I am not too proud to admit that our backyard is looking a bit neglected. The grass is patchy and brown in parts, while other parts are overgrown. Something should be done about it.

We did get some things done this last summer. We did start to clear up some of the overgrown parts. These things need to be done but they are not solving the real problem with our yard. The cause for all this mess is me.

After years of pushing around mowers, moving spriklers from place to place and the daily ritual of pouring water on flowers, I am sick of it and don;t want to do it any more. I have been doing it less and less and then the yard looks tired and unkempt. Then I don’t want to spend any time out there because I feel guilty about not doing any yard work. It is not a sustainable situation.

So, what are we going to do about it?

We are going to move all the nice plants that are still alive to the front yard, and then we are going to convert big parts of the backyard to tall grasses and wildflowers.

The first stage is already under way. We have identified the part of the back lawn that takes the most effort to maintain and have killed the grass. This autimn, somewhere between the first and second snowfalls, we will broadcast the seeds.

A patch of dead grass in a lawn

Next Spring, the hope is that these seeds will germinate and establish a strip of tall grasses and wildflowers. I have selected a selection of seeds from Pririe Moon nursary in Souther Minnesota. The seeds include a cover crop that will help fend off weeds as the wilfdflowers germinate.

Why turn a portion of our backyard intowhat is effectively a mini prairie?

I could say it is because filling the backyard with native wildflowers attracts pollinators. Yards full of lawn grass and exotic plants from other parts of the world do not serve the dwindling populations of bugs who polinate all the plants and trees.

I could say it is because even a slighly diverse population of grasses and flowers provides the foundations for a rich and resilient exosystem of plants, bugs, birds, and animals. Again, grass does not.

Maybe it is because the roots of native pereniel grasses and flowers push deep into the earth providing soil stability. Again, grasses and Lillies do not.

How about the fact that native plants with their deep root systems sequester carbon back into the earth.

It could be that native plants are adapted to their local climate and so do not need much in the way of watering and feeding. This reduces water consumption, reduces humidity, maybe even diminishes the mosquito population. We also will not need to spread fertilizer and herbicides on the grass to maintain that lush green lawn.

All these reasons are true and really are strong, compelling factors. However, the main reason is that I will not need to cut the grass every week. It will need cutting every spring, but once a year is much better than all summer long.

So, I plan on turning laziness into a virtue.

Eileen Frisch, in her book /Essential Systems Administration/ notes that laziness is a virtue. She qualifies the kind of laziness she is talking about to mean, “Writing a 250-line Perl script to avoid typing 15 characters.” Converting your back yard into a prairie takes a little work up front and a couple years of patience but it’s all to save the time and money of watering, fertilizing, and cutting grass. I think you will agree that the lazy option is the winning choice for all.

Dave Snowden talks about how systems can be altered so that the virtuous choice is the one with the lowest energy gradient. For those of us who are not gardeners, perhaps native wildflowers are.