Ground cover is, I agree, appropriate to many situations. Prolly not to this one, though, given the OP's concern about his lawn. (He'll likely have to give up having any gorgeous grass in that sideyard.) Whether water is precious depends on where you are. Dallas? Yes. BUT...you don't need St. Augustine in Dallas. All hail Bermuda grass there! Houston? Rarely is there a drought severe enough to cause a temporary water concern. As for there, St. Augustine or "stickers" are your choices. Mobile, AL, is another place that needs St. Augustine. And rain? Try the rainiest city in the lower 48! Different regions have different concerns--some have water concerns, while fertilizer runoff is a lot more troublesome in others. (Apparently, the strawberries that annoy me so in my grass? A noxious invasive exotic. Great. Suggestions for getting rid of them or even controlling them? Pretty darned feeble, as far as I can tell.) Trying to nurse a lawn that won't ever do very well into a state of verdant, glowing health is going to do a lot more damage than watering a lawn up to two times a week in August in many places. 1" per week *includes* natural rainfall and only applies to the growing season, BTW. Areas that need St. Augustine that I've lived in have ranged from 36 to more than 40 inches of rain per year, on average. That's not much water. It's less than I had to put on my "xeric" plants in NM while they were getting established. (You should have seen me panicking when I first planted them and they started to wither even though I was watering them, in my mind, "all the time"--meaning once a week. *snort* Yes, in a high-wind, high-elevation, semi-desert environment!) I am ALL for choosing a low-maintenance ground cover--*where it works*. I haven't found a single satisfactory replacement for a lawn for kids to play on. I've looked. "Light to medium foot traffic" groundcovers won't do it, though goodness knows I wish they would. And many people live in areas in which replacing a "merely decorative" front yard is either culturally unacceptable--take that as you will--or is actually explicitly restricted by covenants or zoning laws. And that's assuming that the OWNERS like them. In those cases, the best you can do is make large beds which you can try to make as low-maintenance as possible. (Honestly, for 9/10ths or more of people, high maintenance is a bad idea from any standpoint, anyway. Vacations, boredom, illness, business--all of these things would intervene in a strict routine of trimming, spraying, fertilizing, etc., etc., to such an extent that the landscape would soon look pretty pathetic. And so often does! I am WAY too lazy to do that and bitterly, bitterly disappointed that I'll have to water the slope in back next year at least four times to keep back that $%# crab grass.) As for Lyme disease--I'd rather not have my kids--or the neighbors' kids--get it by playing in my yard. I can check myself after going out. I can trust other adults to do it, too. Stripping down elementary schoolers every time they go outside--and in summer, they're banging in and out all the time--is practically insane, but it was the only alternative to treating the 1/8th of an acre that's the major play area last year. We had started averaging, literally, a tick a week. I looked up the incidence of tick-borne diseases in our area, and the statistics were NOT good. Now, I hate using pesticides. This was the first time that I'd personally applied them. I'm killing all sorts of critters I'd LOVE to have in my back yard, but if it's that or a sick kid, I'm grabbing my bag of pesticide. Of course, I COULD just keep the deer out somehow. If you can suggest an effective and economical way of keeping deer out of a 2-acre spread, part of which is wetland, please do! *g* I mean really, I'd love to know, 'cuz I have an azalea that's looking bedraggled nearly 2 years after some young buck decided that it was an all-you-can-eat salad bar for several week running. I have another question, though, purely hypothetical at this point. In one area I lived in, we wouldn't get a hard freeze once every four years or so. And in those years, no matter how we treated the dogs (pills, sprays, collars, what-have-you), they would bring in hundreds of fleas--dozens with every trip outside--that would set up home and eat people and pets constantly. The dogs went piebald with scratching, and we were covered in bites. How can you get rid of fleas at that level of infestation without using a pesticide? We did every de-flea-your-house trick known to man, BTW, from vacuuming more than once a day to the dust that dessicates them. After going through every other option the first year, my dad (who, BTW, has a master's degree in a wildlife field!) broke down and went the poison-the-yard route--which worked beautifully, knocking back the numbers hard enough that bites were rare rather than constant. I do want to makes a BIG point about using "organics." Raw sewage is organic. It is also devastating to the environment. Soooo many gardeners like to make a big point about how they only use ORGANIC compost/worm castings/whatever on their plants. The streams really. don't. care. whether the nitrogen that gets dumped in them from your/my garden is from 100% certified premium organic sources or from cheapo-granulated nitrogen pellets. It doesn't make a difference! I like compost for all sorts of reasons, including reduced runoff and reduced chances of burning a plant because of slower release. But I don't pretend that there's "good organic nitrogen" and "bad inorganic nitrogen"--once it runs off, it's just plain ol' nitrogen. Sorry for sounding condescending--it was meant to be a drawl. ;-)

I think you've made a nice start on your landscape. My advice is not to look at it as a project that must be done before moving on to the next one. Plants and soil take way too much time to change. Fertilize and water routinely and it will start to become even better. Take a 5 year view of the work rather than all this fall. I've found it is much less expensive to let mother nature work with you. I'd recommend 2 projects, then move on to painting or whatever and then come back next year for more. Your side area I would simply lay a thick bed of mulch and let it sit for a year. The change in the soil underneath will be surprising and you can come back later with some flowers and shrubs that love shade. A step further would be to add compost under the mulch and some stepping stones in the middle. I'd do pretty much the same with the back slope area except add some ground cover that works well in your area.

If you go to the link I gave and click on 'Annabelle' you'll get the info you need for planting. You need to scroll down though. Hydrangeas do like water, but just because it wilts doesn't mean it needs water. If the leaves and flowers perk up about an hour after the sun is off of it, then it doesn't need water. It wilts when it's hot and sunny to conserve the water. It may look bad, but it will look normal after the sun is gone. If you're worried when it looks like that, feel the soil. A lot of people think they have to water them every day, but that's not true. I have 'Endless Summer' and PG hrdrangeas. ES gets sun from around 9am to 2pm. On hot sunny days it can look bad, but after the sun is gone it'll be fine. I water mine deeply once a week and mulch them. Even during our hot spells, I've never had to water more than that. I've seen 'Annabelle' in areas where it gets sun all morning and into mid afternoon. They do just fine. PGs can take the full sun in the northern states better than in the southern states. Mine doesn't get full sun, but there are many around here that do. I've read the mopheads and lacecaps don't like all day sun. The leaves will burn. 'Annabelle' starts off with green flowers that turn to white. I believe, but I'm not positive, they turn to that green again when the flowers age. Check out the different kinds there are and if you see one you like, post here again and ask others how well it does before you buy it. Good luck! Kat

Nope Joan, I am up here in Northern Iowa. I pulled another hosta that was close to that one, that looked to be infected also. sigh....... Hubby had to help getting that one out. I am so glad that I came here and learned about this. I would hate to lose anymore, since I have been working so hard. The really infected one came from a friend. I might just talk to her about it, just so she knows about it, and can do something about it in her own garden. Since coming here I have done more research on this virus. I appreciate you all, with your advice. I will have to share some pics of some of my healthy hostas some time. I just came home with 3 more today. Thunderbolt, dancing in the rain, and silver threads and golden needles. These are going into a totally separate garden, that is definatley not infected. Picked them up with a gift cert. that I got for Mom's day! YEAH! Thanks again! MonaRae