Michael Warren Thomas can help you decrease the size of your lawn gradually or perhaps in several steps. This will allow more space for outdoor living areas for you, pathways, wildflowers, a water feature, additional trees, a privacy hedge, and potentially some herbs and vegetables. Outdoor lighting can be added to extend your ability to use the yard in the evenings. 

Lawns are green (hopefully), but they don’t invite you to spend time on them unless you are mowing. With less lawn, small and large properties can have so much more diversity of plant species and longer periods of bloom, which makes the outdoor space more inviting for you. Additional features like a small fountain can distract from road noise in the neighborhood while also providing water for butterflies and birds. 

There are relatively expensive ways to create instant wildlife habitats using larger plant material and removing grass. There are also inexpensive ways to transition your property into a more natural habitat using smaller plants that will in time overcome your existing grass in time in a process called plant succession. For example, Michael has a 30 foot American Hornbeam tree in his front yard that was transplanted to that spot as a 3″ seedling. The Goldenrod towered over it for several years but it has now completely shaded out the Goldenrod in that area.

It is possible to buy large shade trees that have a 4″ – 5″ thick trunk. While these expensive trees give some instant gratification, it will take at least 1 year of recovery per inch of caliper so that a much smaller and far less expensive tree will catch up with larger one in the long run. While Michael emphasizes native plantings, he can include some non-native plants if necessary, and areas of annuals for a splash of color.

Please contact Michael to discuss your goals for the yard, and he can give you more details on the cost of the design. Winter is an ideal time to work on designs and dream about how you can mow less lawn in the future.