A new bed
This scenario repeats a lot on the West Coast: lawn owners get fed up with lawns damaged by the European Chafer Beetle and look beyond simple fixes for more permanent solutions. This was one such project.
The unit owners facing the damaged lawn spent lots of money and effort on fixing their lawn but it didn’t help. So, they finally decided to remove a chunk of the lawn and install a planted bed. A bed full of bastards: plants collected on site and moved in without any design plans.
Two steps
Step one involved heavy labour to remove the top grass layer and install new lawn and garden soil mix. You can rent a turf-cutter machine but it wouldn’t make sense for a bed this small.
Step two was more fun but also more stressful.
When I arrived in the morning, I had no idea what the finished bed would look like and how many edits it would require. So I went to work and dug up all of the rejects and set them out. Interestingly, many specimens came from the back of a vacant unit with no one to speak up for them.
I managed to install the bed before the many opinionated owners got up! When they finally emerged, a new bed greeted them.
Simple design
The owners wanted a focal point so we poached a Japanese maple for this purpose. I also had three Rhododendrons and two large sedges to fit in.
The middle layer got Heathers and boxwoods. We left the front open for annuals which would come a week or so later. Daylily clumps added instant green.
I feared heavy and time-consuming editing but it was fine. I had to break up the Heather lines by staggering them; and we added extra Daylily clumps so they showed in the back line, not just on the left side.
The owners watered everything in and now we just pray that everything takes well and survives. This was my first project where one hundred percent of the plants were recycled. I especially fear for the maple tree because I had to rudely extract it from a tight spot between landscape rocks. Spring is not the best time to transplant maples.
I’m confident everything else will survive and thrive.
Conclusion
Many lawn owners get fed up with chafer beetle battles and they opt for more permanent solutions. In this project we turned a huge portion of the damaged lawn into a planted bed using recycled plants from the complex.
As I suspected, weeks later everything looks fine except for the Japanese maple.
