14. Replace Your Lawn with Ground Cover

Unless you’re one of those weekend wonders whose passion is huffing and puffing behind a push lawn mower, or worse yet, walking behind a noisy, smelly, environmentally damaging, pollutant-spewing power mower, why would you have grass in your yard? Neighborhood custom? Social expectations? Habit? Do you really like having a lawn? Is it worth having to keep it trimmed, clipped, mowed, fertilized, aerated, raked, and watered?

Even if you have someone else, such as a hired gardener, to take care of your lawn for you, you still have to expend the effort to get it done; at the very least you have to write the check for the work. Wouldn’t it be simpler to get rid of your lawn altogether?

You could save a great deal of time, money, effort, energy, water, and other natural resources (gas or electricity for the mower), as well as unnatural resources (chemical fertilizers and weed killers), by replacing your lawn with ground cover.

Many beautiful, drought-tolerant, fast-growing, low-maintenance ground covers—pachysandra, dichondra, ivy, and numerous low-growing evergreens, for example—are available as effective lawn replacements. Check with your nurseryman for the one best suited to your locale.

Imagine never again having to concern yourself with a lawn. Just get rid of it.