I'm confused--you are going to smother grass and then want a non-flower bed, but a stable surface for raking leaves?

Grass is the easiest maintenance area for leaf removal--can mow, rake, or blow.

What is your purpose in "smothering" these other large areas? If you were planning hardscape for some use--patio, etc--then you can remove leaves from that. You could also make a patio from decomposed granite and similar materials, but again, that is going to some expense, and would usually be for a specific use-purpose--sitting, barbecue, etc.

So, lawn and hardscape are the best for leaves. I hope you are not planning just a large mulched area. That is much more painful for leaf removal, will grow weeds, and also, anything that is more like a garden bed, or mulch bed, than lawn, will also sprout a lot more maple seeds.

There are some groundcovers that purport to "swallow" leaves, but I have not found that to be true, if there is a large leaf burden each year. You can end up with a kind of naturalized area, but it is random and according to nature--leaves will over-pile in some areas and create bare spots, leaves will drift up against wall, et.

>is there some abbreviated lasagna method I could use, something without so many layers?Yes: Mulch on soil. Two basic layers, the way Nature does it. Mulch under soil under mulch under...is not the way Nature does it.

Lasagna belongs in the kitchen.

Ugliness is the antithesis of design and it doesn't get much uglier than this shallow (pun intended) method of gardening. Creating a botanical manure pile in the middle of your yard "to make decorative beds" seems ill-conceived when your stated goal is aesthetic.

Bboy is right: Lasagna belongs in the kitchen.

IronBelly

ironbelly, I don't think one can know that said beds will be ugly, and especially not based on lasagna method as the sole marker of aesthetics. THe method works better or worse depending on existing soil structure, existing resources, and what is intended in the planting; the shape and location and what's planted there can be considered mostly different decisions and would apply to lovely tilled beds filled with trucked-in garden loam as well as to lasagna layers.

However, I agree with some caution that these might not turn out well, as is inferred in my previous post as well in my concern for smothering random grass areas not intended for planting. Perhaps what might be a more common newbie mistake (though admittedly one that I continue to indulge in from time to time) is the idea of "making beds" first and only later deciding what to put in them--this is more of an issue when creating very large such areas, as opposed to experimenting happily with small gardens.

So, the OP might be advised to go back to that great design principle--what is the purpose of said beds--in order to end up with a functional and attractive garden bed for its intended purpose, and thereby avoid creating an ugly manure pile looking for a reason to exist. Also, my live-and-learn lesson is to try to avoid biting off too much at once,but consider making a kind of overall plan and implementing it in stages. Even though there is the lasagna-fever about getting the composting process started ahead of time, it is really easy to end up with more areas to plan and maintain than you have time and energy for, or perhaps the lasagna is not working as you had hoped and you need to adjust your methods, or something.

>lovely tilled beds filled with trucked-in garden loamI wouldn't do that either. Soil imported to the site would be used for making mounds or berms on top of the existing soil, without tilling the existing soil beforehand (resulting in settling later) or tilling the trucked-in soil into the existing soil (defeating the purpose of the trucked-in soil).

Sorry, Frankie. This is a landscape design forum, not a latest fad forum. I would like to encourage the time spent on learning all of the pseudo-half facts about this garden practice of misinformation being applied to learning about what makes a design work.

The ugly, botanical manure pile may eventually disappear but good design endures from inception onward. Why not encourage that approach from the start?

IronBelly

I think that has been my point, more to the point. I have been asking the OP to elaborate on the purpose and planning of the areas being considered for transformation, and less on the actual method of transforming grass into soil or creating garden soil structure. As is often the case on the LD forum, the OP may not "find his answer" in that discussion, since he may just want to know about lasagna layers and not LD, but that's just the breaks.

So I find the repeated re-direction to the "ugly manure pile" silly and one-sided and kind of the antithesis of encouraging more of an LD discussion.

Aesthetics and good design aside - say for the area behind the garage that may or may not be used now or later, nothing turns grass into cr@p destroys grass faster than not raking off tons of maple leaves. The maples do most of the layering work for you, you can wet them down periodically to keep them in place and in two years (maybe a little longer) you've got leaf mold which the people on the Composting Forum love for all kinds of gardening applications.

Yes: Trees and grass are mortal enemies. Grasses use allelopathic chemicals to inhibit young trees and other plants. Some trees also do this - as well as using shade and leaf litter to defeat grasses.