Moonflower Moments

In planning a garden, one of the first things that a gardener must determine is their aesthetic threshold. What is it you want to see when you walk around your yard? Some people strive for perfection with lush green lawns, perfectly trimmed hedges, and strategically placed plants or vegetation. If this is what you strive for, make sure that you are willing to work hard and or be willing to pay someone to establish and maintain your yard. If you are planning this with your partner, make sure that they share your esthetic threshold or there will be a constant battle over these issues.

Gardeners and homeowners must first determine how they feel about lawncare. Do they want a plush green lawn? If so, it will require constant maintenance and even that may not give them their desired outcome. Healthy grass needs a certain amount of sunlight and fertile soil in which to thrive and if the yard does not have these elements, it will not thrive. Therefore, homeowners must be willing to install grass that fits their light needs and enrich the soil prior to planting. To determine what their soil conditions are, homeowners are encouraged to get a soil sample that can be sent away for analysis and then make the proper adjustments prior to planting grass and applying additional nutrients as needed. Then there are the ongoing maintenance issues of fertilizer, proper watering when needed and monitoring for disease and insects. These are questions that homeowners should ask themselves before deciding about developing the base for their yard.

There are other alternatives to traditional lawn care, and they are becoming more and more popular among homeowners. These include various groundcovers that do not require as much maintenance as the lush green lawn and provide food for pollinators that will benefit the garden.

Florida has a campaign called “No Mow March.” The idea is to encourage homeowners to
refrain from mowing their yards during the month of March so that the early weeds emerge to feed birds, bees, and other pollinators for the garden. My aesthetic threshold falls about midway through the spectrum. I am okay not having a plush, green lawn if it is regularly mowed and choose to spend my gardening time attending to plants and flowers. On the other hand, my mother wants the plush green lawn. As you walk with her around her yard she will proudly say,” Now I’m not bragging (she is), but you won’t find any dollar weed in my grass.” Dollar weed is the scourge of southern gardeners because it is very aggressive, especially in wet areas of the yard. It is a personal triumph for her to eradicate this invader in her perfect green space by pulling it up from the root or spraying it with chemicals. She has a high esthetic threshold for her yard, her family, and most of all, herself.

There is nothing wrong with having a high aesthetic threshold, and I have found that most
people in this category have set the bar rather high for themselves and those around them. They want their world to be attractive and welcoming, and they work very hard to achieve that goal. For the rest of us, we have to choose where we fall in the spectrum of gardening and understand that it is commiserate with the amount of time that we are willing to devote to gardening.