Beautiful No-Mow Yards: 50 Amazing Lawn Alternatives

by Evelyn J. Hadden

In this ultimate guide to rethinking one's yard, Hadden showcases dozens of inspiring, eco-friendly alternatives to that demanding (and dare we say boring?) green turf. From a lively prairie to a runoff-reducing rain garden, award-winning author Hadden shows readers how to convert their yards.

Genres: Gardening, Nonfiction, Reference, Landscaping, Nature, Plants, How To

249 pages, Paperback

First published May 17, 2012

About the author

A national speaker and award-winning author of four garden books, Evelyn Hadden shares strategies to help people create and maintain comfortable, functional, nature-friendly landscapes with less or no lawn. Her most recent books, published by Timber Press, include Hellstrip Gardening (2014) and the acclaimed Beautiful No-Mow Yards (2012). Evelyn founded the informational website LessLawn and is a founding member of the national Lawn Reform Coalition, as well as a partner at the lauded and provocative team blog Garden Rant. Find her at http://www.evelynhadden.com.

Reviews

[Rachel (Kalanadi) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great resource if you live in the American Southwest / Midwest and are getting your no-mow lawn started. It was exactly what I wanted: inspirational photos and specific plant recommendations, but not overwhelmingly detailed. I've read it cover to cover but also combed through it multiple times for inspiration and notes for my own garden plans.

Some small detractors are that it's pretty tightly focused on the Midwest, so may not meet the needs or native plant interests of people in the eastern and southern states. (This is probably a result of all the fun garden advocacy people hailing from Minnesota, or California. But I assume similar coalitions and networks exist elsewhere too!)

Plus I would have liked a list of resources for further reading and research. I mostly found old and dead-end websites when I tried to follow up on the author's info.

[Brigette · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some good ideas. I would have loved even more pictures, maybe before and after, with clearer help on what does well in different regions.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, I feel considerably better about our "lawn" of clover, creeping charlie and violets. Apparently, that's called a "freedom lawn" and there is nothing wrong with it! So thrive little freedom lawn, thrive, until the day I can cut back your size with big beautiful beds of native shrubs and flowers.

[Jackie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Poorly executed.

I am all in favor of reducing the amount of grass yards we have in suburban America. They don't do anyone a lick of good, they're not good for the environment, and they're boring as all get out. So I picked up this book already on board with the author's message. I expected to get a ton of beautiful pictures of yards without grass, design tips, and some basic information about plant types, etc. This book just didn't deliver on any of that.

The biggest problem I have with the book is that too many of the pictures are close-ups of plants rather than pictures of the whole yards. Not a single proper street-view picture of a house with a grass-free yard was included, and I yearned for one. You want American suburbanites to ditch their water-guzzling grass yards? Show us what that will look like! Don't just show me close ups of bushes and low growth ground cover. It's like if someone wrote an article about a kitchen reno but the only pictures are close-ups of the appliances; hard to get an idea of the layout or the overall effect. Very disappointing in the photography department.

The book was also extremely text-heavy without actually saying very much. Most of the book is written like a series of magazine articles highlighting a few yards (which again we don't get to see as a total) that aren't very informative. Most of the advice in this book comes down to, "no-grass yards are so much better and you should totally do it, but you're going to need to hire someone to tell you what kinds of plants are appropriate because it's very complicated". Also, the style of writing feels very dumbed down and you almost get the impression that the author might think you are stupid. The most informative section is probably the last in which various plants are grouped into categories and then listed encyclopedia style with a preferred habitat zone, description, and sun/water needs. You know, the kind of information you can just google.

This book just failed on a lot of levels, but there are bits and pieces here and there that are decent.

[jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hate lawn grasses with a passion and I'm always looking for ways to get rid of mine. This book is great inspiration for anti-lawn yards, including photos from over 50 different yards in different climates from homeowners with different needs and taste. All of the yards look beautiful, and it's great to see how people craft outdoor living spaces without the conventional American Lawn.

The chapters include design inspirations from different styles of gardens (shade gardens, prairie gardens, play areas, patios, ponds, xeriscaping, edible gardens, etc), advice on how to design and build your own "no-mow yard," and plant lists to help you choose what to place where.

Overall, I am not sure that this book had a lot of new information for me and I wished the photos were brighter than the matte printing allowed for. There is a lot of inspiration here for someone starting to think about eliminating their lawnmower, and it's worth flipping through for the diversity of the gardens.

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The carefree look of many of these gardens gives the reader a calm, peaceful feeling. The natural biodiversity of a garden that isn't full of artificial turf grass and chemicals is, to me, a no-brainer. I haven't wasted much time on fertilizing and watering lawns, nor have I sown much grass seed, but I have retained and mowed wide swaths of green that do not give as much interest as gardens. On each of my properties I have limited the grass lawns with patios, decks, and gardens, but this concept makes me want to expand beyond that to have mostly garden and, perhaps, a small swath of mowed green as a path. My husband loves a lawn, but I might be able to persuade him with this book.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

If someone asked how to subtitle this book, I'd say:
A Philosophical Companion to your Eco-yard.

As other readers noted, this book lacks any practical diagrams. And the plant list is just a tasting menu. Instead the author gives us a lovely, leisurely manifesto on why you should shrink your lawn - with several bulbs of wisdom on design --

Here's a design principle that I found especially winning:

Many gardeners fall in love with new plants and start out by planting one of these and one of those…

It may go against your grain to spread the plants that are thriving. They may seem too common or you may worry that they will take over and make the garden look too boring.

Really, the opposite is true. A site with characteristic plants will have a stronger personality than one with a bit of this and a bit of that. Those signature plants – the ones that are happy and abundant in your garden – help make it a recognizable, unique place.

[Wendi · Rating 3 out of 5]

My sister let me borrow this book. I read and flipped through a lot of it. I don't want to convert my grass into other plants, but it did give me good ideas for areas that don't get our sprinklers what to plant, instead of just having rocks. And does make me think twice about landscaping more of my grass into winding paths, or places my kids can play and discover. I really enjoyed the chapter for kids play areas.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great ideas for inspiration, though the write-ups frequently gloss over the maintenance these yards will require. (And I'd love to find a book about wildlife-friendly landscapes that dares to mention ticks or deer.) Once I have the time and money to implement major changes to my yard I'll be coming back to this.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great inspiration for reducing or eliminating the American lawn. I thought some of the plant combinations were inspired, and I found some plants I had not previously considered. This book is best accessed as a gallery of design ideas, rather than a practical, DIY book. I'm planning to add this one to my garden design bookshelf.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of good ideas. I'm a rip-out-the-lawn convert as we so enjoy our front landscaping full of native plants that is good for the environment, easy care, colorful. It brings in so many butterflies, bees, and birds. We'll soon be creating another area without lawn in our backyard. I just wish there had been more photos in this book; otherwise, it was helpful.

[A_s · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

The story portion of this book had good information but felt repetitive because each garden they reviewed was essentially talking about the same thing. The plant lists were broken down into good categories that I really liked. I read this online so the photos might have been smaller than in the physical copy, but I was disappointed with how small and few photos there were. They could have easily doubled the photos.

All in all good reference book, but needed more photos.

[Tamara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now I have way more questions than I did before I read this. Maybe this is an intermediate-to-advanced gardening book. I'll revisit when I know what the heck I'm doing.

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book for those thinking about getting rid of a traditional grass lawn! It has lots of different types of yards including shady, xeriscapes, water gardens, etc. It's fairly good at including pictures that show the flowers that are mentioned in the text (though for someone like me who is still learning the names of plants and flowers, I still had to do a lot of looking up!).

I do wish there was slightly more focus on using native plants. Even though the gardens featured were from many different areas of the country, it would have been nice to get a sense of what grows natively in certain areas. There was not a strong focus on that. I also wish there was a little more information provided about how to remove your lawn, such as times of year to remove and plant. But overall, this was a great book about lawn alternatives (and I've read several now!).

[Martha · Rating 4 out of 5]

native & non-native suggestions

[Evie K Whittingham · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has lots of beautiful pictures featuring close-ups of specific plants, plant combinations, and long range shots of garden designs (with constructive descriptions), essential in a good gardening book. I would've loved to have seen some garden plans with some of the gardens featured but how much more can you pack into 250 pages?

The author is passionate about encouraging home owners to envision trees, shrubs and groundcovers out their windows rather than lawn and asphalt. She promotes native and other suitable plantings as less work and lower cost than fertilizing, watering and mowing extensive lawns. Not to mention better for our health, environment and the other animal species we live with.

In Part One Evelyn Hadden features different garden types in each chapter: ground cover, shade, prairie, rain, play gardens, etc. Her writing style is chatty and descriptive. Part Two is the how-to. Part Three describes the plant options.

As I have been gardening for some time but have a new-to-me small town property, I was most interested in the how-to and design section. I found it a bit vague on getting rid of the grass by 'smothering.' More definitive rational and instructions on sheet composting/lasagna gardening/no-dig gardening versus solarizing or using herbicides would be useful.

The pages on planning and design had helpful hints, such as connecting planting beds for easy access for small animals and insects, but was basic and general. Considering her personal style of writing, I would've liked more input on her planning and design process.

Nevertheless, I did enjoy reading it and loved the pictures, and plant recommendations. Many would be suitable for my southwestern Ontario lawn-opps!-garden.

[Regan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been piecing through this book for awhile. Overall it's a fantastic book, well put together, good images, enjoyable language, and very useful information. I picked up some fabulous ideas (some of which are already happening in my yard) and enjoyed picking up some philosophical perspectives that complemented my own.

The only real issues I had were non-issues, if I'm honest. I wanted more images in the plant ideas pages at the back, I really wanted to see at least one image of each listed plant. The author repeats herself a bit which really isn't an issue, it just got to me a few times. Lastly, I personally won't use all the sections of the book but I think that's not an issue, it's just the nature of a book like this.

Overall I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in no-mow - either in whole or in parts - on your property. I anticipate I will pull this book off the shelf often to look something up or remind myself of a specific inspiration.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first how-to gardening book I've read cover to cover. Full of practical ideas for not only lawn alternatives, but for rain gardens, xeriscaping, shade islands under trees, and more, Beautiful No Mow Lawns takes you step by step through the work of replacing grass with plants that don't need as much mowing, watering, or fertilizing. The photographs are gorgeous and the author even references local Homestead Gardens blogger, Susan Harris. The hard thing for this neophyte gardener is going to be waiting until our blistering summer heat is over before I try one or two of the projects the author describes.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't read this completely, but skimmed and read the chapters that were most interesting to me. The great reasons for switching part or all of your turf to other options are convincing. There are lots of great ideas and photographs. I do wish the last chapters of ground cover examples had photos of each one. Olbrich Gardens in Madison were featured a few times (On, Wisconsin!).

We're now planning to convert a patch of mostly weeds in our front yard to ground cover with a cherry tree in the middle.

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I adore this book. Anyone who has ever talked to me in person about gardening can tell you how much I abhor America's slavish devotion to grass, so this book is just a feast for my eyes and soul. Hadden does a great job of finding very diverse examples of no-mow yards, both in terms of geography and appearance, and really mixes good practical advice in with the inspiration. I still have way more grass than I'd like, but have been using this as a reference book to get the yard headed in the right direction.

[Vic · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was really my fault for not paying more attention to reviews; this book is about no mow YARDS, not no mow LAWNS. I had thought there would be more information on different ground covers and creeping low growers, and I didn't expect a book on taller plants and arrangements. I really just wanted lawn alternatives, of which this book seems to scratch the surface. There was some good information and beautiful pictures though.

[Kathy (McDowell) Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of great ideas. This is one of those books you probably don't want to read cover to cover. In fact, I would advise starting in Part Three, where it describes many different plants, flowers, and grasses and where/how they will grow best. Then look in the index to find where there are photos of the plant in a yard or garden in the book. The book provides all of the scientific names so you know exactly what to look for at your local nursery or garden shop.

[Tia Rodriguez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great ideas and a lot of the yards she featured were in the few (and varied) locales I'd lived in, so lucky me. I'm giving it 3 stars, though, because I wish it had more/better pictures identifying the plants she talked about. I'm a gardening novice, so that may not be as big a deal to someone else.

[Sharon · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book contained a few pictures of houses with yards and many pictures of mounds of grass, ground covers, and plants.I would have enjoyed this book more if it had included more pictures of the houses with the yards to show how the no-mow yards look.

[Cheryl Gatling]

In case you don’t know, Americans spend extreme amounts of time and money keeping up the grass in their lawns. They also use huge amounts of water for irrigation, and huge amounts of pesticides and fertilizers that poison the rivers. All to maintain a square of green that most people don’t really use, and that is almost devoid of wildlife.

If you have picked up this book, you probably do know all that, and maybe you are looking for ideas on how to do something else. The first part of the book contains “case studies” of people who have converted their lawn to garden, divided into types. Shade gardens create a naturalized woodland environment. Meadow gardens use grasses and perennial wildflowers. Rain gardens, being sunken, capture water and let it soak in instead of becoming runoff. Xeric gardens are suited to dry areas. Edible gardens mix fruits and vegetables among the flowers and shrubs.

The second part contains how-to instructions on getting rid of your grass and building something else. The third part contains lists of useful plants.

The first principle is to shrink the size of your lawn, even if you don’t rip the whole thing out all at once. Make the borders wider. Plant puddles of plants under your trees. If you do keep a strip of grass to walk across or play on, you can choose a low or slow growing variety that only needs to be mowed once or twice a year. At least, if you mow a piece of lawn, let whatever grows in it grow in it. Welcome the little wildflowers and weeds. And you might want to re-think the play area. Areas for children to climb and explore don’t necessarily require grass. Nature itself is a playground for children.

Creating these gardens can be a lot of work, but once the plants are established, there is less maintenance required than when you were constantly mowing, watering, and fertilizing your lawn. What will you do with all that time you saved? Sit in your outdoor room, watching the birds and chipmunks and butterflies that will flock to your yard.

This book is better as an inspiration guide than as a how-to manual. The photos are gorgeous, but they are often close-up views that don’t give you the big picture of how these views fit into the space. There aren’t any of those birds-eye diagrams of the house and lot that garden manuals usually have. It is useful that the names of the garden designers are included, in case you want to hire somebody.

The plant section at the end includes detailed lists of growth habit, growing conditions, etc, but I wanted a photograph of each plant, and there wasn’t one. The plant section also included area of origin for the recommended plants, and since the text had talked about the importance of supporting local wildlife, I was surprised how many suggested plants were not native.

[Pam · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hmm... Sometimes you pick up a book because you are interested in one of the subjects covered. In my case, I was interested in rain gardens so I immediately skipped the earlier subjects to read that chapter. The background on why rain gardens was great, but then I reached this sentence, "To make a simple rain garden, dig a low area and pile the dug-up soil or sod on the downhill side...", I stopped. Was that all the instructions? Yes, it was. What about think before you dig in your front yard? What about the underground utilities? Internet, dog electric fences, watering systems and propane lines are all very shallow. And if you dig deeper, electric, water, sewage, and gas! And what about the top soil? If you have clay soil, dams are best made of that and the top soil you want to return to the rain garden for the plants! These deficients are so major, I wonder if I should read or believe anything else written in the book.

If you look deeper at this book, you quickly realize the photographs are awful, printed in matt they are not clear and sharp. Also, all the photos tend to be close-ups, what do these gardens look like to the neighbors who abutt them? The text is verbose and poetic rather than instructional. And while published in 2012, it seems dated as native plants are generally ignored.

While this book addresses a subject close to my heart which is using your front yard rather than just mowing it, it is a sad example of a gardening book.

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

I skimmed through this several times but didn't find it useful. This isn't "lawn alternatives" as in clover or other short grass-substitutes-- this is "lawn alternatives" as in tiny prairies of grasses 18 inches to 3 feet, or ground covers that grow a foot high, minimum. Most useful if you're looking to landscape an area where you will never need to walk; not useful if you are looking for alternatives in places that receive foot traffic and playtime.

[superawesomekt · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are some good resources and inspiration in this book, but the criticism of grass/lawns was beyond heavy-handed. Also, some invasive species were in the list of recommended plants. They may have had caveats with those recommendations, but I can't remember.

Recommended for someone who is considering replacing sod with other landscaping.

[Carolyn Page · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fantastic resource for those looking to make their yards a bit less golf-course-y. A variety of style ideas and planting combinations, as well as hard advice in design, creation and maintenance. Took one star off for recommending some invasive species. The author DID post warnings that they may be invasive, but in that case find native plants to recommend instead?

[Marie Louise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Except for a few sections or paragraphs, the font size is too small for ease of reading. Small font size and light green in colour for photo captions was even harder to read. Something should be shared as to how many years, and what changes were made during that time, did it take to achieve the mature gardens.