8 Steps to Revitalizing Your Yard

By Jonathan Berohn

When spring begins to turn into summer, I used to begin my annual “how come the neighbor’s yard is so much more attractive than mine” ritual.  I finally got tired of looking at scrawny bushes and bare spots that the sprinklers miss and decided to take action.  I know—believe me, I hate lawn work every bit as much as the next guy, even the next five guys—but turning your yard into something you can be proud of was surprisingly simple.

Step 1: Aeration

The most obvious place to begin improving your yard is with the grass.  The best first step you can take toward improving the grass is aeration.  Aeration is simply a fancy word for poking a lot of holes in your lawn.  The principle behind this is simple enough: the holes allow more moisture to seep down into your lawn’s roots rather than run off.  This makes for stronger, healthier, and greener grass.  Aerating is especially important in drier climates (if you live in a wet and humid area, you don’t really need to aerate).

There are two main ways to go about aerating your lawn.  Aeration machines are pretty expensive beasts, so you won’t want to buy one just to use once a year.  Instead, the simplest way to go is to hire someone to aerate your lawn for you.  Where I live, outside of Denver, several companies offer to aerate your lawn for $25.  For my money that’s a pretty good deal.  If you are more industrious, you can rent an aeration machine from a local construction rental shop, but unless you go in with a few friends, it will end up costing you more than hiring someone.  Not to digress too much, but I have to point out that the confluence of lazy and cheaper don’t come around all that often—take advantage of it.

Step 2: Fertilizer

Fertilization is another easy way to help your lawn.  You can, of course, hire some lawn service to come by and fertilize your lawn weekly, but that’s pretty much overkill.  For most lawns one pass of soil conditioner and another of fertilizer will get you well on your way.  Soil conditioner essentially helps break up the soil so—again—more moisture will make its way to the lawn’s roots.  As for fertilizer, find one that addresses your particular needs.  You can buy anything from plain grass fertilizer to fertilizers with added bug killer or weed killer.  Your best bet is to talk to someone at your local garden supply or hardware store to get the one that is right for you.  To apply your soil conditioner and fertilizer, this time you’ll want to spring for the $20 or so a fertilizer spreader costs.  One note—make sure you read your fertilizer bag carefully and set your spreader to the appropriate opening.  Otherwise you can burn out your lawn by over fertilization.

Step 3: Removing Grass

While you are going to all the trouble to improve and revitalize your lawn, it is important to also realize that there are some lawn trouble spots you should convert into flower beds, mulch beds, or lawn ornament settings.  The most obvious of these are spots that your sprinklers miss.  Now, you could always get somebody out to add a sprinkler head or two to your system (or add another round to your manual sprinkler routine), but it’s much simpler—and often much more aesthetically pleasing—to simply remove grass from these areas.  This is especially true for corner or edge locations.  These spots make great locations for flowerbeds and other grass alternatives.

Obviously, the sprinkler considerations only apply in places where you have to water your lawn.  Even if you lawn gets plenty of natural moisture, there are still areas of your yard that will just work better without grass.  Specifically, areas around trees and bushes are great places to create mulch beds to replace the grass.  Not only will this add a touch of contrast to your landscaping, but it will also make cutting your grass much easier.

To properly remove grass from an area, you should start by either killing the grass you don’t want chemically or digging it out.  One important caveat here: before you go digging up grass—or digging anywhere in your yard for that matter—contact your local utility company and have them come out and mark the utility lines.  One phone call can literally save your life in this instance.  There are fewer ways to ruin your day faster than digging into a gas main or a power cable.

If you’re going to kill the grass chemically, simply spray on an herbicide and wait for it to do its thing.  After a few days the grass will die and you can pull it out.  You should only use this sort of approach if you don’t plan to plan anything (like flowers or shrubs) after you get rid of the grass.  If you do plan to replant, your best bet is the old shovel (yes—here’s where easy is a little harder to follow, but shoveling is good for the soul…really).  No matter which process you opt for, it is straightforward if not exactly easy.  Once you’ve removed the grass, cover the bare ground with weed stop fabric.  This will, surprisingly enough, deter—but not completely prevent—weeds from popping up in your new de-grassed area.

Step 4: Edging

When my wife and I were recreating our own yard, we learned the hard way that there is a logical order to these steps.  As much as you’ll probably want to rush ahead and start planting and mulching as soon as you get rid of the grass—stop.  It is much, much, much easier to finish up the detail work around your new non-grass areas now rather than try to go back after you’ve planted and/or mulched.  Trust me.

As for edging, the first obvious question is why.  The simple answer is that it looks nice.  The other part of that answer is that if you want to keep dirt and mulch off of your grass, you’ll want to add a border (see step 5), and to add a border you essentially have to edge.  You can either buy a fancy little rolling edger or again resort to the trusty old shovel.  Then you just go along all the grass/no grass borders and make sure the dividing line is straight and fairly crisp.  You can also edge along things like driveways and sidewalks, but this is purely aesthetic—your call here.

Step 5: Borders

Once you’ve gone to all the trouble to make nice neat edges, you want them to stay that way.  You also want them to act as barriers to prevent any migration of whatever you’ve got in place of grass onto your lawn.  Here’s where landscape borders come in.  Landscape borders come in two basic varieties—plastic and metal.  If you opt for the plastic, spring for the heavy-duty “contractor” style.  The cost difference is negligible, and the performance difference is well worth the upgrade.  Plastic borders are cheaper than metal borders, they bend and cut easily, and they won’t rust.  The drawback is you have to dig a trench to put them in.  Metal borders on the other hand, are easy to hammer in, but they are very hard to cut to size—and they will eventually rust.  You also need to secure them with metal pins, but that’s not much of a task or expense.  In the end I opted for the plastic.  If you go with the plastic, MAKE SURE you put them in before you plant or mulch.  It is no fun removing your mulch or plants to dig a trench.

Step 6: Plants

When deciding on new plants, unless you know much more than I do, Wal Mart or the local supermarket are not your best bet. Even a hardware store is not the ideal place to go for planting advice.  If you’re really serious about your project, find yourself a local greenhouse and ask for help.  They’ll be able to tell you what kinds of plants do best where.  In some climates this isn’t a huge issue, but if you live in a dry or sunny climate, you don’t want plants that excel in moist shade (and vice versa).

Especially if you live out west, you might also want to look into xeriscaping.  Xeriscaping essentially means creating a yard that uses minimal water.  Note that this does not mean turn your yard into a desert.  There are plenty of attractive low water plants and grasses to choose from.  For xeriscape advice, though, you definitely want to seek out experts at a greenhouse.  One other thing—some homeowners associations frown on the whole xeriscape thing, so make sure you check into that before ripping out your grass.

Step 7: Mulch

Mulch is a great way to cover areas where you don’t want (or don’t have grass).  You can mulch around plants or you can simply use mulch to fill in an area.  You can also use rocks or gravel, but mulch has the added benefit of holding in moisture better, which makes it a better choice for surrounding plants.  When choosing a mulch, stay away from the ultra-fine slivers.  Really fine mulch doubles as an excellent breeding ground for weeds.  The larger pieces don’t blow around/away as easily either, so you get a double bonus there.

Step 8: Watering

Again, some of you may not have to worry about this, but for those of you that do have to water your lawns, less is more.  Less here refers to frequency.  Your best watering strategy is to water every other day for about 20 minutes per station to really soak the grass’s roots.  This creates much heartier and healthier grass—while giving you the same lovely green lawn as your neighbor who waters twice daily.  It will also save you quite a bit on the old water bill.