Nativescaping
I call myself a writer, but one of the things I love most, the thing that I find easiest to do because it’s purely physical and involves only a little bit of design (I’m not especially gift in that area), is landscaping my yard. I want to turn it into a quarter-acre of low-water, native plant heaven. And I hope that since it’s on a park, people will see it and be inspired to rip out their bluegrass deserts.OK, I don’t mean to be an anti-suburban, anti-grass snob. I’ve lived in suburbia most of my life.
What am I thinking?
OF COURSE I mean to be an anti-suburban snob. I fucking hate suburbia.
Yesterday I was visiting a limeade stand (that’s another story) in a fairly new suburban area in Lafayette. The houses were all the 3-car garage type (but at least the garages were on the side—I just love the “Hi, I’m a garage with living quarters attached” look), and they had tipped their hats to New Urbanism by adding xeriscape areas here and there. But the lawns were ridiculously huge, the kind you really want a riding mower for unless you get all your exercise from mowing. They were beautiful houses, but I just don’t see the need for all that space, inside or outside.
When I was studying at the University of Sussex in 1982, the Brits I knew used to tease me about everything being “bigger and better” in America. It’s funny how Americans are so obsessed with size.
I guess after the frontier went away in 1890, we brought it indoors.
A friend of ours is trying to get a cohousing project off the ground in Denver. Cohousing offers houses (usually smaller than the norm) clustered around a common area. There’s a common building where you can fix group meals or use whatever community equipment has been set up.
I like that idea. I love spending time planting buffalograss or native sages in my yard, but I’d be just as happy with a common area that I didn’t have to spend so much time on. I’d be happy with a smaller place to garden.
As it is, my yard has become something of an obsession. And it never looks as good as I think it should.
posted by Price of Silence @ 10:06 PM
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