ok steve .. lets talk background and zen for a few lines ....

did you grow up in the city/suburbia.. and move to the country ??? i suspect such.. as you have some fixation on a LAWN.. as compared to the plant grass ...

when i lived in the city .. i had the best lawn for blocks in each direction ... it was the guy thing to do... water schedules.. fertilizer schedules.. weed-be-gone.. you know the whole rig-a-ma-roll ...

so i moved away from the city .667 acre to 5 acres in the country .... for about 1/4 of a summer.. i tried to do the city thing and create LAWN out of meadow ... on pure sand.. with no irrigation ... then mid-summer rolled around.. and every yard for 10 miles around browned out in summer ... the only thing that stayed green were weeds and meadow plants ... that is when i LEARNED the difference between LAWN and MEADOW ....

then came the zen attitude about grass as a lawn ... on 5 acres ... WHO CARES ... and its free ...

i have a collection of 1500 hosta.. and near 500 conifers.. and maybe 20 to 50 guests per year ... care to take a guess on how many comments i get about the grass/lawn/meadow ... nil, zero, nada.. etc ...

cut your paths .. make them 1.5 time the width of your wheels ... so you dont always drive over the same line ... and let then meadow take over.. keep it mowed ... if its grass .. fine.. if its meadow plants [fancy name for weeds...lol] ... fine ... who cares.. its free.. and nearly maintenance free ...

and an upside.. the rabbits prefer to browse the plantain, and dandelions.. the salad bowl know as a meadow.. rather then the monoculture known as a lawn .... go figure on that ...

short of winning the lotto .. or being independently wealthy.. i dont know how these peeps can afford to use mulch or gravel or anything else.. in terms of the bulk required in large garden ... on a yearly basis ... it seems on one of your first posts i asked you about the mulch paths ....

so.. it comes down to a Zen thing.. ohhhhmmmmm ... with what you are developing in terms of your collection... you could probably spread manure on the paths.. and most peeps will never notice.. and those that do... AND SAY SOMETHING.. never get invited back ...

have you been following my posts on my garden ... can you tell that the paths are 50% carp grass and 50% weeds??? .. do you think you would ever notice if you were touring my garden????

does this make sense ...???

the paths are just NOT an integral part of your garden ...

and dont comparing you soil and weather to say .. england ... where it is the absolute perfect grass growing clime in the world .... jsut because blue has a perfect lawn.. doesnt mean you need a perfect lawn ... if its going to double your work load ... if its there.. and maintains itself... with little or no care.. go for it.. but dont take time and money away from the collection by developing a problem ...

frankly ... my beds started this way ... first came a mowing problem ... say a dead giant stump .... which was then surrounded by a 20 foot ring of mulch.. into which i then planted conifers ... no more mowing problems... and 20 minutes less time spinning in circles ... after year two.. no more need for the weed whip .. then i made sure short cuts to the burn pile and barn were developed... that would be the diagonals .... and finally ... the paths were a way to save mulch ... i presume.. as the plants grow.. the paths will be swallowed up .. but i wont need the mulch.. since the plants will not need it ...

the first summer.. it would take me about 5 hours to mow.. and whip it all ... today.. maybe 2 hours.. and roundup instead of whipping .... and then it all browns out .... and i dont mow from 7/15 to about 9/15 ...

ken

Nothing special about the grass at my place mainly weed and couch, I mow once a week and edge all the beds once a fortnight using long handled edging shears

Ken:
You're partially right.

It's not that I obsess over having the perfect green lush lawn. It's more the constant maintenance of grass/meadow paths. One of the issues I'm also faced with is a lawn that has a fair amount of bermuda grass established, which knows no bounds when it comes to invading every bed in it's path. It also goes total dormant brown in the winter months.

I'm trying to get an idea of how much time we're talking to maintain these grass/weed paths on a regular basis. If I put time and money into mulching these paths now will it save me time in the future.

You're right about the city thing :)

Spruce:
Good to know there's some weeds mixed in the lawn. You're beds are awesome and have inspired me to look at other option, you to Ken.

Grass is boring. It's also ugly, tacky and destructive. People want lawns because they think think of it as an outdoor carpet. In the meantime they're soaking the thing in nasty chemicals, wasting three hours a week mowing the ugly stuff, and then wasting hundreds of thousands of gallons of water to keep it "Green", most obnoxiously in areas of the west that have 5+ months of NO RAIN. What a waste.

Plant some native grasses and wildflowers instead.

"Grass is boring. It's also ugly, tacky and destructive".

It's all in the look your after.

Formal/informal gardens can look quite attractive with grass in sculptured walkways.

On the other hand if you want that wild in the back woods natural presentation then grass is out.

Either way is fine, but the my way or the highway attitude is not acceptable in a public form and I am sure a lot of people will not agree with you. I for one.

Dave

I have a very small lawn. It started pretty small and I chopped and diced some of it for conifer space as well. It takes me about five minutes to mow it. I have an automatic sprinkler and in summer I run it about 10 minutes, three times a week. I am lucky to be in an area that is quite moderated by the water, we rarely get over 85 in the summer.

I have a pretty horrible addiction to conifers so with less then an acre to work with, it's possible the grass will become extinct down the road anyways, but for now, I like the effect it has.

My backyard was larger and I faced a similar question you are, so I decided to slowly, systematically replace the grass with conifer beds, japanese maple beds and paths between them all. It has been a pretty extensive project, some 15-20 yards of bark and now about 10 yards of pea gravel for the paths. Not cheap for sure, but I am hoping for a long term solution that should be very low maintenance.

If you have a very large space(a couple acres or more) one thing you might conider is slowly moving to paths and conifer beds and making it a 3-5 year plan. I'd agree with both Dave and Ken, basically 'rough grass and weeds' mowed over about once a week around nice beds of conifers can work fine, but there is also something very attractive about having a curving green bed of grass surrounding your conifers. If you have too much space then it's probably not realistic, unless you can afford hired help. Just the mowing/watering alone is going to be a brutally hard task.

Interesting topic Steve. We have a similar situation -- lots of field grass surrounding island beds. We don't chemically treat or water the grass -- it is what it is - with many weeds and creeping bermuda grass (although we do maintain a "lawn" immediately surrounding the house.) We've tried to erradicate the bermuda grass by tilling up the whole hillside and re-seeding, but didn't use a pre-emergent and the bermuda grass just took over again. I agree -- it's really ugly in the winter.

I personally like the look of the grass surrounding the beds. As Dave said, it depends upon the look you're going for.

I would be concerned about the maintenance involved with large mulched paths. Weeds will invade. They will have to be re-mulched periodically. If you're talking lots of large paths, that's a lot of work, and $$$. Depending on your topography, they could wash out in heavy rains. I think mowing and occasional edging is easier than weeding and mulching.

We do have some of the problems you're describing. Weeding the island beds is an ongoing chore because of weed seeds from the surrounding grass. The bermuda grass also creeps in around the edges. Sounds like Bluespruce has the best routine - regular trimming with an edger. An electric or gas powered weed-eater would also work well for regular edging. I like to do it the hard way - periodically crawl around on my hands and knees with my Japanese Gardening Knife (my favorite tool for everything!!) and cut the grass back. I also cut fresh edges with a shovel each spring before mulching.

The other problem is grass clippings (and weed seeds) being blown into the mulch by the mower. (Since my Husband does the mowing, and I do the weeding, he doesn't see this as a problem.) We use a push mower with a bagger in a few small areas to catch the clippings, but that's just not practical for most of our grass.

There's going to be work involved any way you go -- but that's part of the fun of gardening!!

It's interesting to learn how others deal with these challenges.

This has already been a large project for me and also super fun. Eight months ago I had zero conifers now we're over 100. Trying to find the best way to do a new project is a great deal of the excitement of the entire process.

This is a 2 acre long strip of property that I'm working on creating the paths and beds. The size is one of the factors that make the grass and pasture plant paths appealing. Although, I do believe I can source enough free wood chips to come close to my desired 200 cubic yards to mulch paths if that's the direction I go.

I'd also like to hear what tools people are using to keep the edges of their beds well defined from the grass paths.

"I'd also like to hear what tools people are using to keep the edges of their beds well defined from the grass paths."

I use stones/bricks... keeps the bark from getting into the grass

I use flat rocks to separate the grass from the beds. I think the paths are an important feature of a garden. In a smallish garden details are particularly important and I like a visual division between the beds and the walkway to the beds. Here are a few pictures. I weed-wack a few times during the growing season to remove grass and weeds between the rocks that blur the division between the two areas. I think even when grass creeps into the beds the flat rocks provide a visual separation. I also like to raise the beds when I can to help define the bed area and I use ground cover as well.

I only fertilize and lime in the fall and no watering at all. I really like the grass like paths. I think Kens garden is very beautiful in small part to the wide grassy/meadow areas. Replacing them with a mulch in my opinion would reduce the beauty of his garden. I have paths through the woods that if I could I would seed with grass. I think it would be beautiful. It is just too hard to do. I even have tried to make my driveway into a grass path. Although no visitor in 17 years have commented on my grassy driveway I think it plays a role in defining my garden. Here is a picture with my family of my driveway.

If I did not have an abundance of rocks I think I would do something like what dcsteg (Dave )has done to define the beds. That takes a lot more skill however.
Gary

HI Gary,

Nice woodland setting and I especially like what you/yours and the 3 star boarders did and the effort to get it that way.

Your comment: "If I did not have an abundance of rocks I think I would do something like what dcsteg (Dave )has done to define the beds. That takes a lot more skill however."

That's interesting..As for me if I would have used rocks in the form of white holey lime stone. Since there is not abundance of that product around here and quite expensive I decided to do the brick borders instead.

There is not a lot of skill involved in what I did and is easily transformed from just a thought to the finished product.

In case you missed a design presentation on a small bed I posted in September 08 hit the link and review.

In regard to the grass discussion and its pros and cons... I consider grass a valuable natural resource. Once established there is little or no effort to keep it that way. To dismiss it as ugly, tacky and destructive is bone headed thinking.

Dave

I agree with you, Dave.

In the dry northern California summer, my grass disappears. But I enjoy it while it lasts! What I've been doing is using trees to create shade, then ferns and mulch to lock moisture in the area. As a result, the grass in the shade tends to persist, which cools the whole area during the summer months. I don't have a sprinkler system, and I don't water the grass in the back yard. I let it go meadow, sometimes with clovers or wildflowers...I yank Queen Anne's Lace and fox tails as I see them.

Since I live under oak trees, I plant amongst them as I can. I've included a few shots for reference.

In March or so, looking from the back property up toward the house (to the left). New ailanthus buds!

Then fast-forward to May, back deck, looking toward the back of the property. You can see the main mown "lawn," and also the meadow area further out.
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Right side of property: my birch, redwoods, ferns, et cetera...

Tough, drought-tolerant stuff...and a grass/weedy pathway (can barely see it in there!). Wide enough for a single pass with the lawn mower, then a light edging. I edge with hand-shears around rocks with signifcant moss and lichen.

And lastly...end of June, or so. The "meadow" has to be mown down before the neighbors start to gripe about fire-codes...blah blah....

I'm using ailanthus (I know, gawd forgive me!) to create a wall betwixt my property and the "Round-Up Holocaust" neighbors, as I've dubbed them. The ailanthus shade the area enough for grass to last a bit longer out there, too. Both the central oak and the willow are on my property - a seasonal creek runs between the oak and willow, left to right...but you can't see it in June, just its green ghost in the grass. There are two liquidambar in there, if you squint.

Josh