcovers, and grasses provide shelter, nesting areas, and food for a variety of wild critters—including those hummingbirds and butterflies that you always wanted to attract. These plants also beautify your yard and provide privacy screening (good privacy screens make good neighbors).

By planting native species and avoiding pesticides and fertilizers, you are also helping to prevent detrimental ramifications down the road—literally. Excess fertilizers and pesticides that are not taken up by plants can enter the groundwater or be carried away in stormwater over roadways and other impervious surfaces. The catch basin next to your driveway likely pipes this stormwater runoff, and its nasty ingredients, right to a stream, lake, harbor, or the ocean. The fertilizers can cause nuisance plant or algae growth, while the chemicals can degrade water quality and be hazardous to the health of humans and wildlife. The chemicals that don’t run off do what they are supposed to do—kill indiscriminately. The beneficial earthworms that aerate your soil and provide natural nutrients through their castings will be killed off with the grubs. The area becomes a dead zone, devoid of any of the symbiotic life processes that naturally sustain the system. As a result, your garden now relies on, and is addicted to, constant applications of fertilizers and pesticides. Avoiding this chemical dependency from the start will greatly enhance the diversity and survival of your garden ecosystem, ensure the safety of your family that uses the yard, and avoid down-stream damages.

Speaking of water, when it comes time to irrigate extensive lawn areas or water plants that are hydric-loving, you may be wasting precious local water supplies that could be better used for other more important human uses (such as drinking water), or kept in the streams, ponds, and lakes for use by fish and wildlife. To conserve water, you can choose plants that are more drought-tolerant, water lawns and gardens only when necessary, and time the watering early in the morning or later at night (this is especially easy with a sprinkler timer) when moisture won’t be lost to evaporation. Mulching around garden beds with materials such as shredded leaves, wood chips, or bark mulch can help retain water in the soils (as well as help keep those weeds at bay). Making use of rainwater in rain barrels is another easy trick (see sidebar). If too much rainwater is your problem (i.e., puddles and pools where you don’t want them), you can direct downspouts to “rain gardens,” where water-tolerant plants grow within a small depression that allows water to infiltrate into the ground, helping to recharge groundwater supplies and your community’s water resources.

When designing a planting plan or considering ways to replace or enhance the plantings within your yard, don’t forget to take into account the conditions of your particular site—that is: wind, light, slopes, water flow, and soil type. Hardier trees and shrubs can be placed to provide a wind screen for less wind-tolerant plants; sun-loving plants can provide shade for plants that do not thrive in the direct sun. On steep slopes, deep-rooting shrubs and grasses can be placed to provide stability and uptake of stormwater and groundwater flows. Because healthy soils equal healthy plants, enhance the mineral and nutrient content of your soils with compost materials (which you can easilyproduce yourself in a compost bin) and aerate soils when they becomes compacted to allow for better water and root infiltration.

So, you CAN do this after all—a “greenscaped” yard that is the envy of the neighbors without all the harmful side-effects to you, the environment, and coastal and marine life. And although you may want others to think that you have been slaving away in the garden, don’t keep it a secret. For the well-being of your fellow gardeners, the community, and the critters on land and at sea, spread the scoop on your greenscape.

For more information on greenscaping practices, see the Greenscapes Massachusetts Program (www.greenscapes.org). Coordinated by the Massachusetts Bays Estuary Association and guided by a diverse group of organizations that collectively form the Greenscapes Coalition, this program is an educational and outreach effort designed to teach homeowners and communities about more environmentally friendly landscaping practices.

Their online greenscapes guide provides detailed information on lawn care, alternatives to pesticides and herbicides, composting, water conservation, soil testing, and much more. The program reaches 33 municipalities and more than 150,000 households in Massachusetts.

Another useful resource for home gardners and landscapers is the UMass Extension Landscape, Nursery & Urban Forestry website (www.umassgreeninfo.org), which includes fact sheets on plant culture and maintenance, a list of prohibited invasive plants, and training opportunities, as well as links to other publications.

Apple Pie is so 1975. Low and high bush blueberry plants are hardy enough for New England's weather extremes, and tasty enough for pie.

Photo: Betsy Rickards