Quiet Landscape Maintenance

I live in a commercial area of the suburbs and I am surrounded by noise all day. There are factories, a supermarket nearby constantly getting deliveries from huge trucks, there is a bank, a construction company right next door, and a ton of car traffic passing my home each day. On any given day, there is a landscaping company loudly manicuring a nearby lawn sometimes as early as 8am! The noise level is constant and a little crazy, so when I’m outside gardening the last thing I want to do is add to the cacophony.

There was a time, many years ago, when I did what everybody did: I hauled out the weed whacker each week and buzzed loudly for half an hour. I remember one time a neighbor sitting on her stoop screaming in to her phone because I was across the street making a ton of noise cutting the grass on the curb while she was trying to talk on the phone. I didn’t care, I had a job to do. Selfish.

Years later, I got into gardening and learned about all the wildlife visiting my yard, and I realized that my landscape management methods were completely destructive. I read about birds being stressed by noise, sometimes to the point of abandoning their nests and I also read about the lack of habitat and food for beneficial insects due to people keeping grass lawns and cutting everything down within an inch of its life. I stopped using the weed whacker and bought a push reel mower. I also started hand weeding selectively and leaving certain plants instead of cutting everything. This method obviously takes much longer and it’s much more labor intensive, but I can’t explain the joy I feel when I’m cutting the grass and a praying mantis calmly crosses the sidewalk or the birds perch in the garden watching me work. When it’s quiet and I’m focused on the plants, it’s almost like a meditation. I get exercise and relaxation, and lots of satisfaction knowing that I accomplished this task without adding to the noise and stress in my neighborhood.

Before I write another word, let me say that I am in a privileged position to do my own maintenance the way I want. And I realize that other people may not be able to do it my way due to physical limitations or time constraints, but I still want to share my experience of what is possible in terms of no/low noise garden maintenance.

My Maintenance Routine:

I live on a corner property, so I have two sides worth of curb grass, otherwise known as hell strips. I have a mix of weeds and grass in these strips, but once it’s mowed it looks like grass from a distance. My weekly routine starts in about mid-May and basically consists of:

• picking up litter
• pulling up mugwort wherever I see it because it grows quickly and always sticks up in the hellstrip making it look messy.
• pulling up narrowleaf plantain in the hellstrip because it puts out tall flower stalks.
• pulling up other plants that are likely to get tall, like daisy fleabane and evening primrose. Notice a pattern? Pulling plants that are likely to get tall in the hellstrip makes the mow last longer. Sometimes I go 2 weeks without mowing.

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• I mow the hell strips, except areas in the front of my home where wildflowers are popping up. I usually let a small patch of wildflowers grow in the front hell strips because parking is not allowed there and the plants don’t block anyone from getting out of their car (tip: if you create a hazard or block the sidewalk, code enforcement will probably visit you, so keep a lot of clear space where it is required).
• I rake the mowed area and sweep the sidewalk. I throw all the clippings and pulled weeds over the back fence where I have a brush pile.
• I spend some time weeding around flowers in the front hell strip and in the front garden. I collect weeds in an old plastic container and fling them over the fence into the brush pile. Tip: keep your brush pile near the area you clean up the most (and keep it out of view, of course). If I encounter a plant I don’t recognize, I take a picture of it and try to identify it later on. I don’t pull it in case it’s something native or beneficial.
• I never get to everything– there is always something new to deal with: more weeds, an invasive tree, a noxious weed like poison ivy- but I always prioritize the front of the garden and the hellstrip. Sometimes I also use a manual edger to create a sharper edge in order to not attract any type of attention from code enforcement. I have a non-traditional front garden and I find that keeping the sidewalk in order makes everything look deliberate and not like I forgot to maintain my property for the last 3 months. That being said, I usually let low growing weeds like purple dead nettle and white clover grow in the front patch as ground cover.
• I don’t use any kind of herbicides. If, and that’s a big If, I want to kill a weed like in a sidewalk crack, I would pour vinegar on it on a sunny day, but normally I just pull things out or pull as much as I can and leave a little green.
• This routine takes me an hour or more, depending on what I have time or energy to do beyond the hellstrips.

The whole time I’m in the garden there are birds chirping, butterflies and bumble bees going from flower to flower, and a whole world of insects that are just hanging out and not running for their lives. Seeing that harmony makes the physical effort worth it and afterwards I feel so connected to my small plot of land. This chore has definitely gone from weekly annoyance to something I look forward to.

I hope this post inspires you to embrace quiet gardening. The world needs less noise and fumes, and we desperately need a connection to the natural world. You don’t have to go a park or a nature preserve, you will be amazed by everything you see in your garden when you don’t disturb it too much and when you actually take the time to look.