We lived in our last house for seven years and in that time we made many changes, but the one that we never did that I wish that we had was to remove the front lawn. That house also had an expansive backyard with a lawn, which we had planned on eventually making smaller, but that our dog roamed on and our kid played on (okay not really much as he was just over two when we moved out). It made sense that we would keep it though. The front lawn though was just a chore to mow. We actually started the process by removing the parking strip and replacing it with a drip and plants. It added a lot of curb appeal to the yard and cut our water bill by a bit each month.
Fast forward seven months and we are living in a new house and while we did many things inside to fix it up before we moved in, one of our first projects to tackle is removing the lawn in front. To be fair, we probably would have redone it anyway even if we were keeping it as there is no irrigation and we live in San Diego where rain does not fall consistently enough to keep a lawn alive. We had a hard enough time keeping our last lawn looking decent even with irrigation. I know that we would fail to keep this lawn looking anything close to presentable.
Many people (read neighbors) seem skeptical about this decision and how it will end up looking. People have strong feelings about lawns. I predict that in Southern California where water is a scarce resource, removing a front lawn will become a modern landscape choice. I think that it will go well with our mid-century modern home and design aesthetic. Considering the expense and time of maintaining a lawn I think that it makes a lot of sense for our lifestyle too. And if we do want to throw a baseball around or roll down a grassy hill, we live a short walk away from a wonderful community park (also why we will not be putting in a swing set and slide).
Check back and see our progress and we slowly transform our yard into a space that we love and love being in!
Update: Read how we killed our lawn
