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Connecting Landscape Dots: Eliminate Bump-and-Go Mowing

Once an errant Best Management Practice (BMP) is adopted in the landscape, it becomes like a large river barge. It is hard, really hard, to change the course to something that on the surface makes sense. Topping trees is an example of one of those BMPs that took years to reverse. (People don’t do that anymore, do they?) Have you seen the donut mulch rings around all the trees in the landscape? Why do we do that?

It does make some sense. We mulch to conserve water, reduce weeds, reduce labor, reduce damage to trees from maintenance activities, and to return organic matter to the soil. Of course, we know that it only takes 3 to 4 inches of mulch to do the job and not the mounds of volcanic proportions we often see. The view created is like the home gardener/landscaper has taken the bubble renderings by the landscape designer too literally. Your eyes blur as you scan the green carpet and see all the dots. It is like the star-gazers/astronomers of ancient times trying to connect the dots and see an archer or a big pot. The next time you view a "lily pad/dotted landscape," squint your eyes to see if the landscaper was leaving a message. There is an easier, better, more aesthetic way to mulch that relies more on logic.

Let’s connect the dots, create some sweeping lines or hard lines for formal landscapes and develop a mulched area that actually does what it was intended to do. Most gardeners know that roots extend out 3 to 4 times the diameter of the drip line of the tree and do not go straight down. Have you ever looked up at the top of a tree and thought how heavy a 2 foot fire log is? Can you imagine how heavy a whole tree is and how roots must claw desperately to the ground as the wind swishes even gently through lazy swaying branches? If the roots went straight down, it would be like balancing a broom on your nose! If you want to mulch roots, put mulch on the feeder roots and not within a 3 to 5 ft ring. Connect the dots among the trees to conserve moisture, add organic matter and create understory planting areas for the 1000’s of incredible shrubs, bulbs and wildflowers you are missing that thrive in the shade. Many landscape professionals, when possible, are now conserving colonies of trees when developing a home landscape to conserve the natural soils and relationships among the trees. Lone, scraggly trees with cut and compacted roots are avoided. Maintenance is greatly reduced. The Saturday morning mower never needs reverse or a tight turning radius for their riding mower. They can mount the beast, put the pedal to metal and be through and off to professionally maintained links, a ballgame, book or couch, in half the time. Leaves that fall, stay where nature intended them to find their final resting place and contribute natural fertilizer for the next generation of the new spring-green popping out now.

If you take this advice, there will be less weed-whacking and trimming; and as the wind blows through the trees you will hear the oohs and aahs of the roots as they grow without competition from aggressive, unhappy turf roots. Grass/turf does not like shade. It begrudgingly tolerates the unhealthy conditions but it does not flourish. All the fertilizer, fungicide, and verbal abuse you spread will not take the place of nature’s energy source and turf’s greed for all it can get. Connect the dots for a better, more relaxing life. Mother Nature had it right, as She so often does.

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