The Curse of the Sloped Lawn

An exploration of Pittsburgh's trickiest turf

There’s a tiny patch of lawn in our backyard, maybe six feet by seven feet. We use it as patio-overflow when we have friends over and our dog lounges there on sunny days. It’s all that’s left of the massive lawn that surrounded our entire house when we moved in. Instead of turf, there’s now miniature prairies and patches of woodland and rock gardens.

We realized that grass wasn’t doing anything for us. We weren’t setting up croquet in the front yard or kicking a soccer ball around. Mowing it was a pain since much of our grass was on a slope. Getting rid of all that lawn – especially the sloped bits – is definitely the best thing we’ve ever done in our yard.

Now I can’t help but look around at all the other sloped lawns in our neighborhood and wonder why they’re still mowing them.

I could talk more about how lawns are boring and also “ecological deadzones” but I’ll leave that to entomologist and author, Doug Tallamy. In this interview with Pittsburgh’s public radio station WESA, Doug explains that America has over forty million acres of lawn and all that acreage isn’t doing much for us:

Lawn doesn’t do any of the things that we need every landscape to do, and there are four of them I always talk about: sequester carbon, manage the watershed, support a food web and support pollinators.

---

---

The other week, there was a last minute opening on KDKA’s TALK Pittsburgh and the producer asked if I had any ideas for a segment. I asked the producers if I could share my distaste for the Pittsburgh sloped lawn. They said “sure!” And if you’re not from Pittsburgh you should know it’s a very hilly city so there are slopes (and sloped lawns) all over the place.

I shared a couple of ideas for sloped lawn replacements – shrubs, edible gardens, meadows, rock gardens – but I’d love to hear from you. What have you replaced your lawn with (sloped or not)? Or is there anything you dream about replacing your lawn with? I’d love to hear about it.

---

And one more thing: Brooke and I were at Target yesterday and noticed a small endcad full of gardening-related accessories on clearance. I picked up this box with the Miracle-Gro logo:

It’s a “DIY Tranquil Zen Garden” that contains a wooden tray, sand, stones, a small wooden rake and three faux succulents. FAKE PLANTS! And I thought sloped lawns annoyed me.

---