I think so too. You are able to absorb what he says before he moves on to the next thought. His words are evenly spoken with a favourable momentum. There’s never an ummm or stutter. Other you- tubers should take a leaf out of his book. Schools could feature his style when it comes to speech recitals. His voice is never loud or over-bearing. I wish the advertisers would match the ads on his channel to his calm demeanour. I enjoy the unassuming way he says, “ Hi, I’m Gardener Scott.”
I do the gardening except the mowing, which my husband does and enjoys. He said it seems like the lawn is getting smaller every year and the beds are getting bigger. He's not wrong!
Butterfly at 4:40-41 that looks nice And that lawns are even mandatory speaks volumes of parody to the notion of "freedom" and "private property" having anything to do with rights of the general population. You give a good example of why mandatory lawns ought to reduce real estate value. Considering that food-gardens were called "victory gardens", it's pretty much beyond parody at this point imo.
Greetings from Ireland Scott.Good video.I moved in to a little 2 bedroom semi a couple of years ago and it was all lawn outside.So i decided to start a vegetable garden and got my spade out.And what wonderful rich soil was underneath all that grass! .Needless to say I have no lawn now...
I read the book "Requiem for a Lawnmower" and it completely shaped my philosophy on landscaping. Of course living in AZ for twelve years also made me view lawns as a waste. Now I'm back in the PNW but I still think lawns are a tradition that needs to go.
This is exactly why I have no lawn in my front yard. Paying water bills in California is not cheap and having a lawn is environmentally unsustainable. We are redoing our backyard right now and adding raised beds for our vegetable garden. Instead of planting grass we are adding bushes and plants for the hummingbirds, bees, and butterflies that visit our backyard
In the UK at the moment there is a movement that is gaining momentum for people to sacrifice areas if lawn, turning those areas over to wild flower meadows. It's less effort in the long term but the real driver is to rewild nature. By planting native regional plants that are beneficial to insects, gardeners are benefiting the environment at the foot of the food chain which in turn supports birds, small mammals and amphibians. It has the additional benefit of using plants that have evolved to thrive in the local environmental conditions rather than using plants that have to be mollycoddled. Right plant, right place as Beth Chatto would say.
Hey Gardener Scott, I think you are a courageous Leader on this subject. Lawns are still so "mainstream" , it is hard to change the common way of thinking about them. Don't get me wrong, I still have some lawn, but it is getting smaller each year, especially each time we build a new raised bed frame!
I love that you made a pretty front yard instead of laying rock (not that theres anythin wrong with rock!). It really shows that theres a gardener living in that house!
Hi Gardener Scott. I love this idea. I moved into my home June 2020 and didn't do much to my already very green lawn because I was doing lots of renovations but I did realize lots of my time had to go mowing the lawn! Plus I have a huge backyard. I agree that if one can do an alternate lawn idea they must do it. My sister currently lives in San Antonio and is wishing she had green grass for her pup but I may send her this video so she has other ideas.
I love the idea of a no grass landscape. I have been slowing doing this to my backyard and I'm loving the joy it is bringing me. You are right about how adding more plants to the garden is so much more garden more interesting than grass. It has made me enjoy my backyard ten folds more. Thank you for this video as I was contemplating on what to do with the remainder of the grass in my backyard. I don't think I need to overthink my decision :)
The lack of veg growing in the UK and the subsequent arise of the chase ( a grass area leading to the house) was a adopted as a status symbol: - As in, "we are so rich that we do not need to grow vegetables for food on every spare yard of land - Instead we can grow grass!!! That is why in the UK we have a front garden and a back garden that is devoted to grass; - it is a measure of affluence/effluence depending on your point of view?
Is that still a thing in the UK? I live in England and I've pretty much done whatever I want for as long as it isn't causing issues to infrastructure or neighbours. I mean, I haven't owned a garden in... almost 4 years due to living in the topside of a maisonette, but I remember my mom and I used to mess around with both the front and back garden without much care for the lawn.
That's my kind of garden too. I've had a lawn and it's too much work just to keep it mowed down, at least in a wet region like mine. I prefer to devote all that effort into growing flowers and bushes and veg and fruit. Bravo!
Interesting!!! I find that lately I have been planting more and more plants, and I have less grass. I find this video very interesting. Thank you for this video.
I don’t mind our lawn - all of it I mow, gets recycled in my compost bins. Lawn clippings are high in nitrogen and...... I noticed that I don’t really need to add any water in my bins when I add the grass clippings - quite convenient I would say! 😉👍
I like how this video introduces creative possibilities and alternative to 'the lawn' - landscape pavers create a raised bed with possibility of a current or blue berry bush; dimension and depth are visually interesting - a lot of possibilities with less maintenance. I'm thinking of doing my side yard as a start.
When I lived in my own house, we had a nice lawn, probably the nicest on the street. It was very easy to maintain. Basically, I would drop a little nitrogen fertilizer in the spring. When I cut the lawn, the mower was at the highest setting so that it would encourage deep roots. I would also only water my lawn twice a week (in hot, dry Utah), but I watered deeply. My lawn was lush and 5 shades darker green then the neighbors. It was also thick, so it forced out most weeds.The only down side was that sometimes I would have to mow twice a week to keep the grass in check. We also had grey water, so the price wasn't very steep. I miss the lawn and how easy it was to maintain. I moved to Hawaii and I love my garden, but its a lot of work to keep the jungle at bay.
I'm only 33 seconds in to this video, and already I like it. Maybe someday I'll win the battle of the back garden being lawn free, to increase the growing space. My wife looks after the front garden with flowers, the back garden is my veg growing space with greenhouse and raised beds.
Dear G.S. thanks for the videos. Could you possibly talk about how to turn a hillside into a garden? I do not have access to any type for machinery to move the earth, but would not mind some form of front yard garden. Additionally, John Baldwin was right. For over a millennium, almost two, everyone in Europe had to grow a front yard garden (small) and a backyard garden (large). The produce from the backyard garden had to go to to the lord or thane, and the produce from the front yard garden could be eaten by the family in the house. Only the very rich didn't have to garden to survive, and they could grow grass. It was a status symbol.
HI, Monica. Some of my earlier videos show my previous garden on a hillside. I'm not planning a hillside video soon because my new garden is flat, but I'll try to discuss that issue more in future videos.
We have a third of an acre and have gotten rid of half the lawn so far, working on it! Veggie garden, fire pit, gravel pathways, flower beds, moss and creeping ground covers
I turned my lawn in into a mini food forest this year, the lawn was so high maintenance. It was half dead when we moved in and it didn’t even look nice so we just put some in mini fruit trees and planting beds 😁
I would LOVE to do this to a large portion of my yard... I have 1.7 acres that's mainly All lawn and it's overwhelming to try to take care of. I'm trying to implement your ideas into my yard to make it easier on me plus more attractive... Slow and steady wins the race 😉.
We have to pay for the water too, so we have two 1400 gallon tanks buried in the backyard that take the roof water. So we have enough free water for vegetables, flowers and bushes.
Great information! We xeriscaped our property in Tucson for many of the same reasons, and enjoyed the space much more than if it had been merely a lawn.
Love this video! I have a yard - a rather large yard. My yard is big enough to be totally intimidating when it comes to planning landscaping, but it is just a yard. Not a lawn. It is planted with native grasses, and I have a lot of weeds and cheatgrass in it. I am slowly planning some landscaping for it. I want native flowers that produce food for the birds during winter, native bushes, and other plants that provide food and habitats for the rabbits, and other wildlife in my area. I don't know how far I'll get, but I'm retiring in December so I will have a lot more time to turn my yard into what I want it to be. I'm also putting in a hugelkulture bed this fall. Thank you for your wonderful, informative, and educational videos! 💛
I hope my tough neighbors will get rid of their lawns so I can follow their foot steps since I'm not good at being an oddity adding to the fact that we've had the most vegetation in our front and backyard already and don't want more attention than that.
I have a swimming pool in my backyard and I will be getting rid of it soon. Looking into converting my backyard and hopefully my front yard into a vegetable and flower garden. Thank you for the video, hope to get some good ideas from your channel. I am a bit nervous to start because I do not know how much work and money will go into the project. I cannot afford to hire a landscaping company so I will have to do all the work myself. I hope I do not give up on my idea.
OMG, now I've read what lawn means in America. And that there are even laws to create and maintain one. How happy am I that I live in a country where flowers are allowed to bloom everywhere.
I live in PNW and grew tired of lawn care expense and back breaking work. I am in the process of removing my front lawn a strip at a time. Its going to be beautiful.
I have been slowly eliminating the amount of area devoted to lawn to eliminate all of the maintenance it entails. When we built our house, we left 1/3 of the lot wooded, and I have turned half of the remaining lot into flower beds, herb gardens, or vegetable and berry raised beds. What I eventually will have left will be a low maintenance, natural type lawn of some clover mix.
My husband and I were driving through the countryside and I saw pastures filled with cows. I commented that a lot of native habitat was plowed down to grow grass for cows. And then it clicked that much of the lawn culture we have is due to status. You need grass to have cows and cows were considerable assets long ago. It was a sign of wealth to have grass and cows. And maybe that’s why the practice continues. It’s morphed a lot where men compete with other men in their neighborhoods for good lawns. But indeed I do believe the status marker is still there. We have 2.2 acres and my husband gets the front part of the house as his lawn. I’m planning to make a raised bed garden and forest garden with the rest of it. If I had it my way, I think I would just make the front lawn a native meadow lol.
yep, totally agree. Most of my section is veges, fruit, flowers and native plants. There is a little bit of lawn as I like the grass clippings to heat up the compost - though I'm getting low on those now. We have a grass that doesn't dry out, so I guess that helps. But I"d much rather garden than mow the lawn.
Wanted to start with, there are plenty of places in the world where the grass is naturally short, not flat but short. A lot of native grasses here in Australia are like that. But in saying that, we just dug up the front yard (flipped the grass over then covered in some veggie soil from the local nursery) to turn it into an orchard. We will ring it with blackberries and raspberries. Finally blueberries around the fence beside the cars. Why, because I got sick of mowing the lawn and it always looked meh. Currently even with just 2 of the 7 trees planted makes the house look massively better. But out the back, different story. I have seven 1x2 meter garden beds ringing around the backyard, with the centre bit free full of good grass, a trampoline and a swing set, the grass must stay because we love Australian spring/summer/autumn time out the back, and the space is great to run in. Kids love the veggies, but the grass is important. This year when I install the irrigation for the fruit trees, I will add popups for the lawn, not for the lawn, but for the kids. I honestly think it really is a balance, even tho we live in a hot drier country I think grass has its place.
Its funny, this year most of my lawn finally decided to die off. There were a lot of weedy areas with it anyway, but this years heat and humidity I think really did it in for good. There are large areas where the roots have died and the remainder has rubbed all off. I was really considering next year to redo the lawn, now that most of my heavy traffic re-design was done. After watching this video, I'll have to rethink my decision. I don't have a huge lawn, but the watering and the ferts do add up. I'll toss the idea around and see what I come up with. Thanks,
Great video! I live where there is a HOA and we have to ask and provide a sketch of what we want to do so they can approve it. When they built my house they put rock where there was no lawnouyr front yard looks great! I have been revamping my back yard. Putting in flower gardens and vegetable raised beds. I will eventually tackle the front yard.I hate the rock.
My lawn drives me crazy. I hate mowing it. I hate the maintenance of it. I live in a shrub steppe climate and it costs a lot of money.But i don't mind garden maintenance. Ha! So, we are going to take 1/3 of my lawn in my large back yard and expand the flower garden and vegetable garden this fall. We are making 6 raised beds and have started "lasagna gardening" in the new beds we have built so far!
In the future I actually would love to have a whole garden as the entirety of my yard. At the house where I live, we have an HOA, but luckily I have a few spots that I could turn into garden area. I actually dug out my first gardening area for the first time a few days ago. I had to also learn about how to amend heavy clay, because unfortunately here in south Carolina it's pretty much what you're stuck with. The bed turned out great though, and I put some zucchini plants in, hoping that even if they don't do great, maybe their roots will help loosen things up. I actually found some earthworms after I started blending and amending the soil, so I think that's a good sign. Thanks for your knowledge Mr. Scott, you have a wonderful lawn there. Having the flowers and vegetables is much prettier than solid grass in my opinion.
This video was truly eye opening. There are some incredible possibilities when you take the time to consider. Thank you for the excellent content sir. 🙏
Having a lawn is wasted space. Tired of mowing every Spring through the Fall and forget about the edging, I hate it. Have been wanting to reduce my front lawn for a while now. Maybe grow veggies since that's where most of the sunlight is. Hiring a landscaper is proving to be very expensive but need someone to help with a good design.
A good thing about having a lawn and a vegetable garden is that mowing that lawn leads to some good organic material. I hate mowing however when I can mow and then use the clippings as mulch or in my compost bin it's a win for me.
Hi GS, Great video. Did you happen to see that nice yellow butterfly fly past the camera while you were talking about your front lawn? Word is out. All the insects know where to come to now! LOL.
My lawn requires very little water I mow very high . I've watered my lawn 1 time this year and have a buetiful green lawn . My neighbors mow short and have yellow brown grass. In my opinion the most buetiful yards are the ones that have a combination of both.
I agree. Lawn takes a lot of time and money to keep up. We spent a lot of money planting one only to find that it took over 200 a month to keep. Needless to say after a few years I let it go. I love your idea. Less maintenance and dollars. What do you spray for weeds? I'm considering no mow lawn for backyard and your idea for front.
Thankyou Gardener Scott for inspiring me today!! I have a very large front yard with a circular driveway and alot of dirt. 😣 it's ok though, I'll start small and little by little👍 thanks again🌞🌺🌹🌻🍄
Hi Scott, thanks for the video. Your front yard is looking really nice! Maybe in a future video you can discuss and demonstrate how you do the cardboard and mulch. How many layers of cardboard do you use? The reason I am asking is, last year I put cardboard and mulch over a weedy section of my front yard with the intention of doing just what you are doing. But the weeds in my yard are so powerful and invasive they came right through the cardboard. Especially the quack grass. That area is now completely covered in weeds. In fact, in my vegetable garden for the walking paths between my raised beds I decided to use weed barrier instead, and some of the quack grass literally punched right through that as well. Although the weed barrier worked better than the cardboard. Thanks again.
Living in the Midwest, we don't fertilize or water our lawn and it's pretty green. Very low maintenance. I think it depends on where you live. I love walking barefoot on the grass when I am outside.
Part of my back yard is laid to lawn. I mow and pull out the big weeds but other than that it has to fend for itself. I'm lucky that I live in a wet temperate climate but still there is part of the summer where everything is brown. I have been planting low growing thyme and seeding clover and other ground covers, every year there is less traditional grass and it looks better and better. I refuse to be a slave to the lawn and I think that slowly I am winning. The dogs have the space to run, I can enjoy the green carpet and pollinating insects love the little flowers that crop up here and there.
The only part of our lawn I like is the dandilions. We are having a drought this year and I refuse to waste money watering it. We rent, so I can't change it too much, otherwise there would be no lawn, just beautiful paths through flowers and food and a couple fountains and a fire pit in the back.
Thank you for the history lesson on lawns. When I moved and that's the first thing I did in my backyard.garden.i had 3 worms an now with the garden .1000+worms
I turned my front lawn into a veg garden very early on and now I've completely removed that lawn, planting flowers instead, next I'm turning the backyard into a permaculture style garden, in theory I'm only going to keep a very small section of lawn the bit that doesn't die in the summer 😂 and downgrade to a manual mower Although I have to say that the attitude to lawns if different down here in Australia, while people love them(the shock I got about getting rid of the unused front section was shocking) it's not as big a deal when they die off in summer or are full of dandelions and other weeds
Totally agree. A green lush lawn is beautiful but it takes alot of work and sometimes money. I have a big lawn but I'm slowly converting a lot of it to a garden. Less work and more function. And it still looks good. I guess the one thumb down is from "Lawn care nut" ;.). Thanks for the upload Scott. Cheers
I live in a city in germany where there are mostly lawns no wild plants at all. This kind of "well kept" lawn just looks sterile to me and is a nightmmare for the bugs and bees we need so much. Never understood the cultural obsession with "tidy"(only grass) lawns. Am in the process of moving to the countryside(disliked living in the city for a decade and now gathered enough courage to move away) and will have my first garden there. Its a wild overgrown garden but i will keep it as wild as possible. Want to grow some herbs there.
There is a few things I would like to add. In the middle ages, they didn't need to spend hours cutting the lawns they grazed sheep on them. Even if you do have a lawn, it need not be that labor intense. you can grow grasses adapted to your local climate and cut it longer. this allows the roots to go deeper into the soil giving them more access to water and nutrients and if you mow onto the area that hasn't yet been cut, this chops the cut pieces so small there is no need to rake so you are not removing all that from the soil. this further reduces the work needed because you suck the grass from the edges into the blade and don't need to weed whack when you are done. Using a ground cover of mulch still requires a lot of weeding to keep it looking nice.
I agree. I am required to have a lawn by my city. It's stupid, but all I do is mow as little as I can and let the clippings mulch. I never water - it always comes back from brown when it rains again. I never fertilize, though I do occasionally hand spray for weeds and crabgrass. I spend 15 bucks a year on my lawn (one bottle of spray, on average, and one small container of gas for the mower). Been 14 summers and it looks as good as when I moved in.
I do have a recent garden tour video that shows many of the plants I used, but much depends on your climate and what plants will do well in your region.
Is it absolutely essential to lay down cardboard/paper first then the layered of mulch? Wouldn't the green grass getting covered over be a good thing, adding organic matter to the soils as it decays under the mulch? (Same with garden beds?)
It is not essential if the mulch is thick enough to kill the grass underneath. The cardboard is a barrier that not only kills plants but can also hinder soil life until it decomposes.
Hey man, really like what are u doing and find your content very helpful. But to be honest I spent a lot of time to go down to rabbit hole of growing all sort of plants in last a few months and I believe that there is no deference between growing successful lawn and growing veg patch or ornamental garden. Grasses themselves require same stuff as your other plants. Grasses are not weeds and they do well in similar conditions as most of your plants. Its all about biology in your soil. Mostly how many microbial life and fungal life is present in your soil. Once u get balance right it should work on all species of plants excluding the weeds which do well in microbial tipe of soil. Recommend the work of Elaine Ingham to really see what I mean. Don't get me wrong, I really like what ur doing. I would just love to hear more about the real issue which for me is misunderstanding that we need to feed the plants themselves. We need to feed the soil which makes all nutrients available for our plants.
I want tonget rid of our lawn and turn it into an edible landscape. Unfortunately, I don't have support from anyone else so we still have an ugly front lawn - I did win the pesticide and herbicide battle! I was able to put in some blueberry bushes, but the grass is constantly invading the space even with edging in place. I hope to eventually have a pretty mulched yard full of flowers and fruit.
@@GardenerScott Thanks for such a quick reply! I live in hot Phoenix. I have non-irrigated desert in the back, and non-irrigated grass in the back. I have a 9'X24' fenced dirt area for my airbnb. Was debating leaving it dirt, or sand, or rock (but rock gets hot). After I saw your video it gave me some new ideas. And who knows, I may even use your ideas on my entire back lawn. And here in AZ we have lots of low to no water plant choices! Thanks.
Do u have problems with dogs or cats doing their toilet on the front yard ? I have and need to put netting around :(. But I really love the idea of currants in front and the lovely flowers like rudbeckia and others
I wish I had run across such good counsel years ago. But, alas advertisers were selling that “best-looking-lawn-on-the-block” claptrap, and for too many years I was buying. However, one day while looking out the window and trying to decide whether to do the deed myself, or pay someone, it just hit me: Since I don’t eat grass and I don’t have any animals to graze, why am I spending so much time, money, and effort on grass? Well, that was my light bulb moment...I started doing research on alternatives to grass. Now, I have drought tolerant plants and ground cover…interspersed with low-profile vegetables…in the front, and a full vegetable garden in the back. Yes the startup takes work; but, that's a one-time thing; and the upkeep is so much less effort and money.
While you don't **need** chemicals to have a beautiful lawn, organic is highly possible and there are lots of places to find the info, I still think it's a waste of time, space, & money. As for HOAs requiring you to grow a lawn, this is one of the reasons I'll never own a house where there's an HOA. Buncha busybodies with nothing better to do that tell people what color flowers they can plant, how many, and such. Not for me.
This is a fantasy video for much of the US. Not only do many HOAs require lawns, but so do many cities and townships... for flood control and for neighborhood beauty (at least those are the excuses my city gives). The only places where lawns are typically not required is where rain is very scarce, for the obvious reasons you list. But for the rest of us...
I’m with you on lawns. Yes, yes, they are visually appealing. But getting and keeping them way does requires a kings ransom or maybe Prince Charles’ gardening team!!!! From grubs and their predictors to cinch bugs and perennial weeds, it’s a night mare. The dangerous chemicals that have been used to keep lawns tidy have shown to be carcinogenic, tumor promoters, and neurotoxic. In fact the previous owner of our home who kept the lawn up now has Parkinson’s. (Poor chap) But he continues to treat his lawn in his present home. They also have been shown to cause changes to the liver, kidneys, lungs, skin, adrenal glands, and thymus. Health effects can also be transmitted to subsequent generations. And, this persistent quest to kill the beneficial dandelion is a crime against nature. It’s a crucial flower for the bees first thing in the spring; it’s leaves and roots are highly beneficial for the liver and the blooms can also be used to make a tasty syrup. The mulleins and plantains that share the lawn space are also beneficial as lung strengthening teas and for bee stings. We replaced our lawn with clover. It stays green in drought and chokes out invasive plants. We mow it and use the cuttings to feed the compost pile. And the bees are crazy about the flowers!!😊 🐝 The circle of life!!! I admire what you’ve done to your front garden. There’s so much more habitat in a garden like that👍🏻
