This Lawn Never Needs Mowing

This lawn never needs mowing AG WORLD Ag World 9-4-19 Ralph Greulach, of Van Wert, Ohio, only works in his front yard when it absolutely needs it ù every five years or so. That's because there's not a bit of grass there. It's all gravel . . . painted green with a huge sloping initial "G" in the center. "When we built the house in 1971, I decided not to have a front lawn," says Ralph, who owns a propane gas supply company near his home. "I'm always busy spraying anhydrous in the spring, so I just don't have time to take care of a lawn. I don't have time for anything but work." Ralph's sure his neighbors were a bit apprhensive about the kind of people moving in next door when he hauled in 70 tons of gravel. And they had to be even more skeptical when he started painting all those little pieces of gravel green. "The emblem in the middle is stone," he explains. "But the rest is all gravel. "I think if I were to do it over, I'd use stone for all of it, though, gravel just doesn't hold well on a slope. We paint the gravel every five years with a garden sprayer and water-based paint, but it doesn't hold the paint too well. "It's a little porous and the paint flakes off. Stones would hold paint a lot better." Ralph lives on the south edge of Van Wert, right on U.S. 127. Since he lives on such a major thoroughfare, he hears lots of comments about his unique yard. "I don't have a CB, but my friends tell me what they hear," he says. "Lots of truckers talk about it, since it's something different." Although Ralph can justify his gravel yard as very practical, he admits there's still another reason he chose not to use sod when he built the house. "I hate to mow lawn," he confesses. "I was raised on a farm and we had a big lawn . . . that I had to mow with a push mower. "I hated it then, so I don't want to do any more of it than I have to!" (Reprinted with permission from Farmland News.)

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