Street view.

With an active toddler, there is simply no substitute for a lawn.
There just isn't a better surface for small child play.

What is your purpose in removing the lawn? Save money, avoid mowing?

For a budget of $500, an artificial turf, even if you DIY, isn't going to get you a large amount of material.

Are you planning to keep a section for the toddler or do you plan to get rid of the entire lawn?

Re: mulch; if you have a truck or a friend with a truck, for large amounts, you are better off ordering it in bulk (cubic yards) from a landscape material supplier. Make sure you get a quality product, as the cheap stuff is usually full of chunks of asphalt, plastic, and even bits of broken glass, which naturally with a toddler you want to avoid.

Gravel--you'd also want to order from a landscape materials supplier. Shop around for the best price.

Are you in LA? I think they have a lawn-removal deal--they'll pay you to remove the lawn and not put it back. That would give you some extra budget. A few other municipalities in So Cal are offering the same sort of deal.

Gardening/landscaping with a low budget means you have to have the patience to have a bare-looking yard while the plants fill in. I did the same thing at my yard. You might do what I did, and remove only one side of the front lawn and work on that, and leave other sections to work on as time and money allows.

I did buy some "big-ticket" items (phoenix rupicola), but most of what I bought were plants in 4-inch containers, 1 gallon plants and cuttings that i propagated myself. 1 cutting of cotyledon orbiculata can become a 10 foot by 5 foot mass planting of cotyledon in a year if you continue to take cuttings as the plants grow and stick them in the ground where you want them to grow. The same goes for senecio, calandrinia and a number of succulents.

When you're purchasing plants, look for containers that have more than 1 plant in the same container. 1 gallon Salvia gregii, for example, are almost always three or four individual plants in one container. You can separate these and have four plants instead of 1. Grasses are easy to split. I am currently making a meadow lawn with sections of carex pansa and others of blue fescue. I purchased two flats of blue fescue which come with probably around 200 individual plugs each. These can run you about $15 to $20. I planted the plugs at 6 inch intervals in September and let them grow a bit. A month ago, I split each of the clumps into 20 to 30 smaller clumps and planted those to increase the square footage of the meadow lawn. Next weekend, I'll be splitting the larger clumps again and more than doubling the square footage of the existing lawn. I've done the same thing with carex pansa, and will be planting another section of carex pansa soon. Here is what my meadow lawn looks like today. This is four months worth of splitting and replanting. The right side of the barrier has the blue fescue that will blend into a bed of native grasses, interspersed with indian paintbrush, native penstemon and a manzanita tree. The left side of the barrier has been planted with small carex pansa plugs. Those are just now starting to take off. I planted all of the carex pansa section with only 30 "standard" sized plugs. I split each of the individual plugs into 3-5 smaller plugs each.(Please disregard the fence, we're replacing that this spring.)

A meadow lawn like this would not be good for heavy foot traffic. We'll only use it occasionally so this is a good option in our case, but you could incorporate similar techniques for your front yard.

This is the look I am going for. This is an image i found on the internet and have been trying to copy. Of course, the colorful echeverias would be very expensive if you buy mature sized ones ($12-$20) each. I will be using red crassula "campfire" for the bright colorful accent because I have lots of it and it is easy to propagate.

Thank you so much for your input.

The water bill and maintenance have become a burden for us. It is a fantastic idea to do them one side at a time. Do you think if I mulch the entire area 25'x27' is aesthetically challenging? We don't want to be an eyesore of the neighborhood. Thanks again.

Aesthetics aside, I don't think a big mulch pile would be ideal to have a toddler play in. If you've ever spread mulch with no gloves, you'll know that you'll end up with tiny splinters and pieces of wood fiber beneath your nails. If you want a surface on which a child could play, a lawn is just about the best alternative. A carex pansa lawn would take less water and less maintenance. Mowing is not necessary, but could be done once every six months. With $500, you could probably plant the entire area with carex pansa. You can make your money go further by splitting each individual plug into two or three smaller plugs. You'll have to have the patience to wait for the plugs to spread and fill in, but once they've established themselves, you'll have a nice meadow lawn that is practically indestructible.

Have you considered just reducing your lawn area, keeping lawn near the half or third of your yard closest to the house? I think that is a good compromise, offers a small patch for your toddler. Our yard only has 200 - 300 sq ft of lawn, in the backyard, and it was adequate for the kids to play. Not great, so if they REALLY want to play we have to go to the park...but it was adequate. The rest of the yard was play bark like they use at playgrounds and it's been no problem. I recommend wearing shoes, but really it holds up well.

I think it would look fine to have mulch in the front (but that's how our front looked for many years and my DH was never a fan). FINALLY the plants are starting to get big enough that it does look good, even DH thinks it's okay. We're on a slope, so erosion was an issue for a while.

Look for local/zone-appropriate resources for pre-planned planting ideas, if you can find something like that online it's a great way to figure out what to plant (rather than trial-and-error)

When we bought our house last year, the backyard was probably 75% concrete. We had that ripped out and we left with essentially a blank slate since there was no landscaping to speak of.

We had a local tree trimmer drop off a LOT of mulch... almost too much--it was an entire truckload. We're still working on spreading it out. Anyway, that was free and it has gone a long way to make our backyard look more polished. We don't have kids, but I don't really agree that it would bad for kids. I remember getting splinters from that bark-type mulch stuck as a kid on the playground, but the pine mulch we had delivered hasn't given me any splinters so far.

In my opinion, the free mulch was the best thing we could have done. It fills in otherwise awkward gaps in the landscape and saves us a ton of water. Another idea would be a bushy, small tree that can shade any part of the lawn you decide to keep. We have an olive tree in our front yard that shades most of the grass and I only had to water the lawn once per month in the summer. It wasn't magazine-cover-worthy green, but it wasn't dead either.

Things to think about.

For more ideas you might check the county extension service. Through the Master Gardeners, they have established a program of coming to your house, looking at your possible problems regarding your lawn removal, and offering alternatives. Al

Here you can find contact information for your county's cooperative extension office:
http://ucanr.edu/County_Offices/

I just redid our entire front yard (1600 sqft) in DG and awesome low water plants and succulents for $957 by doing the work myself. I got a lot of the plants from a succulent guy that sells at the Rose Bowl flea market (nice large unusual echeverias for $6, smaller for $1-3 including the bright ruffled ones as well as lots of other succulents and cacti,) and "death row" at Lowe's (the clearance racks- I cut them back and nursed them to health while doing the sod removal and killing the remaining grass.) We only spent a lot of the 3 large focal point plants ($129 for a large Hercules aloe, $40 for a large red pencil stick tree and $28 for a larger Madagascar palm with 10 pups in the pot- I cut off 8 and am rooting them to add later.) The other large expense was good landscape cloth and pins, about $250 of the total cost (must be water permeable to qualify for the rebate, no plastic.)

The turf replacement rebate here in Riverside is $2 a sqft so the check I get back will cover 100% of what we spent. Definately check and see if you have a rebate program in your area- they have to inspect before you start so don't start ripping anything out until you talk to them!

We went with DG not only for the look but because mulch is very ant/ bug friendly and because it breaks down so it is a continual expense- you have to add to it every year to keep it looking decent. The DG was $40 a yard.

With your need for a play are you could keep the area on the side for a play area and do the main part of the yard with the $500. When you no longer need a play area you could do that area.

This post was edited by VedaBeeps on Mon, Jan 19, 15 at 10:47

Do check out the rebate program and rules before you do anything, and see if you want to go that route, it will certainly stretch your budget, but you have to follow their rules. I wouldn't recommend the Carex pansa as a lawn substitute, as while I like the plant, it is unlikely to do what you want it to do as well as lawn does. If you want to replace the grass with something less water intensive as a play area, I'd suggest either Dymondia margaratae or Carex divulsa as better choices. Both can easily get buy with just once every few weeks irrigation.

You don't say whether you already have an irrigation system where the lawn is, or whether you have to hand water. Both the plants I suggested will need some supplemental irrigation to fill in. The Carex divulsa only needs mowing during the warm months, and can easily be kept 4" tall with a good rotary mower, and can also be planted out from plugs at about 4" on center.

If you wanted a bit more screening against that cyclone fence, perhaps consider adding a quick growing vine from 1 gallon cans at 6~8 feet on center. Thunbergia alata would be a quick, long blooming screen, but there are also many others.

Thank you all so much for all the wonderful ideas. We are going to do more reasearch and look into your suggestions.

Very grateful！

pz

I wanted to throw in my two cents since I'm a pretty novice gardener but I have learned a lot on here in the last couple of years.

The lawn: I would keep a small patch, perhaps nearer to the house than to the street. And I would add plants gradually, removing the lawn nearest the street and making my way in as time and expenses allow. It's not the best idea to rip everything out and not replant with something because the bare patches will likely get overrun by weeds.
Plus, having at least a little bit of lawn really adds interest to the landscape as it helps break it up and iit draws attention to the plants around it.
It shouldn't cost you much on water...are you sure you have good watering practices? I strongly suggest you peruse the lawn care forum for a moment to double check. If you water deeply and less often you encourage strong roots in the grass and it won't NEED to be watered more tran 1x/week and that in the summer. I also switched to organic fertilizer (i.e. Buying alfalfa pellets or soybean meal from a farm supply store) and I was rewarded with a ridiculously green and lush lawn all summer long. And I'm in sacramento where the SoCal breeze is nonexistent and it gets HOT.

One more thing, about landscaping paper... Please please do not use this stuff! You can get MUCH better results from laying down thick layers of newspaper (say 7 pages or so) and overlapping them and then covering those with a 3-4 inch layer of either mulch (don't use gorilla hair) or compost which also acts as mulch. Compost needs replenishing yearly but it adds oh so much in the way of nutrients to your soil AND it acts as a weed barrier if it's thick enough. But, it does need to be reapplied every year, because all that goodness is breaking down to make your soil awesome! If your soil is already awesome, go for some kind of wood chips. But again, 3-4 inch layer is needed to suppress weeds and to provide moisture retention in your soil. And it only needs to be replenished after several years. Laying down that landscaping paper prevents the nutrients from the mulch/compost on top from reaching the soil. But they will break down..on TOP of your landscape paper. I am currently spending a LOT of time and energy ripping out that crap from some of my beds. In the others where I used the method above I haven't had to use fertilizer in two years, and I've pulled up Maybe a handful of weeds in that time..which came up easily since the soil is so soft!

Also, if you do have some grass, it pays to mulch mow (where you leave the clippings on the grass). But it has to be cut about every 5 days. It sounds ominous but without all the bagging and whatnot it's super easy. It takes me about 30 minutes to do 2200 sq ft, and I'm a woman. It's nice exercise too. But if you leave a small patch, it's easy peasy.