Managing Iowa Acreages: Low-Maintenance Lawns

Many acreage owners are looking for simple, lost-cost ways to maintain their lawn. There are several ways to reduce the time, cost and environmental impacts of your lawn. This may include choosing a low-maintenance lawn, reducing the size of your lawn, or doing both.

Conventional lawns can be a lot of work, and the practices needed for upkeep of conventional lawns can have adverse impacts on the environment. These include:

• Increased water consumption due to watering.
• Increased air and noise pollution from gas-powered mowers, trimmers and other equipment.
• Pesticide use causes potential risks to health and the environment.
• Applied fertilizers can leach into groundwater and enter streams and lakes through storm water runoff.

What is a Low-Maintenance Lawn?

Low-maintenance lawns are made up of a diverse mix of hardy, drought-tolerant, slow-growing and low-height turf grasses, fescues, and wear-tolerant broadleaf species. A sampling of these grasses includes Blue Grama, Sideoats Grama, Little Bluestem, Buffalo Grass, Fescue varieties and Prairie Dropseed. These species require less mowing, fertilizing and watering than conventional lawn species. Without mowing, Buffalo Grass grows to only about four to five inches, while Prairie Dropseed may be up to three feet tall. For maximum benefit, select a mix of species that are suited to your needs, climate, soil type, soil pH (acidity) and the amount of sun or shade.

One drawback of a low-maintenance lawn is appearance. A low-maintenance lawn typically appears less uniform than a conventional lawn. Is a less-than-perfect lawn appearance worth the savings in time and costs, and the gain in environmental benefits for you?

Reduce the Size of Your Lawn

A great way to reduce the size of your lawn is to establish native grasses, plants and trees. Steep slopes and small or narrow areas are the best places to replace conventional turf grass with native plants and grasses. Replace areas that you don’t use for recreation or other purposes with natives.

Natives have a root architecture that increases soil organic matter, builds soil quality and helps retain and infiltrate storm water. They save time and money by eliminating or significantly reducing the need for fertilizers, pesticides, watering and lawn equipment. Consider devoting 30 percent or more of your lawn to native landscaping and, if possible, direct runoff toward native landscaped areas. Some nurseries offer seed mixes featuring lower growing native species (4 feet or less) with a more uniform appearance. For more information about establishing native landscapes, refer to “Seeding Native Landscapes” at www.ia.nrcs.usda.gov/news/brochures/publications.html.

Plant Native Trees and Shrubs. Another way to reduce the size of your lawn is to plant native trees and shrubs. Native trees and shrubs are adapted to Iowa’s extreme weather, less likely to be stressed than non-natives, more resistant to insects and disease, and they increase wildlife habitat. They also provide similar environmental benefits as native plants and grasses, such as reducing soil erosion, cutting energy costs and improving water quality.

For well-drained sites, examples of native trees that we recommend include: red, white, black and bur oak, black cherry and walnut. On wetter sites, plant silver maple, cottonwood, sycamore, swamp white oak and pin oak.

Another way to reduce your lawn size and, at the same time, provide shelter for your home, is to establish a windbreak or shelterbelt–a linear planting of multiple rows of trees or shrubs. Windbreaks are a benefit in reducing energy costs. The shelter they provide can reduce winter heating and summer cooling costs by up to 40 percent. Windbreaks can serve as living snow fences to protect your homes, driveways, livestock or roads from snow drifts, and they benefit acreage owners by reducing soil erosion and attracting wildlife.

For a complete list of trees and shrubs, go online to www.ia.nrcs.usda.gov/plants.html and click on “2007 Iowa Woodland Suitability Recommendations.”

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