I'd champion the idea of island beds in your lawn if you've got the room to make that work. So effectively the lawn becomes the path between the beds. But the last time I suggested that here it didn't seem to go down too well.
Clay soil - Cheshire/Derbyshire border. I play with plants and soil and sometimes it's successful
Depends what you use the area for. I need to walk across my back garden lawn to hang out the washing, and the washing needs to be able to blow in the breeze without catching on anything, so hedges and trees wouldn't work there. It's grass plus other things that find their own way into it. I have a hedge and a few trees as well as shrubs, lots of perennials and bulbs, elsewhere in the garden. The front lawn (similarly mixed) might at some point get replaced with perhaps gravel with low-ish plants, but I don't want anything too tall that would block the light and view from the front ground floor windows.
Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Soil type: sandy, well-drained
As I implied on another thread, it doesn't have to be all or nothing. If you have a mixture of grass and plants that tolerate mowing ( the kind that would be cropped by herbivores in the wild or ancient farms) and accept that they will dry up in midsummer, you can have your green patch. After all, we accept that many of our garden plants will die down or hibernate over winter - why not summer?
I'd champion the idea of island beds in your lawn if you've got the room to make that work. So effectively the lawn becomes the path between the beds. But the last time I suggested that here it didn't seem to go down too well.
I remember your pictures of your lovely islands... what a beautiful intriguing garden
Why do we need to replace them exactly? Last year they didn't do well but most people didn't water them at all, so I don't see how they are negative. Replacing them with flower beds etc, is it really environmentally friendly?
Grass can be useful for lots of wildlife and it's only when people constantly fertiliser and water it that it might have negative impacts on the environment. Grass is also the only plant most non gardeners have. I'd rather that then the constant paved over gardens everywhere.
Grass is one of the most amazing plants, such diversity and tolerance. Lawns cool down hot gardens, make carpet to walk on, hard wearing play areas, insect havens, food for many animals, nesting material and is great to lie around on in warm weather. Plus you can use it as a whistle! (I still do that). You can trample it to mud, drown it, dry it out completely, it'll just keep bouncing back.
A green lawn (with or without moss!) provides a visually pleasing setting for plants in borders and provides shelter and food for wildlife - particularly greedy blackbirds! It also provides a cooler surface for sitting in summer - hard landscaping can get too hot!
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I play with plants and soil and sometimes it's successful
Asylum
I play with plants and soil and sometimes it's successful
Grass can be useful for lots of wildlife and it's only when people constantly fertiliser and water it that it might have negative impacts on the environment. Grass is also the only plant most non gardeners have. I'd rather that then the constant paved over gardens everywhere.
You can trample it to mud, drown it, dry it out completely, it'll just keep bouncing back.