Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, May 7, 1995                   TAG: 9505100031
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: D-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THE ECO-LAWN

And on Sunday, it's just you and your mower, right? Keeping your family safe from encroaching nature, cutting back the flora that, left untended, would creep ever taller until, at last, it overtook any pretense that life has been tamed and civilized, and that you are at least upwardly mobile, even if you haven't quite yet arrived.

Well, there's a researcher at the University of Minnesota who says you don't know what you're doing.

Not you, personally, perhaps. But, based on his research, a lot of people reading this don't even, say, get their soil tested so they know how much nitrogen and potassium and phosphorus and stuff like that should be in the fertilizer they spread. If they use fertilizer at all. And when spring arrives, they drag out the herbicide, whether the lawn needs it or not. Never mind that a healthy lawn supposedly keeps out weeds on its own.

Fortunately, there is help for the lawn-obsessed who don't know if they're over-spraying or under-fertilizing, or vice versa, but who toil on, worrying vaguely the whole time that they might be doing damage to the environment. For these good souls, there is emerging what is known as the "eco-lawn."

Eco-lawns are only, roughly, 80 percent grass (by design, not accident, and this makes all the difference in the world to the status-conscious homeowner) and boast a mix of flowering, broad-leafed plants, such as white yarrow, strawberry clover and English daisy. Such plants, the turf expert says, naturally fertilize the soil, and they cut the need for water, pesticides and mowing.

One Oregon State University researcher planted such a mixture with rye grass, and his lawn stays green through the hot, dry summer even though he waters it only four times a year. The best news, though, is that this green lawn needs mowing once every three weeks instead of once a week. Every three weeks. Imagine.

As the old margarine ad used to warn, it's not nice to fool Mother Nature. But the old gal knows how to return a favor, too.