Lawn-free and loving it . . . at least, I used to be.
I was at Lowe’s a few days ago buying bags of mulch when the loader guy says to me, “Getting in some late-season gardening, huh?” Late-season? This is primetime for Austin, which the Lowe’s guy would know if he worked for a nursery that wasn’t already clearing out its stock to make room for Christmas trees.
I’ve been as busy as a bee in clover lately, finishing up my back garden redo. Earlier this summer, while admiring my mother’s small lawn encircled with iris and hollyhock beds, I hatched a scheme to work a small lawn into my back yard. Though both front and back were almost nothing but grass when we moved in, over the years the lawns shrank as the perennial beds grew. For the last three years, I’ve been lawn-less and loving it. Even with kids, not having a lawn never felt like a hardship. We’d dedicated half of the back yard to the kids’ play area (with a playscape, sandbox, and trampoline) and mulched it with pea gravel. Utilitarian, but it worked.

July—Playscape and pea gravel edged with old, warped landscaping timbers. These had to go.
Lately though, my disenchantment with the look of the play area had grown. For one thing, pea gravel gets really, really hot in this climate, burning bare feet, and the sun glares blindingly off the white stone. For another, the kids weren’t really using the playscape much anymore, and yet it physically and visually (because it was raised on stilts) took up a lot of space in the yard. It was all you could see when you looked out back. Finally, that vision of lawn stuck in my mind. I missed the feeling of grass tickling my bare feet and having a place to lie on my back and watch the clouds. Simple pleasures of childhood. Grass, I decided, would bring them into the garden for my kids (and for me too). A small monoculture of perfect, restful green would do the trick. It wouldn’t even be a lawn, really. More of a lawnette.
But first I had to make some room. Before I could rework the area, I needed to remove the offending pea gravel. I listed it on Austin Freecycle, which lured several takers over to haul wheelbarrows of it away. This took all summer! Finally it was down to the last inch, and I scraped it up myself and spread it around the greenhouse, where it looks clean and neat.

September—After the gravel removal
This is how the area looked after the gravel was removed and my husband and I had taken down the bulk of the playscape. You can see the black weedblock that we’d laid under the gravel, which I had to rip up where the lawn was to go. The weekend I took this photo, we’d moved the trampoline to the middle of the space and rebuilt part of the elevated play structure as a ground-level playhouse. It’s much smaller than the old playset was.

Another view of the playhouse along with a new sandbox I built (covered to keep cats out)

Mulching and roofing the playhouse
In late September, I outlined a curvaceous, small lawn with an old soaker hose. Before I installed it, however, I mulched around the trampoline and playhouse to cover up the scrim of leftover gravel and give the space the feel of a woodland glade. With an old, leaky, wooden roof, the playhouse was due for a Texas makeover; you can see metal roofing lying under the trampoline.

New metal roof, stepping stones, and lawn edging
With its gleaming, new roof, the playhouse is now an asset in the garden, not an eyesore. (I can’t do much about the trampoline though.) The mulch softens the lines of the garden beds behind the playhouse and trampoline; though I left some of the timber edging in to keep the plants in bounds, I hid the timbers with mulch. Flagstones set in the mulch lead to the trampoline and playhouse. Once the mulch was in place, I used a few bags of paver sand to level the concrete edgers for the future lawn, following the outline I’d made with the soaker hose.

A fuller view of the edging, as well as the flagstone I laid at the lawn’s entrance
The back yard slopes very gradually from the house to the fence, but it lacks any significant grade changes. So I decided to build one in by using 4″-high edging and building up the lawn to that level. Now there is a small step up onto the lawn, which I feel sets it off a little more, making that area more interesting. Where the warped landscape timbers once presented an angular step into the play space, I paved a small, curved entry with Oklahoma patio stone, which matches our back patio.

October—The newly planted lawnette
I planted the lawn last weekend, after filling the edged area with a couple of yards of soil. (I used ‘Palisades’ zoysia grass.) The decomposed-granite path into the back garden and toward the greenhouse/shed now detours to a small apron of flagstone marking the entrance to the lawn. The new bottle tree is the centerpiece of this space.

Playhouse with metal roof
To the right, stepping stones lead to the playhouse and sandbox.

Center view of the lawn
At the rear of the amoeba-shaped lawn, the Barbados cherry bush is visible now that the elevated playscape is gone. It looked lovely in full pink flower recently, and the scrap-metal flamingo reinforced the color.

Looking to the left
To the left of the flamingo, the path to the greenhouse/shed curves around and leads to a back entrance to the lawn.

Looking back toward the house

A Mexican plum stands sentry at the junction of patio, path, and lawn.
I’m pleased with the new openness of the back garden, the replacement of crunchy gravel with quiet, cushioning mulch, and the addition of green, green grass. You’ll have to excuse me now as I go wiggle my toes in it.