Making do with less lawn
Up to 90 per cent of the water Australians use in their gardens is lapped up by lawns. Here’s how we can use less water on our lawns.
Replace unused or surplus lawn areas with native plants and grasses and keep well mulched. Native plants have adapted to our tough environment and encourage native wildlife into the garden such as honey-eating birds. Native plants also usually require fewer fertilisers, which helps protect our precious waterways and bays from stormwater pollution.
Replacing your lawn with a natural garden in your front yard will reduce traffic noise, increase privacy and eliminate the need for expensive and often unsightly fences.
Cover large open areas in your garden with a tough groundcover such as Grevillea poorinda ‘Royal Mantle’ to help retain soil moisture. This looks particularly effective under a large feature tree like the Yellow Gum.
Replace high use lawn areas such as under children’s play equipment with artificial grass or pine bark mulch. This is just as safe for children and requires no water.
Replace lawn in car parking and washing line areas with paving. Properly laid paving (or gravel, crushed quartz, lilydale topping or washed river pebbles) will provide a low maintenance and hard-wearing surface for many years.
Create a low maintenance pebble garden in an unused lawn area using washed river pebbles as mulch around succulent plants such as Sedum spathulifolium ‘Purpureum’ and Adam’s Needle-and-Thread (Yucca filamentosa).
Choose a blend of grass that is suited to our climate. Couch and Kikuyu blends withstand droughts well. Seek advice at your nursery.
Under the current Stage 3 water restrictions, lawns cannot be watered by residents, businesses and local councils. Details of Stage 3 water restrictions can be found on the Our Water Our Future website or by contacting your local water retailer (City West Water , South East Water or Yarra Valley Water ).
Hand-held hoses fitted with a trigger nozzle, watering cans and buckets can be used between 6am-8am and 8pm-10pm to water gardens. Automatic dripper systems can be used between midnight - 4am* and manual dripper systems can be used between 6am - 8am and 8pm - 10pm*.
When washing your car, hand-held hoses or high pressure cleaning devices cannot be used at any time. A bucket filled from a tap can be used to clean windows, mirrors and lights; and spot-remove corrosive substances. A commercial car wash can be used.
Keep lawns at least two centimetres long in summer to shade the roots and retain moisture.
*Even numbered houses can water on Saturday and Tuesday; odd numbered can water on Sunday and Wednesday.