Willy at Barton Springs Nursery mentioned the book “The Know Maintenance Perennial Garden” by Roy Diblik in a recent episode of my podcast, The Horticulturati. I read the book and the concept captured my imagination: create a landscape entirely with perennials that could be mowed. Roy Diblik developed this concept in Chicago and Milwaukee. Could I adapt it to Austin?
My backyard is where all the higher maintenance plants are like roses, herbs and veggies. The front yard had been a lovely, low maintenance butterfly garden for years but in the last few years the plants in front have been subjected to calamity. Some fungus, I think maybe ganoderma but not sure, swept through and killed a few rosemarys, a palo verde tree, two texas sages and amistad salvias. Winter storm Uri in Feb 2021 took half of the canopy of an medium size American Elm, and a wind storm the following May took the other half. My woold butterfly bushes never really recovered after Uri. At some point I had tossed a handful of common sunflower seeds out there and they basically took over, to my simultaneous delight and dismay. Other trees, like my Texas Mt Laurel and my Giant Fuyu Persimmon have grown and shaded areas that were sunny. Texas Redbud was going through a process called “retrenchment” which old trees do when they reach the limit of how tall they can grow. They start to have trouble drawing water up to their tallest branches and they start making themselves shorter. The tallest branches will die and the tree will grow new sprouts from the roots or lower trunk. So I cut the biggest trunk off the redbud and let the new sprouts grow up to replace it. So all that’s to say there’s been some major changes and the front yard is ready for an overhaul.
With all the high maintenance plants in the back I wanted the front to be very easy. My husband and I have successfully mowed some perennials in the past, like four o clocks, turks caps and datura. So Diblik’s concept appealed to me. It would be like a wildflower meadow but more “put together”, more intentional and maybe more interesting in some ways
I started working on the project this past fall. I started transplanting and removing plants that I suspect would not respond well to mowing like my ‘Red Lion’ hippeastrums and salvia greggiis. I also removed some agaves and other succulents.
One twist that the Austin, Texas climate tosses into this mix is our warm winters allow for certain perennials to have the opposite life cycle of typical perennials: the tops die down in the summer, and then grow back in the fall and winter. The plants then bloom in spring and go dormant after that in the summer. White yarrow, cedar sage, oxalis, violets and spiderwort are examples. So I decided to experiment with half of the front yard getting mowed in the summer and half the front yard getting mowed in the winter. The sunny half has the more traditional perennials and will get mowed in winter. The shadier half has the winter and spring blooming plants that will get mowed in summer. Here’s a plant list:
sunny side mowed in winter: Dallas Red Lantana, zexmenia, Henry Duleberg Sage, 4 o’clocks (they were there in the shade before the elm tree fell apart, gonna see how they do in full sun) walkers low catmint, greggs mistflower, Monarda fistulosa, purple heart and little bluestem.
shady side mowed in summer: white yarrow, oxalis, leersia monandra, webberville sedge, snowdrops, lyre leaf sage, dutch iris, texas bluegrass, mondo grass, cardoons. I had the cardoons in the back veggie garden and they take up tons of space and I don’t love eating them, but they look amazing so I am going to try to transplant them.
I bought most of these plants in early January as 4” starts from a wholesale grower. They have been wonderful but hard to keep alive in the pots during cold weather and they dry out fast. I got a great deal price wise but protecting them and watering them has been stressful.
I did not take Roy Diblik’s very wise advice of starting with a 10x14 area and plotting it out on paper as a grid. Instead, I mulled it over while falling asleep at night and then in the morning made bizarre notes to self about my ideas for the plant placement. And of course I took on the entire front yard at once which is like 50xhumongous and sloped. I also didn’t prep the area the way Roy advised, partly because I was not starting with a lawn which is kind of assumed in his boon. To my customers: do as I say not as I do, I guess. Optimally I would have sheet mulched with cardboard first and then planted one gallon plants. That would have made things way easier.
Instead I have been clearing existing plants while going along planting. The existing plants were mostly a wild invasive grass called rescue brome, cleavers and hedge parsley. This method was working pretty good until spring started and now the common sunflowers and other warm season plants are sprouting and starting to get taller than my little 4” transplants. I did take Diblik’s advice and got a Dutch Push Hoe which is wonderful so I will be using that on the unwanted volunteers.
I have been using the rescue brome, hedge parsley and cleavers that I pulled up as mulch around the new plants. That worked well until they started going to seed, so now I am pulling them and putting them in the city compost pickup bin so I won’t be spreading their seeds around. Now I gotta figure out what mulch to use because these tiny 4” plants have bare soil around them and it’s getting hot. I’m leaning towards either wood chips, tree leaves or pecan shell mulch.
Anyway in retrospect I wish I had sheet mulched to start with, and I wish I had waited ‘till spring and bought bigger 1 gallon plants. But I think even if I had done those things I probably would wish I had done something else differently too. The most important thing is I have been enjoying myself and the anticipation of how it will look in May when the warm season plants start blooming is thrilling. Ok more to come soon!
The photo here is from early March 4 2022 and is basically a ‘before’ photo though I had planted a few plants at that point already.
