Moss Makes a No-Care Lawn - New York Times

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• DEEP GREEN David Benner is an advocate of what he calls “the moss approach” to lawn maintenance.

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  By JANCEE DUNN

  Published: May 1, 2008

• Solebury, Pa.

• Moss, which grows fast and hugs the ground, prevents soil erosion. Its density repels weeds. Deer do not snack on it. It can be walked on. Even when it looks dead, a splash of water can restore it to emerald health within minutes. It doesn’t need fertilizer (lacking a root system, it takes nutrients from water and air). All it needs, in fact, are shade, moisture — though not large amounts of water — and what most gardeners would regard as poor-quality soil.

• According to an informal survey by the American Society of Landscape Architects, many of its most prominent members predict that the use of native and drought-resistant plants like moss as a sustainable substitute for grass will be a major design trend of 2008.

• The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that nearly a third of all residential water is used for landscaping. “Here on the East Coast we had drought conditions for a large part of last summer,” Ms. Somerville said, “and it sounds like we’re going to get more of that with global warming.”

  Although moss requires moisture, said Christine Cook, who owns Mossaics, a moss gardening business in Easton, Conn., and who lectures at the New York Botanical Garden, a moss lawn needs “a fraction, one percent or less” of the 10,000 gallons (beyond rainwater) that the E.P.A. estimates a suburban grass lawn drinks annually.