Planting a Blue Grama Front Lawn

By Linda Dietrick, Master Gardener

In July 2023, MMGA Garden Tour visitors to the Fort Garry neighbourhood of Winnipeg were treated to a delightful sight: a front lawn of blue grama, a graceful, shorter native grass with characteristic brush-shaped seedheads. Created by homeowner Chelsea Synychych, the lawn is still thriving. Since many readers might want to know what was involved in creating it, I asked Chelsea if she could provide some details. Here are her answers to my questions.

Linda Dietrick: I understand that this is your fifth year with your native blue grama grass front lawn, and that you originally planted it with seeds from Skinner Native Seeds near Roblin, Manitoba. Is that correct?

Chelsea Synychych: That is correct! We started converting our front yard to native plantings in 2015, but it wasn’t until 2020 that we decided to transform the “lawn” as well. We planted a mix of blue grama (Bouteloua gracilis), a warm-season grass, and June grass (Koeleria macrantha), a cool-season grass, in an effort to get active growth throughout the season. The June grass never took, so the lawn is entirely blue grama.

Photo: Chelsea Synychych | Synychych Yard – 20200811

Linda: How did you get interested in this project, and how did you decide to use blue grama for the main part of the front yard?

Chelsea: I’m very inspired by my family’s farm in the Shell River Valley, which is mostly aspen forest, mixed grass hillsides, and river valley. It’s my favourite place and is the reason for my interest in native plants of Manitoba. During my studies in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Manitoba, I started to apply that interest through design. Two professors, Brenda Brown and Ted McLachlan, were particularly influential in expressing the importance of native plants in landscape architecture. Since then, I’ve made an effort to include native plants in all of my work, including our own yard and lawn.

While I have a passion for native plants, I’m not an expert, and so I reached out to John Morgan of Prairie Habitats (Argyle, MB), who very kindly offered recommendations for native plants that could do well as a lawn. He suggested seven different species to consider, including blue grama and June grass, and recommended using a diversity.

To source the plants, we first reached out to Prairie Originals (Selkirk, MB), as they are our go-to for all the other perennials we have in our yard. Given we were needing larger quantities of seed, they suggested Skinner Native Seeds. We ultimately chose blue grama and June grass for three reasons: the seed from those species was readily available from Skinner Native Seeds; the grass could be mown short or left tall; and we found the seedheads of both species to be visually stunning.

Linda: How did you go about converting your conventional turfgrass front lawn into this blue grama meadow?

Chelsea: We were determined to do the whole project by hand without the use of chemicals. It was a family effort, with all the work completed by my husband, daughters, parents, and myself. These were the steps:

1. We removed the sod. We rented a manual push sod cutter that looked very archaic and was physically difficult, but it did the job – it’s slightly easier if you remove the sod when wet after a rain.

2. We removed existing soil to eight inches below grade.

3. We covered the area in plain cardboard, which we found in the form of used pieces at a low cost.

4. We covered the area with new four-way mix soil and rolled it to one inch above grade, to allow for one inch of settlement over time.

5. We fenced the area to prevent trampling during the first month of growth as there are many rabbits and deer.

6. We seeded by loosening the top half inch of soil, mixed seed with sand for weight, hand spread the seed, then raked it lightly into the soil. My suggestion to those who plant from seed and are unfamiliar with what seedlings look like (as I was) is to plant a test pot of seed at the same time you seed your yard, so that you can compare the growth in the pot to the growth in your yard. This way you have a visual reference for which plants you actually planted and which ones you should weed out.

Photo: Chelsea Synychych | Synychych Yard – 20200529

We watered daily, morning and night, for the first few weeks, then every week or so following that for the first summer. Following the first year, we didn’t water at all, even during the drought of 2021.

We had originally planned to cover the yard for a season with a tarp to kill weeds/grass and then plant in the existing soil the following year, which would have involved less labour, less cost, and less use of resources. But we have young kids who wanted to use the yard as soon as possible, and so we changed our methods to speed up the timeline for them.

We didn’t want to waste materials, and so we donated all the sod and soil to others in the city. This made the work a little more complex with coordinating pickups, as it was 450 sq ft of sod and 12 yards of soil, but it was an important part of the project not to waste the valuable resources we were removing from our yard.

We seeded 450 sq ft using 1to 1.5 lbs of seed. This was in early June. By the end of July that first year, the lawn was fully established.

Linda: What has been your maintenance routine with the blue grama meadow?

Chelsea: Maintenance the first growing season was the most involved. There were many other plants growing within the blue grama, some likely from the soil mix and some likely blown in from surrounding areas. All the advice I read said to wait for grass to be well established before weeding to avoid damaging young delicate stems, but I didn’t want the grass to get outcompeted by other broadleaf plants, and so I very carefully tiptoed through the grass to pull weeds during the second week of growth, doing Mission Impossible-style moves to make the least impact on the lawn as possible. For the first six weeks, I weeded every two weeks for two hours each. After that, weeding was minimal. Each year since, I have only needed to spend an hour total weeding the lawn portion of our front yard.

Typically, we mow the grass to a height of six inches once a year around the beginning of August. We do this to encourage root growth. It’s also fun to play with mowing patterns – we’ve let our girls mow a maze; we’ve mown just the edges and left the middle tall; it’s very experimental. We do a careful check for any animals that may be in the grass before we mow, as we’ve had rabbits nest with babies and often a frog or two. If we find these, we hold off mowing until the animals have moved on. Cutting in early August allows enough time for the grass to get seedheads again before the winter, although it doesn’t grow as tall after being mown, as the blades tend to stay short with the seed stalk shooting up. We use a whipper snipper, as it allows us to cut the grass taller than a regular mower. The lawn typically looks brown after mowing but greens up quickly after a rain.

Linda: Did you have any problems that you had to overcome?

Chelsea: Given that the cool-season June grass didn’t take, other cool-season grasses have had a chance to move into our yard. Last year (the fourth growing season) was the first time that other grasses started to take root, which is most obvious in the spring when we see patches of green amongst the brown. As we are trying to avoid chemical treatment, our current method is to pull the seedheads from the grasses we want to remove to try and keep them at bay. I think next year, in the sixth growing season, we will either need to dig up patches and re-plant, or perhaps try a prescribed burn. If we do the latter, we will hire an expert, as it’s not something I have any working knowledge in.

Early in the season the grass is very soft and lush, but it becomes harder on the feet as the stalks get thicker throughout the season, especially after it’s cut. I wonder if mowing more frequently earlier in the season would keep the softness – something we may try in future years.

Also, having only the warm season blue grama means our yard doesn’t green up for about a month after the neighbouring yards do, but visually this doesn’t bother us.

Linda: Tell me about the other native plants you have planted in your yard.

Chelsea: The native plant species we have in our front yard include nannyberry, shrub-form birch, prairie crocus, milkweed, black-eyed Susan, purple coneflower, wild flax, wild bergamot, purple prairie clover, wild strawberry, pink onion, prairie sage, little bluestem, and big bluestem. In our backyard, we have Canada anemone, false sunflower, giant wild rye, fragrant false indigo, harebell, raspberry, bur oak, and Manitoba maple. I was inspired by the amazing gardens in the MMGA Garden Tour last summer that had a great diversity of plants, and so we purchased several more species this year from Prairie Originals and have added them.

Photo:  Linda Dietrick | Synychych Yard – The blue grama front lawn July 18, 2023 (Master Gardener garden tour).

Linda: What do you like about having an unconventional front lawn like this?

Chelsea: It brings us joy. Visually, it makes us happy to have a yard that is reminiscent of our family’s farm. Ecologically, it provides habitat for many species, manages stormwater runoff, and successfully grows in both very wet years and drought years with no need for additional water. From a family perspective, it’s nice to have a yard that we planted together, continue to maintain together, and get opportunities to learn together about the plants and the insects and animals that interact with the plants. And from a community perspective, it’s exciting to share an example of alternative ways to consider a front lawn which acts as a conversation starter to discuss the benefits of native plants in the urban landscape.

We are more than happy to share what we’ve learned with anyone who is interested. Feel free to reach out to me by email at bluegramalawn@gmail.com.

Linda: Is there anything else you think readers would want to know?

Chelsea: It’s a labour of love, as is all gardening. I think for this type of yard to be adapted more widely, it would require different methods of ground preparation and initial maintenance/weeding than we used, as our way was quite labour-intensive.

It would also be beneficial to have a greater diversity of species in the lawn than we used. Skinner Native Seeds is preparing a new native grass lawn alternative that they are hoping to release in the near future that will consist of three locally sourced grasses: blue grama (Bouteloua gracilis), poverty oat grass (Danthonia spicata), and Rocky Mountain fescue (Festuca saximontana). All three are fine-leaved, relatively low-growing, and able to provide a nice, easy-care and attractive alternative to typical lawn grasses. They are also working on a second blend of about 10 low-growing locally sourced wildflowers to add to a native grass lawn alternative.

Photo: Linda Dietrick |  Synychych Yard – The blue grama front lawn July 18, 2023 (Master Gardener garden tour).