By Shermakaye Bass

Ah, the smell of freshly mown grass. It’s the smell of childhood, of school vacations and picnics and lying in the backyard, finding faces in clouds. No one will deny that plush turf is a big part of modern Americana. But the imported, “exotic” grasses of our childhoods, nostalgic and fragrant as they may be, are becoming a thing of the past for anyone who is concerned with water or soil conservation.

Non-natives create all sorts of nastiness for their environment. They guzzle water, they invade flower beds, they often demand a chemical diet and they discourage indigenous wildlife, sometimes driving them from their home turf. So there’s no reason not to go native, experts say – especially considering that a few naturally occurring grasses have low profiles (5-8 inches, un-mown), comparable to pugnacious imports like Bermuda grass and St. Augustine, which were transplanted from Africa as early as the late 1700’s

In fact, as the habitat-restoration and water conservation movements gain footing among everyday Americans, more people are supplanting those foreign interlopers with native species such as Buffalo grass (see picture, right, courtesy Native American Seed) and Blue Grama.

“We’re on our 94,568th customer,” says specialist Bill Neiman, owner of the two-decade old Native American Seed, an online purveyor of native grass and wildflower seeds, with residential and commercial clients around the country. The company has always done well, but in the past year, he says, things have really taken off.

“Now we’re getting a couple hundred new customers about every 10 days. There is what I like to call the 100th monkey effect. Well, the 100th monkey has shown up, so this is starting to reach a sort of critical mass, where it’s not a strange or radical thing to eradicate your Bermuda and replace it with something that should have been there all along. In fact, it’s become the paradigm, and everybody’s getting the drift.”

In other words, the movement to go native – especially among urban dwellers, where the average residential lot is about 5,000 square feet – is growing like a weed. Even a famous Houston golf course designed by Greg Norman has gone quasi-native, using a special seed blend in non-fairway/putting green areas of the course.

And when golf courses start considering their grassy options, clearly the urban “turf wars” have begun. Will the home team of native grasses prevail, or will the imported army win out? Neiman and others say that if the latter continues to claim victory, the real loser is the earth itself, and all life that it supports.

For the golf course designers, going native wasn’t so much a matter of pure ecologic concern as a combination of factors.

“Native grass has been used (a blend of Buffalograss and Bue Grama) in areas where we’re not supposed to hit a golf ball. It helps give the course definition,”says Layne Ricks, general manager of Meadowbrook Farms Golf Club, outside Houston. “And since the native areas require less maintenance, long term, you don’t have to mow as frequently — so there’s some cost savings there. And it doesn’t require irrigation…

“Water’s getting tougher and tougher to (access) around the country. In places like Las Vegas, they only can irrigate at certain times. And water hasn’t been that much of an issue for us yet – but it could become one.”

Ricks, who wasn’t at Meadowbrook when the re-plantation took place in 1999, says he knows that club members have enjoyed the more laid-back substitutions. “It’s nice aesthetically. When the wind blows, the native areas look like waves on an ocean. It’s beautiful — better than having mown grass from property line to property line.”

WHEN TO START/WHAT TO DO:

Whether you want to replant a front yard or an entire office park’s common areas, the time for lawn prep is between now and early May, says Bill Neiman, who is based in West Texas but whose clients hail from around the country.

“If the soil temperatures are about 65 degrees (Fahrenheit) or higher, you can start,” he says. “Or if you’ve had nighttime temperatures of 55 or so (for the low temp) for at least 10 nights in a row, you’re ready.”

But the real crux of changing from “exotics” to natives lies in ridding your lawn of the existing turf – be it Bermuda, Johnson grass, Augustine or some other hard-to-kill menace. The key is making sure it’s fully eradicated. It’s not easy — and it’s rare that merely planting natives in with the much more invasive imports works. Neiman suspects that, with long term plantation, natives might overtake the foreigners, but he’s never known it to happen.

In fact, the opposite is true.

“This doesn’t get spoken enough, but the biggest challenge that people are going to have is the control of or the eradication of the introduced, exotic species they have now. A lot of people think Bermuda grass is native, but it’s been introduced from Africa by the USDA” over the years.

“And even if you wanted to use one, there’s no herbicide that does a full job of killing it. That’s pretty freaky. Bermuda grass, in particular, is pervasive. In a small-scale process, such as a residence, you could use solarization (see Native American Seed’s “Planting Tips”) and seal it off with plastic and let it cook in the hot sun. That will cause it to die out and takes about three to four weeks, but if you leave one little last living thing, it’ll spring back,” Neiman says.

Another option is to rent a sod cutter, which slices beneath the old grass’s root systems.
“You can cut the sod and remove it in squares, the same way it got put down. … Or what we did is rent a little Bobcat (light construction equipment) and scoop it out. Then all of the sudden, your lawn is dirt again. You might have to haul off the top layer of soil, but that’s not a bad thing, because some of that dirt is” tapped out anyway. “Besides, native species aren’t that concerned with fertility.”

Next is the seeding process, which isn’t difficult, just detailed.

“Seeds have to touch the earth,” Neiman says. “They can’t be thrown out on top of a bunch of thatch or weeds or grass and take root. To plant them, do a very light tilling or raking to loosen the top of the soil first — a half inch deep is all you need. Some of these native seeds are rather small, so you don’t want them to get much deeper than ¼ inch.

“Next, broadcast the seeds, then press them in. But be careful not to get them too covered up. If they’re on loose, tilled dirt, they can (settle in) but you can also use lawn rollers or sod rollers, which you can rent, and that’ll press them down enough. Then you just sit back” and let nature take it’s course.

Generally speaking, Neiman recommends the hearty blend of Blue Grama and Buffalograss. “The Native Sun Turfgrass is something that could be much more widely used (geographically) than it currently is. It could replace this whole Bermuda and St. Augustine thing that’s been pushed on us for so long. … People think native is sticklier or looks messier, but it’s not. And it’s not nearly as invasive as the exotics.”

But the reason the turfgrass can sustain deep droughts and doesn’t require water is that it’s roots go down at least eight feet. Some natives’ root systems reach as far as 20 feet into the soil! But Neiman’s blend doesn’t grow taller than eight inches. Most people who are unfamiliar with native grasses are surprised to hear that, he says.

“I’ve seen St. Augustine and Bermuda growing up to two and three feet tall, if you never mow it. What a trip, huh – if more people replaced it with native grasses? If you could get up on a Sat morning and the whole neighborhood was quiet and there were birds and butterflies around, instead of weed-eaters and Chem-lawn.”

Websites:

Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center

NativeGrasses.com

Western Native Seed