How To Create An Attractive, Kid-Friendly Lawn

If you've just purchased your first single family residence and are looking forward to raising your children there, you're probably envisioning relaxing on the patio with your spouse as you watch your children playing on the lawn. However, when lawn grass is used as a primary play surface, pesticide and herbicide use needs to be kept to a minimum -- otherwise, tender skin may become irritated by the exposure to chemical used in these products. Fortunately, strategies exist designed to help homeowners cut down or completely eliminate the use of chemical pesticides and herbicides on your lawn. Following are three of them. 

Plant the Right Type of Grass

Choosing a grass seed blend that includes a predominant amount of tough turf grass helps ensure that you've got a lawn that provides a proper play surface for active children. Lawns are generally made up of several different types of grasses, including both perennial and annual varieties. Examples of tough turfgrass include Kentucky bluegrass, red fescue, and both perennial and annual ryegrass.

Although most tough turfgrasses thrive in sunny conditions, they may languish if they're planted in the shade. Many homeowners get around this by using other landscaping options in shady spots of their yard, such as hosta gardens or mass plantings of ajuga as ground cover. However, if you want to have grass under your shade trees, look for a lawn blend that contains zoysiagrass -- this is the only one of the tough turfgrasses that can handle shady conditons. 

Water, Weed, and Aerate

The easiest way to keep your lawn healthy and attractive isn't to saturate it with chemicals designed to kill pests and weeds -- it's to implement a lawn care program of best practices designed to decrease its vulnerability to weed and pest infestations. For instance, when a lawn isn't watered properly, it may develop dead patches as a result, and this leaves an opening for weeds to gain a foothold -- and when weeds show up, insect pests aren't far behind.  Most insects that are considered lawn pests are actually there for the weeds, by the way. If you don't have your lawn aerated on a regular basis, the soil may become so impacted that it gets in the way of root growth and development, causing your lawn to languish and even die -- leaving the door wide open for the invasion of weeds.  When weeds sneak into your lawn, pulling them out by the roots before they go to seed keeps their populations down. 

Please feel free to contact your local landscaping service, such as Nature's Design Landscaping , for more information on how to create an attractive, child-friendly lawn. 


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