Removal of the front Lawn: Part 1

Howdy all! 

We live in California, and if you haven't been watching the news, we are in a record drought. Our governor has requested that people reduce their water usage by 30 % so we decided to get rid of our water sucking lawn! As well, our local government has offered reimbursements to cover the cost, so bye bye lawn!

We first need to kill our old grass. We covered all of it with sheets of cardboard, which will prevent light from reaching the grass, and will prevent the grass from reaching the surface. Cardboard is great because it is cheap (basically free), and will break down eventually once the grass is dead. Here you can see Nicky spreading out sheets on cardboard. We had to rip off all of the tape, plastics, etc since they won't break down:

On top of the cardboard, we placed bag after bag of mulch. This has weight, which helps keep the cardboard weighted down onto the surface. As well, it will eventually break down.

We spread the mulch over over the cardboard. We did this (stupidly) on a windy day, so we had to put down the mulch as we went or the cardboard blew away:

The cardboard is overlapped, such that no grass can make it the surface. The few plants that we had were placed such that they could still peirce through the cardboard. Where needed, we cut holes out of the cardboard, such as around our sprinklers

Mulch mulch everywhere!

More cardboard to spread:

The finished product. After you spread the mulch onto the grass, you has to hose it down with water, allowing the mulch to suck up the water.

After two weeks or so, we found that our cardboard placement wasn't great everywhere. Some of the grass managed to make it through little holes in the cardboard. Not a problem! We brushed the mulch away, put down a fresh sheet of cardboard where the grass snuck through, and covered it with more mulch.

Step two:
After the grass is killed, and the cardboard begins to break down, we will plant our new native/ low water front "lawn".

M & N