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Lawn Alternatives

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  • Designed for Every Property Type Project Basics

Address

Islip

Service type

Lawn Replacement

  • Designed for Every Property Type Project Summary

Project Summary

The Islip front yard was a prototypical Long Island landscape: lawn, one token non-native tree, and not much else. The ask wasn’t to go wild — it was to find an aesthetic that fits a suburban neighborhood while still making an ecological statement. Beautiful and impactful, without standing out for the wrong reasons.

Spadefoot replaced the front lawn with a sweeping planting of purple love grass — a native grass that forms soft, billowy masses that shift with the breeze and catch the light. The result reads like a plush, living cushion: approachable to neighbors, unmistakably intentional to anyone who looks twice.

It’s proof that ecological landscaping doesn’t have to announce itself loudly to do its job. Sometimes the most powerful thing a front yard can do is be beautiful in a way that makes people stop and ask what’s growing there.

  • The Challenge What They Called Us For

The challenge

Site condition when you arrived
A standard front lawn of turfgrass in a sunny location, requiring heavy irrigation, regular mowing, and chemical applications to maintain.
A low-maintenance front yard that would support wildlife, bring aesthetic beauty, and have a wild but highly intentional look.
  • What We Did

Services & approach

First step on site
Removed the existing turfgrass lawn.
Replaced the lawn with Purple Love Grass (Eragrostis spectabilis), a native grass named for its purple-toned flowers that bloom in summer and last into fall. Added a foundation garden bed of native grasses, flowers, and shrubs that prefer warm, dry conditions — including Butterfly Milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa), Tickseed (Coreopsis verticillata), and Goldenrods (Solidago spp.).
Lawn replacement with a drought-tolerant native grass; foundation garden bed designed for visual balance, contrast, and variation, with blooms sequenced across every season.
  • Natural Purification Design Elements To Highlight

Visual & functional highlights

Key visual features worth showcasing
A sweeping front yard of Purple Love Grass paired with a foundation garden bed of native prairie plants — designed for visual balance, contrast, and variation, with blooms providing interest and color throughout the year. The result is a stunning, modern landscaped look.
Purple Love Grass (Eragrostis spectabilis) for purple-toned summer-to-fall flowers; Butterfly Milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa), Tickseed (Coreopsis verticillata), and Goldenrods (Solidago spp.) for season-long bloom and pollinator value.
The Purple Love Grass front yard — low-growing, drought-tolerant once established, requires no irrigation, and only needs to be cut down once a year.
With prairie plants like Butterfly Milkweed, Tickseed, and Goldenrods in the new garden beds, the client now reports seeing more butterflies, bees, and bird activity than ever before. The Purple Love Grass is attracting new wildlife too, including Dark Eyed Juncos that come in waves in the wintertime to feast on the grass’s seeds.
  • Streetscape Design Results & Outcomes

What changed

What changed
A high-maintenance turfgrass lawn became a sustainable native landscape with season-long blooms and habitat. The new front yard requires no irrigation and only minimal mowing.
Eliminated the need for heavy irrigation, regular mowing, and chemical applications that the previous lawn required.
Increased butterfly, bee, and bird activity reported by the client. Dark Eyed Juncos visit in winter to feed on the Purple Love Grass seeds.
Eliminated irrigation entirely. Mowing reduced to once per year. No chemical inputs needed.

John Anderson

Spadefoot completely transformed our backyard. They removed all the invasive plants and replaced them with beautiful native species.

  • Where This Applies Photos & Media

Project Photos & Media
  • Designed for Every Property Type Notes

Internal notes

Sensitivities

Anything to avoid referencing publicly? (client privacy, permit status, unresolved issues)

Frank’s notes

Anything Frank said about this project that should inform the write-up

Status

Ready to publish / Needs photos / Needs testimonial / Hold

Wetland Pool

They were interested in biodiversity, but also concerned that, you know, it would, it wouldn’t look good. Basically, they wanted to make sure that, you know, although they wanted to help the environment, they also wanted to make sure that their, you know, their summer, you know, hideaway, pool, hide, it didn’t look like it was like in the mess of them, you know, in the midst of a messy jungle.

Paid careful attention to layering, so we didn’t use some taller native plants, but those are all towards the back, and as you got closer to the to the to the build structures you had, you know, successfully shorter plant species that we used, a combination of plants to ensure that there’s something almost always in bloom. And, you know, we created a subtle bioswale area to take on extra stormwater from from like, the nearby built structures that would otherwise flood the area.