Moss: The Lawn With No Mower

Some people pay good money trying to get rid of moss in their grass, but it just keeps coming back.  A better idea might be to go with the flow and let the moss grow. Because of shade, some places are just better suited to moss than to grass. And especially with water restrictions in place, a moss lawn needs less maintenance than a grass lawn.  Which isn’t to say that moss beds are “no maintenance.”  There is, after all, no garden without a gardener. Yes, random patches of moss can survive unaided, but keeping a lawn of moss looking good does take some investment. Fallen leaves will smother mosses as easily as they will grass, so regular, gentle leaf management with a blower set on “low” helps. And they are not the best weed suppressors, so grooming with some “therapeutic”  hand weeding is necessary. But no matter how much time you spend grooming your moss lawn, you can remind yourself with a smile how much time you did not spend mowing each and every week.

Gasoline powered lawn mowers put out several times as much pollution per gallon as cars do. So anything we can do to reduce the use of these mowers helps reverse the warming of the atmosphere.  And since moss doesn’t require fertilizer or irrigation replacing a grass lawn means fewer nutrients flowing into our waterways and killing fish.

A moss lawn can be simple and uniform or you can spice it up with a collection of weathered, lichen-crusted stones with mosses growing on and around them. Throw in some ferns, hellebores, native ginger and spring ephemerals to contrast with the velvet mosses and the bones of stone and you will have a visually lively garden indeed.

There are essentially two ways to start or enhance a bed or lawn of moss. You can transplant it or you can buy it. A moss nursery in Pa. called Moss Acres sells 4 different mosses by the box. I’ve started several moss beds for clients this way and have used the scraps of leftover moss in my shady garden of  spring ephemerals. Of the various ones offered by Moss Acres, the novice moss gardener will probably want to try the sampler kit with a few square feet of each type of moss or start with a box of the fern moss (Thuidium delicatulum)—so named because of it’s resemblance to a sheet of tiny fern fronds.

The other way to get mosses going is to transplant them. There are several ways to do that. Ideally, if you have some mosses on your property, you can scrape them up by hand and consolidate them nearby on bare soil in similar light and soil conditions. This method can have the greatest level of success because transplanted mosses do best if their growing conditions change as little as possible.  If the conditions are different at the new site—a couple of hours of morning sun instead of a couple of hours of late afternoon sun, for instance—then you’ll likely have better luck “seeding” the moss into the new area. The largest and most verdant moss garden I know of in the piedmont is north of Greensboro and I’ll share that gardener’s method of spreading moss: in a motion similar to brushing crumbs off a countertop, she uses the edge of one hand or her fingers to brush across the top of the moss and catch any loose moss foliage in the palm of her other hand. Mixed with this will be lots of moss spores. She then tosses the whole mess onto some bare soil in the shady part of her garden and over time it fills in with new moss.

Other moss gardeners have success mixing moss, water and buttermilk in a blender and spreading the slurry on bare soil. Others insist the buttermilk (or beer as some recommend) has no effect and they simply crumble the moss onto bare soil. I’ve had varying degrees of  luck with all these methods and think that the  key is keeping the area moist for a couple of weeks in the spring or fall until you see some bits of vibrant green taking hold.

And then the most important step—remembering not to mow it.

Resources:
www.frankhyman.com

www.mossacres.com A terrific site for learning about mosses and buying mosses, growing accessories, books, etc.

Basic moss growing technique:

•    Expose bare, compacted soil.
•    Lower pH with sulfur.
•    Layout sheets of moss or crumble and spread particles or slurry of moss.
•    Protect small areas from birds and squirrels with bird netting pinned to the ground.
•    Keep moist if you can for 2-3 weeks.
•    Repeat in new areas as moss spreads.
•    Remove weeds by hand.
•    Keep leaves off moss with a blower set on low speed.
•    Enjoy frequently.