An organic and drought tolerant fix to a convential and non-drought tolerant lawn

The dead-looking conventional lawn last August

Last spring, as part of the Slow the Flow Grant I received to relandscape my property in natives, I also shrunk my lawn by about 300 square feet removing most of the dead-looking areas of lawn and adding native plants instead. The sod had been put in the previous summer by the sellers of our house just before we bought it. It clearly wasn't drought tolerant because I pretty much killed most of the grass since I never watered it, as you can see in the photo to the left.

If I didn't have two young kids who love to run around barefoot on the lawn I would have shrunk it even more. But, since I am now committed to the lawn, we still have about 1400 square feet of it and it needs help.

This spring, just before a forecasted four days of rain, I spread pure compost from the Ipswich Curbside Compost program on the deadest-looking areas. The compost will hold on to water longer than plain top soil both slowing the flow of rain runoff as well as feeding the grass in a phosphate-free way.  Then I added a drought tolerant (mostly fescue) grass seed and let Mother Nature do her watering job:

The day I added compost and seed:

 Four days later after a few days of rain, the new seed hadn't sprouted yet but the grass that was still alive took off:

 

Two weeks later (I did do a light hand watering twice just to hold it over until the next heavy rains). The drought tolerant seed sprouted and is now dominating over the old non-drought tolerant grass:

 

And looking at it from the other side, the day of adding compost and seed:

 

 Four days later after rains:

 

Two weeks later:

Now this area of the lawn is pretty lush, I've even added some more compost in a few spots that were still thin. And these results were achieved with NO chemicals or a sprinkler. It's 100% organic and should be mostly drought tolerant now. I think next spring I'll get a few yards of compost delivered and do the whole thing.

The lush organic and drought tolerant lawn

This is really easy to do, and if you don't want to do it yourself there are organic lawn care services out there (J.Gil Organic Landscaping is a great local Mass. one) who only use compost and compost tea as fertilizer. You'll have to put up with a few weeds, but a dandelion or two never hurt anyone, and in fact are very good for the bees and butterflies.

And the best part: an organic and drought tolerant lawn is a lot less work and cheaper over time than a conventional one.  You don't have to be constantly spraying with harmful endocrine-disrupting chemicals like Round-up, feeding it with high phosphate fertilizers which end up in lakes and rivers, and wasting money watering it with your sprinkler. It's a win/win for you, your children (who run barefoot on it and probably eat it), your pets (who probably eat the grass too) and the environment!