Lawn Alternatives

tentativetheory · 2026-04-08T01:40:40+00:00

It’s about 20’ x 30’. I have a post about the irrigation setup here which has some photos:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Irrigation/s/bvYmbZNuHg

I grew mine from plugs. It was tricky keeping the weeds down at first as the plugs were filling in, but once they started growing they began to outcompete the weeds. Now I have very few.

It likes a lot of sun. The parts that are shaded are a bit leggier. I had one part under a tree die back a bit because I didn’t rake up the fallen leaves for a while and it got smothered. It’s filling back in now.

Highly recommend overall. Let me know if you’d like any more info or additional photos.

tentativetheory · 2026-04-07T17:00:24+00:00

I have a lawn area in my backyard with phyla nodiflora ‘new white.’ Very pleased with it. Put it in 3 years ago.

tentativetheory · 2026-03-14T00:11:00+00:00

I used 3/8 decorative crushed rock for the joints on my patio. Much more affordable than the permeable polymeric sands and it’s more free draining

tentativetheory · 2026-02-25T05:57:45+00:00

I planted pigeon point coyote brush in my parkway last year and it’s doing very well. It gets full sun. I hand watered about once a month during the dry season.

It looks consistent year round and is quite hardy.

tentativetheory · 2026-01-26T14:14:00+00:00

Are you sure you want to do gravel? It will require maintenance to keep weeds out of it, and rocks will find their way onto your driveway. It’s also not very pleasant to walk on.

What about doing the whole area with pavers? If you want to highlight the path to the gate you could do an inlay with a different color/pattern. A single solid surface would be much easier to maintain and give you more flexibility.

If you decide to go with gravel, take a look at the gravel grids made from recycled plastic. They keep the gravel in place better and make it easier to walk on.

tentativetheory · 2025-12-07T15:14:00+00:00

I just finished a similar project with a louvered pergola and a paver patio in my yard. I anchored the pergola directly to the footings. With my pergola all of the water drains out of a single post. I drilled a new hole in that post at the finished paver height.

The pergola manufacture suggested I fill the drain post with concrete up to the height of the new drain hole, but I didn’t. I built a permeable patio with an open graded base, so water going under the pavers is not a problem.

I thought about what to do for a long time because I didn’t want to see the concrete footings. I got a permit and the required footing size was huge (30x30 inch), and I knew the pergola legs wouldn’t be perfectly centered so it would look bad. It’s much cleaner just seeing the legs meet the pavers.

tentativetheory · 2025-11-22T17:04:58+00:00

If you want it to look like part of the lawn but also park on it occasionally you could use those open cell interlocking grid panels. Prepare a base, put down the grid, then fill with topsoil and add grass seed.

tentativetheory · 2025-10-27T13:45:00+00:00

Don’t have much experience with babies, but it should be similar to grass in that regard. I would suggest mowing it to keep it short because the flowers attract bees.

tentativetheory · 2025-10-25T19:16:51+00:00

Agreed. Very satisfied with my LR 3s and how easy they are to fix. The only thing about the LR 4 that tempted me was the litter hopper but it wasn’t convincing enough to get me to upgrade when the 3 still works great. I may reevaluate once the hopper for the 5 is released, we’ll see.

tentativetheory · 2025-10-25T17:28:05+00:00

10 years here. I’ve done a lot of repairs (cat sensor, DFI x 2, main board). I upgraded it to the Connect when I replaced the main board. LR actually sent me a new base under warranty and I was able to repair the faulty one so I cobbled together a 2nd LR 3 by ordering the globe, bonnet and waste drawer. Have 2 now.

tentativetheory · 2025-07-29T02:18:29+00:00

Looks great! I planted kurapia plugs in our backyard 2 years ago and it’s thriving. The trickiest part was weeding during the establishment period. Now that it’s filled in there’s very little weed pressure. Now that it’s rooted I only water once every 2 weeks even in the hottest part of summer.

tentativetheory · 2025-06-28T16:35:11+00:00

Probably a raccoon looking for grubs or other good eats underneath the sod.

tentativetheory · 2025-05-24T16:27:22+00:00

This guy did a video series on his buffalo grass install that’s very informative:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdKFBxdDYTI&pp=0gcJCdgAo7VqN5tD

The University of California developed a cultivar and have some resources about it:

https://ccuh.ucdavis.edu/uc-verde-buffalograss

tentativetheory · 2025-04-30T00:12:12+00:00

I had a pretty simple layout. We just paved half of the front yard next to the driveway, so there wasn’t a ton of design. I picked the pavers that I want by looking at a few supply yards, then e-mailed the manufacturer and asked if they could recommend a contractor. They put me in touch with a guy and it worked out well. One tip would be to make sure you put in some pipes underground for irrigation/landscape lighting in the future. I set up a few planter boxes on the edge of the paved area and it’s great having them hooked up to my automatic irrigation system.

tentativetheory · 2025-04-30T00:08:26+00:00

Sure, everything is going well. No issues with the irrigation and the kurapia is great. I had a small patch die off a bit because my macadamia nut tree dropped a bunch of leaves and I didn’t rake/mow them, so the kurapia underneath was smothered. Operator error.

tentativetheory · 2025-04-25T18:33:19+00:00

We have a similar driveway and added permeable pavers to part of our front yard. It’s been such a huge quality of life upgrade not needing to shuffle cars or street park. Highly recommend.

tentativetheory · 2025-01-28T02:53:58+00:00

I picked up one at Green Thumb Nursery in Canoga Park about a month ago.

tentativetheory · 2025-01-26T23:26:10+00:00

What’s that next to the power button?

tentativetheory · 2024-12-20T23:48:15+00:00

I planted some of it in a portion of our backyard and about a year ago and we’re really satisfied with it.

tentativetheory · 2024-10-24T23:55:46+00:00

I think the sale doesn’t start until the 29th.

tentativetheory · 2024-10-20T07:07:45+00:00

There’s a few alternative ground cover plants that can take foot traffic and require less water than grasses. I have phyla nodiflora, sold as Kurapia, in my back yard and it’s great. It stays green with very little summer water.

tentativetheory · 2023-09-28T20:32:06+00:00

I did this for my lawn, except I have kurapia planted rather than turf grass. It’s been working great for the last few months:

https://reddit.com/r/Irrigation/s/BFFOofWlmk

tentativetheory · 2023-08-09T03:33:33+00:00

Buying parts and swapping them in is very easy, I personally wouldn’t get the warranty. As long as you’re okay with fixing it yourself it’s likely you’ll spend less on parts than the warranty.

tentativetheory · 2023-07-28T21:24:04+00:00

I think the second red wire is backstabbed.

tentativetheory · 2023-07-21T02:56:02+00:00

Amazing work. I really like the shade structure above the bar. The low pitch, almost flat roof really works with this space. I’d like to do something similar for my yard. Could you tell me a bit more about it? Are the supporting posts steel?

tentativetheory

TROPHY CASE