JoAnne Skelly: Is xeriscape the answer?

Last week I mentioned how unhappy I was about having to remove trees to save the septic system. There are more big changes to consider this week.

I wrote last spring and summer about how much devastation the voles, also known as meadow mice, have caused to our lawn. There are hundreds of holes with dead grass paths connecting them all. Although the owls and hawks stay busy preying on the voles, I’m not sure they will ever reduce the population. One vole actually poked his head out of his hole repeatedly, not five feet from me, when I was sitting in the sun as if to say, “Ha ha, you can’t get me!”

I have noticed that the voles are most prevalent in the areas of the yard that are irrigated, not only the lawn but also the flower beds. They are not in the field where it is dry. With that in mind, I’m contemplating removing a huge area of lawn and not watering there anymore in an effort to get rid of these pests. Since the trees have to go, I no longer have to water there. Think how much water I could conserve. I could finally have a water-efficient landscape, a xeriscape. My horticulturist friend Peggy has a beautiful xeriscape with a diverse selection of plants that bloom for three seasons. I have always wanted a landscape like that.

While this sounds like a suitable solution, there are some significant challenges to this approach. First, there is the problem of eliminating all the remaining lawn in the area I want to change. This could be accomplished with a sod cutter, herbicides, laying down cardboard to starve out the grass or digging it out by hand. Second, where do I put all that removed sod? Third, it would require rerouting the existing lawn sprinklers to the remaining lawn and trees, which is a big, expensive task. Fourth, if you have ever removed a lawn before, you know it always comes back. Weeding would be never-ending, and most likely I would have to resort to herbicides because I can’t do that much weeding anymore. I do not like using pesticides (which include herbicides). Finally, I don’t know if I have it in me to do all the work to xeriscape the yard. I could possibly hire a company to do it, but the expense would be considerable.

It is so much easier to keep the existing lawn, even with the ugly vole damage. After all, mowing a lawn is about the easiest way to “weed.” Particularly when it’s on a riding mower.

JoAnne Skelly is Associate Professor & Extension Educator, Emerita University of Nevada Cooperative Extension.