A private house is not only a place for year-round living, but also an opportunity to decorate the surrounding area taking into account your own taste and preferences. Landscape design of a personal plot provides endless possibilities for creating unique elements that create a cozy atmosphere around the home. Of course, for decoration you can use flower beds and flower beds, garden paths and artificial ponds, various buildings (sauna, veranda or terrace). However, many are tired of such decisions and want a more relaxed design. A lawn is a grassy area that can also be interesting and attractive. Using different types of lawn, you can create unusual and original compositions that captivate with their simplicity and beauty.
The lawn easily fits into any landscape design, regardless of the design style of the site and private house. It not only emphasizes the sophistication of the garden area, but also hides the defects of the site and serves as the basis (background) for various design ideas and compositions (pond and waterfall, sculptures and flower beds). What are the positive aspects of a lawn? What types of grass surfaces are there? The answers to these questions and photographs of the best solutions are in our material.
Lawn at the dacha: the feasibility of creating grass cover
As a result of the seeds of perennial cereal plants simultaneously planted in fertilized soil, a dense grass covering is formed - a lawn. Its arrangement at the dacha is the right solution to many problems:
- The soft lawn on the site is an ideal place for children to play, play sports, and organize picnics in the fresh air.
The lawn at the dacha is an ideal place for a picnic
- To combat weeds that provoke an allergic reaction in the body, it is advisable to plant the entire area with plant species that are safe for health - meadow bluegrass or clover. Before choosing a lawn base, it is recommended to consult an allergist.
- To level out the feeling of discomfort during the sweltering heat, it is wise to make a grass covering around the entire perimeter of the dacha. It creates a thermoregulatory effect when there is a sharp temperature difference between the soil surface and the air space.
When the temperature changes, the lawn creates a thermoregulatory effect
- Lawn grass is an excellent air purifier. It performs effective filtration: absorbs automobile exhaust gases, dust particles, various combustion products, and prevents the penetration of pathogenic microorganisms from the soil into the airspace. Agronomists recommend using phytoncidal plants in abundance for sowing. They ionize the air and neutralize all kinds of toxic substances.
- To improve the structure of the soil, it is important to use a lawn. A massive grass floor retains moisture in the soil.
The lawn will improve the soil structure
- To reduce the power of earth vibration, it is wise to surround the house and various buildings with neatly trimmed cereal plants. Owners of households located near highways should pay close attention to this feature.
Thick grass cover is the best source of oxygen, contributing to the excellent well-being of others.
How to choose lawn grass?
Landscaping should begin at the final stage of territory development - upon completion of all construction work, wiring of communications, laying garden paths and installing basic decorative elements.
Think over the site plan in advance and determine the places where the emerald carpet will be located. The most suitable lawn options for a private home are meadow or park. They are resistant to trampling and other mechanical influences, have a decent appearance and do not require painstaking care.
In such clearings you can plant flower beds, place sun loungers, and it’s not even scary to play ball or badminton. To create them, perennial cereal plants are usually used:
- meadow bluegrass,
- ryegrass,
- bentgrass,
- fescue,
- comb
It is easier to achieve a uniform cover if you use one type of seed rather than a grass mixture. At the same time, there is a higher probability of avoiding fragments of different shades and textures.
In the case of a meadow lawn, one type of grass is taken as the basis, which should make up at least 80% of the seed, and then the rest are added to it in small quantities.
If you want the turf to be hardy, durable and to withstand various natural phenomena, the onslaught of weeds, pest attacks and diseases, in this case you need to combine several types of grasses.
When choosing seeds, pay attention to the following aspects:
- Climate . Consider the ability of plants to tolerate certain weather conditions characteristic of your region. For example, harsh winters are not terrible for meadow grass, various types of fescue, and bentgrass. The same cannot be said about ryegrass, which, in addition, does not tolerate drought.
- The degree of shading of the area . For sunny areas, meadow bluegrass, thin bentgrass, clover and perennial ryegrass are suitable. In dimly lit places it is better to plant fescue.
- Soil moisture level . Poa, clover, red fescue and thin bentgrass are unpretentious in this regard. Moisture-loving plants include sheep fescue and bentgrass. While perennial ryegrass does not survive on damp soils.
- Manufacturer. Give preference only to trusted, well-established companies. These include Danish and Dutch brands, but domestic brands, unfortunately, rarely delight with their quality.
- Price. A good product, therefore, is not cheap. Therefore, trying to save money on grass seeds can subsequently lead to even more significant expenses.
- Best before date. Often this nuance is simply forgotten, but if the material turns out to be expired, all further actions to create a lawn will be meaningless.
It is advisable to buy lawn grass in specialized stores with a good reputation and a high rating.
Types of lawn at the dacha
Low-growing perennial plants are optimal for landscaping the garden area. The purpose of the grass turf influences the choice of lawn type:
- Landscape gardening is actively used to organize recreation areas on the ground. Plant varieties with soft stems and leaves will create a pleasant feeling while sitting, lying, or walking without shoes. The green base is characterized by its resistance to stress, the ability to quickly restore its original appearance, good growth in shaded areas and under intense sun exposure. It is planted around trees, bushes, benches, paths, artificially created ponds and other architectural structures.
Landscape lawn is suitable for recreation areas
- Sports is necessary for organizing a football field or playground for children. A characteristic feature is planting a certain area of soil with plants with increased rigidity of stems and a strong root system. Dense turf under heavy loads quickly recovers not only under the influence of athletes’ feet, but also when driving vehicles.
- The ground floor is an indispensable element of the design of a dacha in the English style. It is used to decorate the site. To equip it, you need seeds of monochromatic plants of a bright green tone, capable of growing slowly and forming a dense topsoil layer. You cannot walk on the ground lawn. Otherwise, bald spots and voids will first appear on it, and then it will quickly trample.
Ground lawn for a summer cottage in English style
- Moorish is a remarkable decoration of a summer cottage. It plays a purely decorative role. To form it, it is necessary to sow with flowering field plants. At the final stage of growth, a colorful lawn is formed on the soil, embodying the pristine beauty of nature.
The Moorish lawn plays an exclusively decorative role
A rolled lawn will delight you with its spectacular appearance just a couple of weeks after it is installed in the desired areas of the site. To successfully implement the idea of gardening a dacha, you need to study in detail the key points of organizing seed, roll or Moorish lawn turf.
Ground lawn in landscape design
The most sophisticated and attractive solution would be a ground lawn, because it is considered elite and is used directly in front of the entrance to a country house or cottage. You can supplement the grass cover by using flower beds and flower beds, shrubs and small trees, artificial reservoirs (fountains, ponds) and sculptures. Before forming a lawn, you need to prepare the soil by adding an additional layer of black soil.
If we talk about the composition of the lawn, it includes not only grasses, but also crops that require care. Typically, plants that are resistant to precipitation and drought are chosen for planting, as well as herbs that quickly recover after mowing. Working with such a lawn is difficult, but interesting, because it allows you to realize the most daring and original design ideas. Experts say that the parterre lawn will be an excellent addition to other elements of the garden plot (flower beds, fountains, etc.), but it is important that the grass area be no larger than the flower arrangements.
Features of choosing grass for a sowed lawn
Creating your own grass flooring on the ground provides the opportunity to choose plant varieties that are ideally suited to the type of soil in your dacha, climate and aesthetic taste. The primary task is to select a base that can perform a utilitarian and decorative function. Having decided on the purpose of the lawn, you should choose plant seeds in accordance with the desired effect:
- Lawn grasses that are excellent weed killers include bentgrass, red fescue and bluegrass. They perfectly displace harmful plants, withstand severe frosts and drought, and require moderate watering. When choosing a base, you should take into account their color. Bluegrass forms a soft carpet of rich green color on the soil. Red fescue easily colors the ground with a jade tone with rare splashes of dove and sky colors.
Soft, deep green bluegrass lawn
- To beautifully decorate the soil around landscape design elements, it is advisable to plant sheep fescue. It looks elegant due to its long, needle-like stems of dark green color. The bush structure forms a dense grass cover that resists trampling and sunburn.
Fescue lawn is resistant to trampling
- For a parterre lawn used as a natural decoration for a summer cottage, it is optimal to choose perennial ryegrass. This plant has an unusual malachite color with shiny, arrow-shaped leaves that shine in the light. Ryegrass seeds germinate instantly. Due to its intensive growth, loose bush grass requires frequent mowing in order to give the lawn turf an aesthetic appearance.
Perennial ryegrass for parterre lawn
The main criteria for choosing grass for forming a lawn are adaptability to climatic conditions and growth period. Bluegrass and ryegrass are annual plants. Therefore, with the arrival of spring, the lawn must be renewed annually. Red fescue, comb grass, and multicolored ryegrass can delight with uniform growth and density of grass cover for many years.
Park and meadow lawn
To create a park lawn, it is customary to use perennial cereal crops, for example, a mixture of bentgrass, timothy, fescue and comb grass. Meadow areas are usually used to design parks and other public areas, but they can also be used when creating landscape design for a personal garden. At the same time, experts recommend not to lay out this lawn in front of the entrance to the house, placing it closer to the fence or the back of the yard. Plants used to create a park lawn require sunlight to ensure their proper growth.
Advantages of rolled lawn
Incredible soil transformations in a summer cottage can be easily and incredibly quickly accomplished using a mobile grass flooring. Rolled lawn is a multi-layered canvas consisting of a soil substrate and densely sprouted grasses.
It consists of professionally selected different plant varieties that form a three-layer coating. At the lower level there is a densely intertwined root system with soil, at the middle level there is a mesh for the shape stability of the grass, at the upper level there are stems and leaves with a length of no more than 5-7 cm. A green carpet with a soft “living” covering can be spread anywhere in the dacha on a moistened soil.
Rolled lawn can be placed anywhere
The undoubted advantages of rolled lawn are its unique features:
- Minimum time required to create a grass floor on the ground. In a matter of hours, the earth will be covered with a colorful blanket of greenery.
- The rolled base can easily take any desired shape. When using a garden knife, it can be easily cut in accordance with the straight or curved configuration of landscape design details - gazebos, flower beds, paths.
Rolled lawn takes any desired shape
- When forming a grass base, universal plants are selected that easily adapt to any living conditions - windy, shaded, places in the sun, with an abundance of moisture and the influence of low air temperatures.
- If the rolled canvas is deformed, it is easy to correct the defect by cutting it out and filling it with fresh lawn turf.
- Weeds don't grow on it.
Rolled lawn is easy to install
Rolled lawn is so easy to install that any summer resident without gardening skills can refresh the area in the spring-summer season. In urban conditions, grass with a soft velvet surface will look the same for 5 years, and outside of it, away from dusty areas, for over 10 years.
Sports turf in landscape design
This lawn is a type of meadow lawn, but to create a green cover, grasses are used here, which are highly resistant to damage and mechanical stress. Typically, such lawns are formed by sowing or laying rolled cloth. This coating is ideal for creating a recreation area or arranging a children's playground. Before creating a covering, it is important to ensure the waterproofness of the grass cloth by providing a drainage layer.
Distinctive features of the Moorish lawn
If you want to admire the flowering meadow outside the window of your country house every day, it is rational to choose an unusual way to improve the land. The most natural landscape, illuminated with a riot of colors of flowering wild plants and herbs, is a unique feature of the picturesque-looking Moorish lawn.
It is amazingly suitable for decorating the surrounding area of the house, a garden with fruit trees. A beautiful “living” carpet with multi-colored colors perfectly neutralizes the effect of emptiness on large areas of land without buildings. It does not need to be framed by a fence.
Moorish lawn to decorate the surrounding area
Organizing a Moorish lawn requires a careful selection of cereal plants. An ideal soil cover will be made from 80% wildflowers and 20% grasses. As a flowering base, you can use the seeds of poppies, cornflowers, dandelions, forget-me-nots, and daisies. The more different types of colorful plants are present on the plot of land, the more impressive the colorfully decorated “Moorish” carpet looks. Meadow bluegrass and clover seeds are excellent for forming a grassy layer. Due to the variety of plants growing differently, this type of lawn grows in a chaotic direction and does not have clearly defined boundaries.
Green lawn of clover
Caring for a decorative lawn is labor-intensive due to regular weeding, fertilizing, and watering the soil. It can be built on any type of soil. Taking care of it is moderately difficult due to the lack of the need for frequent trimming. It is enough to cultivate the soil with a lawn mower after the seeds have germinated and the flowering period has ended. The height of the plants after mowing should be at least 10 cm. Due to the extremely rare cutting of the grass cover, it is impossible to give it a certain shape. This is the individuality of the Moorish lawn, recreating the natural appearance of an endlessly blooming field with the divine aroma of wildflowers.
Lawn on virgin soil
If you decide to sow the lawn “in virgin soil,” the labor intensity increases significantly. The simplest thing is to remove last year's dry weeds or mow the grass. Then you need to evaluate your options and make a decision: remove the turf or use herbicides. In any case, we need to somehow radically solve the issue of weed growth.
Removing turf is a physically extremely difficult process; in addition, you will need a place where to stack the removed layer of soil; later it can turn into humus and become wonderful fertile soil.
Using herbicides, it is much easier to achieve success, but even their use does not give immediate results. It is necessary to carry out two or three treatments, waiting the required time between them.
It is important to remember that the benefits of using herbicides must outweigh the harm from their use. If handled carelessly, not only the weeds will die, but also the flowers and berries growing nearby.
Subtleties of soil preparation when arranging a lawn
If there is not enough time to improve the dacha area, the option of creating a roll-type grass cover is relevant. If you want to save a lot and add a personal touch to the landscape design of your site, it is advisable to make a lawn at your dacha yourself.
The soil preparation technology is extremely simple and straightforward:
- Marking boundaries. It is necessary to clearly mark the place for sowing lawn grass when using rods or sticks covered with rope.
Marking boundaries for sowing a lawn at the dacha
- Soil cultivation. Before sowing, the soil must be cleared of stones, stumps, snags, all kinds of roots, and weeds. The easiest way to combat harmful grass is to treat the soil with herbicide mixtures.
- Soil fertilization. To do this, it is worth using a mixture of slaked lime and crushed chalk, vermicompost, and humus. In the spring, it is important to fertilize the soil with nitrogen fertilizing, which promotes the progressive growth and full development of plants. In autumn, the soil needs to be fertilized with mixtures containing phosphorus and potassium, which strengthen the root system for painless wintering.
Fertilizers will strengthen the lawn's root system
- Leveling the area. To compact the soil and create a perfectly flat surface, use a manual or mechanized roller with a weight of more than 100 kg. Any uneven ground needs to be corrected.
Compacting and leveling the soil
- Soil shrinkage. During the half-moon, the earth should become denser. Therefore, it needs to be moisturized regularly.
Only in fertile, loosened, intensively drained soil will plant seeds instantly germinate and bloom. After successful earthworks, you can plant lawns at your dacha with your own hands. Photo instructions from experienced gardeners will make it easy to cope with the task of preparing the soil for planting cereal plants.
Non-standard forms
- Smooth, winding lines will also look beautiful Such lawns are ideally combined with ribbon flower beds, island flower beds and landscape plantings.
Gray Rocker / Flickr.com
- An interesting and non-standard solution would be to change the level of the lawn in certain areas. This will look especially impressive The difference in height level can be 15-25 cm.
DrNickStafford / Personal archive
- The lawn can be raised or, conversely, “ submerged .” Such a lawn will require mandatory border design and a thoughtful approach to the lawn mower. Stone or brickwork will look beautiful and stylish in this role . Such an element of garden decoration will definitely not go unnoticed.
Choosing the optimal season for sowing
The ideal time to plant lawn grass is from early spring to late autumn. Each period of the year except winter has advantages and disadvantages:
- In the spring, under conditions of warm soil, moderate air humidity, and loyal sun exposure, cereal seeds actively germinate. Together with them, weeds sprout, slowing down development and displacing herbaceous plants.
- At the beginning of summer, there is absolutely no chance of frosts that have a detrimental effect on young, immature lawn grass. Heat has a negative effect on sprouts. Direct rays of the sun provoke lethargy and drying of seedlings. The ideal time for planting is the heavy rainy season with an average daily temperature of 20-25 °C.
- In autumn, it is recommended to carry out sowing work at the beginning of September or before the arrival of winter. If the lawn base is planted immediately after the end of the summer heat, it will germinate well before frost with abundant artificial and natural watering. If the seeds are sown in slightly frozen soil before snow falls, they will sprout only in early spring. Over the winter they will take root and begin to withstand the effects of frost and wind. With the arrival of warm weather, the soil will warm up, provoking abundant growth of cereal grasses.
It is recommended to sow from early spring to late autumn
How to visually smooth straight lines
- You can place some figurine or sculpture on such a lawn.
- It could also be a birdbath, a sundial, a fountain, decorative screens, or a flower girl in the shape of an old bicycle.
- You should not place such items in the center of a rectangular lawn. It is better to choose the edge closest to the flower bed, or a point at the rear border, to which the observer’s gaze will slide.
You can also change the impression of a rectangular lawn by placing it diagonally . Such a lawn will look much more interesting if it is positioned at an angle of 45º.
- There is no need to completely redo You simply remove in certain places and transfer it to a new, prepared place.
- The only point is that other structural elements of the site should be in harmony with the diagonal lines of the lawn. And such elements can be screens, screens or plants planted along the same diagonal.
How to plant a lawn at your dacha with your own hands: step-by-step sowing instructions
Having chosen the optimal time, you should begin sowing:
- For this process you need to choose calm weather.
- Pre-moisten the soil.
- To evenly distribute seeds throughout the area, it is recommended to use a seeder.
Seeder for uniform seed distribution
- When sowing by hand, you need to mix the seeds with sand. This will help scatter them evenly across the soil. They need to be distributed alternately in two opposite directions: along and across the site.
- At the end of sowing, the soil should be loosened with a rake and the position of the seeds should be fixed with a roller. To prevent the wind from blowing them out of the soil, you need to cover them with a layer of peat no more than 1 cm deep.
Low-growing grasses that do not require regular “haircuts” are perfect for inconvenient and hard-to-reach areas when mowing.
On curved terrain, it is wise to use twice as many seeds as on flat ground. During heavy rains on sloping areas, they are easily washed away by water flow. To plant a dense lawn, you need to disciplinedly adhere to the sowing norms indicated on the seed packages.
Low-growing grasses do not need regular trimming
To make maintenance easier, it is important to form grass turf with the help of perennial plants. For easy replanting of annual grasses, it is worth planting them along the edges of the lawn cover.
When preparing the soil yourself and sowing seeds, the time for the formation of a grass layer on the soil ranges from several months to one year.
Content
- Easier to fix than to replace
- Lawn of ground cover plants
- Defining the goal
- Choosing a form
- How to visually smooth straight lines
- Non-standard forms
- Round lawn
- Lawn Borders
The lawn most often occupies the main, central part of the site and must strictly correspond to the general appearance of the garden and the lifestyle of its owner. After all, it is the lawn that plays the role of the main background on which all other elements of the garden are placed.
pixnio.com / Personal archive
Rules for lawn care
In order for the grass cover to always be in a fragrant condition and delight the owners of the dachas with the richness and brightness of its greenery, you need to take care of it in a timely manner:
- Install automated watering systems with a fine water spray. Turn on underground sprinklers regularly in the morning and evening. When watering by hand, be sure to use a hose with a spray nozzle. Otherwise, strong water pressure will wash away the soil and deform the root system of plants.
Automated watering system
- Mowing should be carried out when plants are longer than 10 cm. The strength of the plant root system depends on the frequency of mowing the lawn. Use lawn mowers or trimmers to cut grass.
- Aerate the soil. As a result, the cereals will receive a flow of air, water and natural minerals that has a beneficial effect on their growth.
Lawn aeration
- Organize fertilizing of soil with a deficiency of fertile layer.
- Fight weeds.
Easier to fix than to replace
- If you are planning to change an existing lawn design or create a new one, try to keep what you have or simply modify it.
- Expanding, reducing or changing your lawn is much easier than creating it from scratch.
- The most labor-intensive part when changing the design of a lawn is digging and reseeding , which, by the way, can also be avoided if the lawn is not completely bad and repairs can give good results.
- If there is a need to change the shape of the lawn, then you can simply get by by cutting out the turf from unnecessary areas and moving them to the right places.
Yoshihide Nomura / Flickr.com
hippopx / Personal archive
How to decorate the landscape of a summer cottage with a lawn
Caring for a healthy and clean environment is the main trend of modern landscape design. The abundance of cereal plants in the summer cottage intensively produces crystal clear oxygen. In addition to its beneficial health function, the lawn looks aesthetically pleasing in any form.
The composition of the seed determines the design of the lawn surface. It can have a variable form:
- graceful smooth lines of soil with a perfectly even grass surface of emerald color in the traditional design are obtained when planting cereals of the same type;
- alternating straight stripes of light and dark green tones are created by alternately sowing grasses of the corresponding color;
- checkerboard lawn covering is made using different varieties of plants with radically different colors;
Checkerboard lawn covering
- curly ornaments and patterns in the form of zigzags, spirals, circles and other shapes can be cut out on the grass using a lawn mower;
- the effect of a multi-colored textile covering on the ground can be easily created by planting many-sided meadow flowers mixed with herbs of mustard, olive, and mint tones;
- a multi-level lawn looks original on multi-story architectural structures on a summer cottage, provided that each level of the building is decorated with grasses with a colorful color different from each other.
Multi-level lawn looks original
The appearance of the land cover represents the stylistic concept of the landscape design. If the dacha visually resembles a strictly designed garden in the English style, then it is optimal to opt for a ground lawn. If you want to decorate a suburban area in a rustic style, it is wise to create a rustic atmosphere by arranging a meadow or Moorish lawn with an abundance of wildflowers.
The lawn at the dacha gives the impression of impeccable order. A perfectly flat grassy ground cover will focus the attention of those around you on the careful care of the local area. The lush greenery of forbs creates a natural idyll. Properly planted and well-groomed lawn grass can turn a standard-looking piece of land into a heavenly place for a complete relaxation in the country, where the air is thoroughly saturated with the aroma of herbs and floral amber.
Let's go back to history...
Descriptions of the oldest lawns can be found in chronicles created over three thousand years ago. The first green carpets grew exclusively in the palaces of the emperors of Ancient China and Persia - ordinary people could not afford this option for transforming the area in front of the house. After some time, emerald lawns with a smooth surface began to decorate the courtyards and gardens belonging to the ancient Greeks and Romans. And only after the 14th century, the fashion for lawns spread to all European countries, and then to the rest of the world. It is curious that until the lawn mower was invented (mentions of this event date back to the 19th century), the intensity of grass growth on lawns was regulated by grazing sheep, which trampled down significant green cover. Around the end of the 19th century, the first lawns appeared in Russia.
Photo gallery - lawn at the dacha
Options for designing a lawn in front of the house
The space in front of the house requires special attention, since it is where the first impression of the site and housing is formed. That is why the question of how to make a lawn in front of the house is relevant for many homeowners. It is not recommended to divide your lawn into small areas as this can make it difficult to maintain. A single lawn will be an excellent backdrop for placing decorative elements on it.
A small ground lawn in front of the main entrance to the site
The lawn near the house can be supplemented with flower beds or small paths that are laid out from the gate to the entrance to the room. A few large objects will look better than many small ones, so you should not overdo it in using them. You can decorate the planting with vertical free-standing flower beds or vines framing the gazebos.
Children playing on a grass playground will bring less dirt home
What and how to fertilize
The green lawn is fertilized in spring, summer and autumn. This is done in different ways, but summer residents prefer spraying fertilizers.
In order for the lawn to emerge from winter as quickly as possible, it is recommended to fertilize it with nitrogen or phosphorus fertilizers. The grass is fed as soon as the snow melts. In this case, both liquid and solid fertilizers are applied.
In summer, your lawn needs more nutrients. Therefore, the ideal solution would be to use mineral fertilizers. It is recommended to apply them at the end of June - beginning of July.
In autumn, attention is paid to the application of nitrogen fertilizers, which will help the grass to survive the winter well. The lawn is fertilized two weeks before the first frost.
Reservoirs
An excellent decoration for the space around the lawn is an artificial or natural pond. It gives the area a natural look and fills it with living energy.
The stream will highlight the elegant style of the lawn. A small fountain flowing next to it will become a very impressive design element. A small pond will give a natural and aesthetic appearance.
Proper trimming
Mowing the lawn is a stressful condition for plants. Therefore, it is better to remove a third of the height at a time, or even more. There are a few more nuances that need to be taken into account:
- Only when the height has reached ten centimeters can the first bevel be made. The cut should not exceed one centimeter. Knives must be well sharpened;
- When several such haircuts have already been carried out, the legs gradually drop lower. The final height should reach five centimeters.
Creating tracks
Paths around flower beds and lawns can be paved with stone, paving slabs or paving stones. Depending on the exterior of the house, a suitable material is selected. Patterned paths made of pebbles look very impressive.