Elinor Teague on gardening: Check out local gardens for yard inspiration

In my neighborhood, most of the lawns are completely brown or have been replaced with drought tolerant and native plants or planter boxes filled with summer vegetable crops. A few neighbors still irrigate, but much less frequently so their lawns are a mix of tan and green. One diehard traditionalist has a lush, bright green lawn (newly sodded this last spring).

In the Fresno/Clovis area, we normally renovate our lawns in late September and October when both cool-season grasses (fescues, perennial rye) and warm-season Bermuda grasses have a last growth spurt before winter dormancy. Those of us with no lawns or with mostly dead grass will not be renovating this fall. For those who just can’t stand not having a lawn, here’s a reminder of annual fall lawn care chores:

▪ Fertilize both cool and warm season lawn grasses with a high nitrogen fertilizer.

▪ Apply a pre-emergent herbicide to control for winter and early spring weeds, including crabgrass and poa annua or annual bluegrass.

▪ Remove thatch (a mat of dead grass blades) and aerate compacted soil.

▪ Level the soil and reseed bare spots.

Keep in mind that fertilizers must be watered in, that pre-emergents must be applied to damp grass and that newly seeded spots must be watered every day or more often during hot spells (which does not follow the mandated watering schedule during severe drought conditions).

Brown, crispy, cool-season lawn grasses won’t recover from the summer heat and drought. They’re really dead. Bermuda grasses’ underground rhizomes can survive long periods of high heat with no water.

If you’re considering replacing your Bermuda lawn with drought-tolerant plants or with a water permeable hardscape that lets water percolate back into the soil and recharge the aquifers, you’ll need to apply a glyphosate herbicide to the dead-looking grass at least two, perhaps even three or four times over a period of several weeks to kill off the invasive rhizomes. Soil solarization will kill bermuda rhizomes, but fall temperatures are too cool for solarization to be effective.

Some homeowners who have opted to replace their lawns have applied glyphosate herbicides to the dead grass, then laid down some sort of weed barrier (weed cloth, perforated plastic sheets, black and white newspaper) and 4 to 6 inches of mulch to cover the area. An all-mulch yard isn’t colorful, but it will do until the rains arrive and we can begin working the hard dry soil to plant or to install hardscape such as water permeable decomposed granite, wide-spaced stone or brick pavers or gravel pathways.

The Fresno County Master Gardeners demonstration garden (1750 N. Winery, Fresno, open 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Monday-Friday, admission free) and the Clovis Botanical Garden, (945 N. Clovis Ave. open 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday, admission free) are most beautiful in the fall months. Check out drought-tolerant and native plants at the gardens, and at the Clovis Botanical garden, check out their patch of extremely drought-tolerant UC Verde buffalo grass near the front gate. Buffalo grass is much better suited to our hot, arid climate than traditional lawn grasses. (Local source: Takao nursery, Fresno; www.ucverdebuffalograss.com).

This story was originally published September 23, 2015 at 9:00 AM with the headline "Elinor Teague on gardening: Check out local gardens for yard inspiration."