Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
We recently bought a house in Sacramento Ca. I believe it is zone 9 or if you use Sunset, it's zone 14. We have about 1/4 acre and lots of trees, the yard is east facing and quite shady. We have a small lawn and raised planter beds, but the seller covered large areas of the yard with gorilla grass mulch which is just a curse, every time our two dogs come in they are covered with that crap and there is no way to rake or blow leaves out of it.
We would like to replace that, or at least plant it with the goal that ultimately the ground cover would take over. Our dogs don't dig, the most damage they would do is running around chasing each other.
Any ideas would be appreciated, since the yard is large and the area currently planted in grass is small I would be open to using more than one kind of ground cover.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
44,563 posts, read 81,131,933 times
Reputation: 57767
We have been faced with this dilemma for many years, always having at least 2 dogs. With feeding of a high quality food, resulting in dense, compact "droppings", we found gravel to be the cleanest and easiest for cleanup. Grass is good too, but of course requires work, mowing and watering. Large bark won't track in but they can get pawsplinters. Any plantings that are higher than lawn will hide the droppings until you step on them.
We have been faced with this dilemma for many years, always having at least 2 dogs. With feeding of a high quality food, resulting in dense, compact "droppings", we found gravel to be the cleanest and easiest for cleanup. Grass is good too, but of course requires work, mowing and watering. Large bark won't track in but they can get pawsplinters. Any plantings that are higher than lawn will hide the droppings until you step on them.
We don't have a problem with droppings at all, they are large dogs but eat high quality grain free food so no issue there. We have a relatively small lawn right now and don't really want to cover the whole yard with grass, I think that some parts of our yard would probably be too shady to sustain a lawn anyway. We have an area with compacted decomposed granite which works well, and a cement patio, I was hoping to plant some areas with some kind of ground cover to add interest to the yard and mainly get rid of this gorilla hair (or is it gorilla grass) Maybe we should just get a pool
We dug out an area (10' x 10') off our patio for a dog potty pit. We dug down about 6" and filled it with sand. Pea gravel would work well too, we just happened to have free sand given to us. Our dogs are small, but you get the idea. At first we had to walk out there with them to be sure they did business where we intended, now they just go there. It helps that we hung a tarp over it (one of those neat shade sails) so it is dry in the rain and it keeps the snow out of it too...not that you will have snow in Sac! We jsut hose it down after raking it once per week. It is not far from our family room windows so we aim to keep it from smelling bad.
That leads me to the graound cover. We battled hot sun and shady areas, irrigation problems, getting the mower into all the nooks and crannies. We finally gave up and installed artificial turf. Don't laugh and if you are at all interested go see a dealer in your area. There are some specific brands for places like dog parks that dogs can mess on and it hoses right off. However, since we have small dogs and they only go out there to run around, we just got ordinary, common turf. We also chose not to put the rubber fill material in but usd sand instead. I just didn't feel comfortable with the rubber fill knowing that one of my dogs is very curious and tries to taste everything in her environment.
Just sayin'. We no longer have to mow, fertilize, water. The turf will pay for itself given what the cost of irrigation and water is here. We also have enough shade that there are cooler areas on the turf for hot summer days as the turf does hold some heat in direct sun. The most maintenance we have is to blow the leaves off in the Fall. If you get artificial turf be sure that the installation is done correctly. We have a neighbor who has spent some $$$ because it wasn't layed flat and stretched properly in the space. But I couldn't be happier with ours.
We dug out an area (10' x 10') off our patio for a dog potty pit. We dug down about 6" and filled it with sand. Pea gravel would work well too, we just happened to have free sand given to us. Our dogs are small, but you get the idea. At first we had to walk out there with them to be sure they did business where we intended, now they just go there. It helps that we hung a tarp over it (one of those neat shade sails) so it is dry in the rain and it keeps the snow out of it too...not that you will have snow in Sac! We jsut hose it down after raking it once per week. It is not far from our family room windows so we aim to keep it from smelling bad.
That leads me to the graound cover. We battled hot sun and shady areas, irrigation problems, getting the mower into all the nooks and crannies. We finally gave up and installed artificial turf. Don't laugh and if you are at all interested go see a dealer in your area. There are some specific brands for places like dog parks that dogs can mess on and it hoses right off. However, since we have small dogs and they only go out there to run around, we just got ordinary, common turf. We also chose not to put the rubber fill material in but usd sand instead. I just didn't feel comfortable with the rubber fill knowing that one of my dogs is very curious and tries to taste everything in her environment.
Just sayin'. We no longer have to mow, fertilize, water. The turf will pay for itself given what the cost of irrigation and water is here. We also have enough shade that there are cooler areas on the turf for hot summer days as the turf does hold some heat in direct sun. The most maintenance we have is to blow the leaves off in the Fall. If you get artificial turf be sure that the installation is done correctly. We have a neighbor who has spent some $$$ because it wasn't layed flat and stretched properly in the space. But I couldn't be happier with ours.
I'm open to any and all suggestions, but I don't think artificial turf would work, I think we need something to contrast with the lawn and the decomposed granite areas. We don't really need a place for the dogs to poop, we already showed them where to go and they are very reliable about doing their business under some big fig trees. I attached a picture of one part of the yard[IMG][/IMG], the reddish brown stuff in the picture is gorilla grass mulch which is just horrible, the dogs track it all over the house and you can't rake leaves out of it ugh..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
