Spring is here with lawn mowing season drawing near: Valley Views

CHAGRIN FALLS, Ohio - As the earth thaws out, and the spring rains fall on our lawns, the words of poet William Wordsworth will spring back. He wrote of a lawn being "a carpet all alive."

That's both the good news and the bad news.

The perfect lawn is a freak of nature. Lawns, like life are wild things. They contain soil, worms, bugs, cultivated grass and uncultivated plants we call weeds.

On a more nano level they contain billions of organisms, we can't see and don't know the importance of, according to Alec McClennan who owns Good Nature Organic Lawn Care.

McClennan lives in Chagrin Falls, where his favorite activities involve playing with his sons on his lawn.

He grew up in the Chagrin Valley playing backyard football and laments the trend toward artificial turf for school sports fields.

"We were lucky enough to play sports on grass and in the mud," he said. "The bumpy and uneven playing fields taught me more about the ups and downs of life. Sometimes the ball bounces your way and sometimes it doesn't."

Currently the ball is bouncing McClennan's way. His Cleveland rooted company has branches in Columbus and Akron and is growing along with a trend away from chemicals and toward organic products, such as corn gluten, a byproduct from making corn syrup. Spreading corn gluten in the early spring will help keep crabgrass at bay by feeding the soil that feeds the plants.

"Healthy grass will fight weeds," he said. "If you take care of the soil, it will grow healthier grass."

A problem with crabgrass is that people call all native plants they don't like growing in their lawn, crabgrass, he said. That means they may be using the wrong product to try and control it.

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Spring is here with lawn mowing season drawing near: Valley Views