If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail

Why are landscape contractors so attached to work they can do with machines? A recent conversation with a fellow gardener reminded me of this frustration. Her lawn service uses a weed wacker—a string trimmer—to cut back weeds in her yard instead of uprooting them. 

A string trimmer shortens weeds but doesn't remove them

As I pictured it, they’re leaving the weed plants a couple of inches tall. From the weeds’ point of view, this is helpful pruning. They marshal their underground resources and send up more growth. She finds the weeds are spreading. The crew leaves her property looking neat, but they’re not serving her gardening purposes.

    I have the same experience, and it’s getting more acute as I shift toward my version of sustainable gardening. I employ a landscape contracting company that I’ve known for years. I know that the leadership of the company includes several people with strong horticultural knowledge. The actual mowing, though, is done by a team of two or three young men with many stops on their schedule for the day and little time for tailoring their approach to suit my wishes.

Can I buy lawn care that's consistent with my sustainable approach?

    Last time they visited, I happened to be out in the garden. The team leader stood next to my new perennial bed, painstakingly mulched with shredded leaves, and asked whether I wanted them to use the leaf blower. He remembered that I’d said no to leaf blowers in the past, for which I’m grateful. But I had a strong feeling that if I hadn’t been at home, my leaf mulch would have been blown off the bed in a few seconds, and I’d have been stuck buying bark mulch from the garden center.

I put that leaf mulch down on purpose

    That would have wiped out all my efforts to mulch with materials I find near home, minimize carbon cost, and maintain habitat for native insects.

    I’ve talked with the supervisor of the team at least annually about how I want to maintain the garden. I’ve put up signs asking the men not to remove fallen leaves from the property. Things have improved, but there are regular relapses. My approach just doesn’t seem to compute for them.

    Another sore spot is grass clippings. It took effort to get across the message that I don’t want them removed from my yard. That’s organic material that should stay here and build soil. I ask to let the clippings lie on the lawn. 

Instead of moving clippings to the compost bin, you can let them compost in place on the lawn-photo anneheathen

Yet each spring I’ve had to call and beg for this request to be honored. It’s not the way the team is used to doing things, and it probably looks messy to them.

    It may be more efficient for landscape contractors to do the same work in every yard and to work with power tools—gas powered mowers, leaf blowers and string trimmers--despite the dust and exhaust the operators inhale and the hearing loss they incur from the noise. But we customers are paying for this one-size-fits-all service. It’s time for us to vote with our pocketbooks and seek out contractors who are equipped to accommodate a more plant-friendly and environmentally conscious approach.

Pushing up through the leaf mulch