Thank you for this column….to include all of the contributors with their blogs. Now to get George to read this………..which is like pulling teeth.

I also am not nuts about gravel, especially the type they dye weird colors & the white stuff. Did you know it’s possible to desert-landscape with NOTHING? That’s right: no junk on the ground at all. A friend did this, and it is killer gorgeous. Just landscape with plenty of native plants and use pre-emergent to keep the neighbors’ grass from seeding your yard.

If you have a dog, that’s none too practical in the backyard, unless you enjoy scrubbing tracked-in mud off the floor. Crushed granite, however, is great: 3/4-minus in a sort of sand color packs down and looks like the desert floor, but it doesn’t turn to mud in the rain. Uhm…in the unlikely event that it ever rains again….

Now, this is much different than the astro-turf of the 80′s, this product really looks like grass! It was a little more expensive on the front end ($8-9 per square foot), but it saves me so much time and frustration I think it was well worth it.

When I had real grass, I would look out the window and see all of the things that needed to be done (mowing, weeding, trimming the edges, etc.) and it never really looked that great anyway since it only half alive and I only had weekends for yardwork. Now, when I look outside at my fake grass, it is green and perfect and there is nothing that needs to be done. Instead of my backyard being a source of stress, it is now a source of happiness, and well worth the extra few dollars.

Is there no low-maintenance, low-water, low-energy-consuming landscaping available in the Midwest? With the climate warming and water growing increasingly scarce in regons where once it was plentiful, maybe now is the time to look into alternatives to lawns.

We cut our lawn tall, which sometimes means cutting more often, but we only weed/feed once in the fall and have had great results. We live in Michigan where rain is usually plentiful, so we don’t water. We don’t even own a sprinkler. If the lawn gets a little brown in July, it bounces back in August/September.

You just go out one night in September or October and say goodbye to it. Then suffer through the global-warming induced ‘drought’, and hope to buggery that it rains the following May.

Easy.

Fortunately, since there’s no lawn yet, no problems for us with this year being dry, even though we’re in Indiana like the person in the post.

Most lawns receive twice as much water as they require for a healthy appearance. The key to watering lawns is to apply the water infrequently, yet thoroughly. This creates a deep, well-rooted lawn that efficiently uses water stored in the soil.

To know when to water the lawn, simply observe the grass. Wilting and discoloration are signs of water stress. At the first sign of wilting, you have 24 to 48 hours to water before serious injury occurs. Apply 1 inch of water to the lawn as rapidly as possible without runoff.

Watering only when needed and watering thoroughly produces a deep-rooted lawn which is more water efficient and drought enduring.

I also conserve whatever other water I can, for example, from cooking pasta – put the strainer in a dishpan, let the water cool, then use the water on indoor or outdoor plants. (One caveat: water used for cooking may start to stink after a day or so, so use it quickly!) I only have non-edible plants, so I don’t know how/whether this would affect the taste of plants grown to eat (herbs, veggies, etc.).