Phyla nodiflora (Lippia)
JUNE 2019 MARKETPLACECONTRACOSTA.COM 55
people earn their money pruning trees, and the limbs
they cut off and chip are a waste product that must be
disposed of. If no one wants them, those chips must be
hauled to the dump, so taking them is doing the arborist
a favor.
You can either phone around to local tree services or go
to chipdrop.com and sign up. Either way, expect to wait a
few weeks, and be prepared to accept whatever they have
on hand (quantity and quality) when your number comes
up. But as an arborist profoundly remarked to me once,
“Hey, after a while it all turns brown.”
One recommendation based on my personal experience
(i.e., mistakes): if you have a large space, don’t try to
do it all at once. The project will be more fun and less
exhausting if you do it in stages – perhaps over more
than one year, if you have a big lawn to murder.
It’s Dead, So Now What?
Now the big question: come fall you’ll have a new, blank
slate to work with, so what do you put in place of that
lawn? Let me start by listing the bad choices to avoid.
Decorative Rock. This is an older landscaping style, but
one sees it frequently in El Cerrito. I gather it was in
vogue when that area was built up, but I still see new
installations. My neighbor down the street did it not
long ago. Many people think of decorative stone (quartz,
lava rock, colored gravel, etc.) as “no maintenance”
landscaping. It’s a lie – don’t fall for it. The front yard of
my current home had been partially (and only partially,
thank the seven gods of Westeros) covered with white
quartz by the previous owner. The quartz was laid over
a perforated plastic weed barrier, which had tiny holes
to allow storm water to drain into the soil while stifling
the growth of any weed seeds below. The flaw in this
system is that many seeds are airborne, and get deposited
atop the stones. Also, dust and leaves blow in, some of the
leaves decompose before you can remove them, and you
wind up with just enough growing medium to let some
of those weed seeds germinate. The tiny roots then find
the drainage holes in the weed barrier and proceed to
grow. The rock prevents you from removing the weeds
with a hoe, and when you pull them up by hand, guess
what? You rip holes in the weed barrier, creating more
openings for other weeds. The only way to keep rock
landscaping looking good is to regularly spray with an
herbicide such as Roundup – which is being increasingly
linked to cancer.
Also, your electric bill will go up.
Plants pull moisture from the soil and into the air in a
process called transpiration. This process absorbs heat,
providing a natural cooling effect. Conversely, that
decorative rock absorbs heat from the sun and radiates it