How do you live in your outdoor space? Do kids play in the yard? Do you like to gather with friends? Are you a gardener? How will all of this change over time? Diana Grundeen of Trio Landscaping asks a lot of questions the first time she meets a potential client. She’s gathering the information she needs to create spaces that allow people to live their best outdoor lives at home — now and into the future.

Grundeen has 25 years of experience in the industry, including 12 years running Trio, her own landscape design business based in Minneapolis. Grundeen pictures yards as outdoor rooms, with different areas for different purposes, that bring people into the natural world. For her, yards should keep up with the changing needs of the people who use that space. Today you may want a sizable turf lawn where the kids can play. But kids grow up. Will you need that space when they do?

Grundeen speaks from experience. Her front yard was once mostly conventional turf lawn. Her sons used to play there when they were younger. In 2019, she decided to replace the turf with a rain garden and a patch of pollinator-friendly lawn, today a beautiful clover patch. There was some familial pushback. Her sons said they needed a place to play catch. So she asked when was the last time they played catch out there. They couldn’t remember. In the end, they helped tear out the lawn.

In her backyard, years ago, the playset turned into an unintended trellis for pumpkins growing in the vegetable garden. The playset is gone now, replaced by trees and plants. The vegetable garden is still there, with a more recent trellis going up to the kitchen window. “Everything evolves,” Grundeen says.

Which brings her back to lawns. Lawn space can evolve, too. For a lot of people, the lawn is what Grundeen calls “default space.” It’s just there. During a consult, Grundeen typically asks how much lawn people need. Often there’s a pause, and then a reply something like “I never thought about that…”  Grundeen wants people to think about their lawn intentionally. Sometimes — actually, quite often  — the work people do to keep up their conventional turf lawn is not commensurate with the time they actually spend using the lawn.

“The lawn is the neediest child in your landscape,” she says. “It needs to be watered, it needs to be mowed, and the more you water, the more you mow, not to mention fertilizer…”

Grundeen will discuss other options, including reducing the size of the lawn or replacing lawn space with shrubs that use far less water, or even a bee lawn. She says a lot of people have heard of bee lawns, but don’t always know much more than the buzzword (yes, pun intended). Bee lawns incorporate low-growing flowering plants that provide food for pollinators. They also require less mowing and watering than conventional turf — very helpful information for people who may not want to spend so much of their outdoor time doing maintenance!

Grundeen notes several trends in recent years. More people now want to incorporate pollinator-friendly plants; 15 years ago, many people didn’t even want bees in their yards. Since the pandemic, Grundeen says, she’s seen many more people who want to be able to use and enjoy their yards to the fullest. This includes front yards. More people are creating social spaces there. Once she was driving by a client’s home and one of the children was getting a violin lesson in the outdoor patio space she created out front.

And that is exactly what Grundeen wants to see: people living their best lives outdoors at home.

— Aleli Balagtas, Metro Blooms Editor

Trio Landscaping, a Metro Blooms sponsor,  is a Minneapolis-based landscape consultation, design, and project management  and installation business.

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