There's no need to defend your turf: A carpet of lawn -- even if it includes clover, violets and a smattering of dandelions -- is a beautiful, time-honored tradition, sweeping back to the age of village greens. For lots of people, lawns are all there is to gardening. But lawns are also the gentle background to the angles and architecture in our residential landscapes, the soothing green swath around a home. Patches of lawn knit our neighborhoods together. They frame our flower gardens and give kids a place to play.

"There is something about our vision of home -- lawn is attached to that," says Chrysanthe Broikos, a curator at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., where a gigantic indoor lawn of artificial turf was the centerpiece of the museum's summer installation. "Developers are putting more homes on less land," she says. "People are willing to have a smaller lawn, but they still want a piece of it."

Working with the Rockwell Group's LAB, a professional architecture and design studio, the museum created a lawn that became much more than a great expanse of grass. Hammocks and deck chairs were scattered everywhere. Virtual fireflies lit the scene at night. Crickets chirped in the soundtrack, and the bell of an ice cream truck could be heard in the distance, along with the gentle roar of lawn mowers. Visitors felt right at home, says Cathy Frankel, the museum's vice president of exhibitions and collections. She was pleased to see kids rolling in the grass: It seemed to come naturally. A lawn is "a place to take your shoes off, relax and create memories," she says, and visitors took the exhibit's cues without hesitation -- they spread picnic blankets, played lawn games and simply hung out.

Lawns are big business. Americans spend billions of dollars every year on lawn care -- including the cost of buying and maintaining lawn mowers and investing in seed, sod, hoses, sprinklers, irrigation systems, fertilizers and pesticides. The average lawn takes up 20% to 30% of most home lots, says Ben Hamza, director of technical operations at TruGreen, a national lawn care company.

If you mow your lawn yourself, you're probably committed to doing the job once a week during the gardening season, and if you pay someone else to do it, you're probably paying $30 to $80 or more, according to lawn research data for 2019. "The desire to maintain a healthy outdoor living space has not changed" over the years, Hamza says, "but more people are busy, and they don't have the time or knowledge to take care of their grass. More people are looking for help."

Neighborhood teenagers who cut the grass for pocket money are a vanishing breed: They're being replaced by pros. About 100,000 landscaping companies mow and maintain residential lawns across the country, and the industry is growing. TruGreen handles lawn, tree and shrub care for about two million residential customers in the U.S. and Canada.

Healthy turf is the best defense against lawn problems, Hamza says. A healthy lawn out-competes weeds, helps control erosion on your property and limits runoff into overburdened storm drains. Proper mowing -- don't scalp your lawn -- encourages grasses to put down a deep and thriving root system that doesn't demand constant watering and tolerates droughts with ease.

Lawn-care customers wish to be good stewards of the environment, Hamza says. They want environmentally safe and sustainable solutions to the challenges of maintaining a good-looking lawn. Protecting pollinators, including bees, is a priority, Hamza says, and, when pesticides are called for, customers expect lawn professionals to use them responsibly and with discretion. Lawn care products should also be safe for people, as well as for pets.

It takes time, effort and an investment for a lawn to thrive, but the consensus is obviously that it's worth the effort. A lawn doesn't have to be very big, and it doesn't need to be as meticulously groomed as a golf-course fairway. And it always works: Large or small, front or back, secluded or wide open, lawns never go out of style.

Sources

-- Your local university extension office, and master gardeners who volunteer for extension services, are great sources of information about lawn care in your area. Search for "lawn care" and "extension" and your state to find advice, bulletins, lawn care calendars and more.

-- TruGreen is a national, professional lawn care company. For lawn care basics and more information, see trugreen.com.

-- The National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., is a museum of architecture, engineering and design. The summer exhibit Lawn, and other exhibits at the museum, explore our relationships to our homes and to the landscape. For more information, visit nbm.org.

Herbs are essential garden plants, as pretty as they are useful, so when you're choosing herbs for your garden, don't just think about taste -- remember color, fragrance, and texture, and give herbs plenty of room in your garden plans.

There's an herb for every recipe, but really no recipe for an herb garden -- the important thing is to grow what you like and to find places and ways for herbs to thrive. An herb garden might include old-fashioned roses for rose-petal jam or tea, lemongrass to freshen up Asian recipes, or sesame plants for your baking. You might grow a row of tall, cheerful sunflowers and harvest seeds both for yourself and for the birds. You don't even need to do any digging: Simply place a pot of rosemary on the back stairs where you will enjoy its fragrance as you come and go.

The choice of plants for herb gardens "is wide open," says Gayle Engels, special projects director of the American Botanical Council, which specializes in herbal medicine information but promotes herbs and herb gardening widely. Herbs from around the world flourish in 25 medicinal and culinary herb gardens at the ABC's headquarters in Austin, Texas. The demonstration gardens are pretty, but they have a purpose. The goal is to inspire herb growing and suggest new ways to use herbs.

Engels doesn't have a handy list of recommended herbs for everyone. It "depends on the individual and what they want," she says. Many herbs are beautiful and versatile: Engels loves calendulas for their bright petals, which are dazzling in a salad. They're certainly appropriate in a culinary garden, but they're also grown for their medicinal uses: Engels makes a soothing skin oil from calendula petals and almond oil. Mint also works hard in both culinary and medicinal herb gardens -- it is a classic herb for summer drinks and salads, but a big bundle of mint leaves can also be used to make a first-rate soaking solution for tired feet, Engels says.

Most herbs grow best in a sunny spot. "It doesn't have to be the best soil ever," Engels says, as long as it drains well. Many annual herbs -- parsley, basil, cilantro, dill and others -- flourish in summer's heat, and do not need pampering to grow and thrive. Perennial herbs -- sage, oregano, thyme, lavender, mint, chives and others -- are also easy to grow, and they benefit from pruning and harvesting.

Experience is an excellent teacher, Engels says. You'll learn by doing, and by persevering. If you've been trying to grow an herb that doesn't seem to thrive for you, try moving it to a different spot. In the AHC gardens in Texas, if an herb still doesn't do well after a couple of moves, they replace it with a plant that prefers their climate's hot, dry conditions.

You don't need 40 acres and a tractor to have a successful herb garden. A large flowerpot will serve for several parsley, basil and dill plants. Plant labels may recommend generous spacing, but when you're harvesting regularly, it's all right to crowd herbs close together. Many herbs grow well alongside ornamental plants; try planting zinnias in with dill or basil, for example, or grow a border of parsley, chives or lavender around a flower bed. Remember, many common garden flowers -- daylilies, dianthus, pansies, nasturtiums -- are traditional herb-garden plants, too.

These days, gardeners are expanding their herb selections to include spices commonly used in Indian, Middle Eastern and Vietnamese recipes, Engels says. It is easy to give them a try, either by planting seeds, getting cuttings from friends or buying transplants. "Push the envelope. Try new things," she says. "It's more of an art than a science."

Engels teaches herb-gardening classes, and she says her students are also looking for new ways to use familiar herbs. Lots of gardeners ask her about herbal teas, about infusions and elixirs made with herbs, and about the benefits of herbs for pollinators. The flowers of many herbs, including dill and fennel, attract butterflies to the garden, and their leaves and flowers are a source of food for the caterpillars. It can be disconcerting to discover caterpillars eating your parsley, so plant enough to share, she suggests -- vegetable gardens are even more productive when there's a thriving pollinator population in and around your garden.

Herb gardens have their roots deep in the past, but they're full of modern-day adventure, Engels says. They're rich in the fragrance, flavors and cultures of faraway places. No matter where they come from, you can enjoy them to the fullest in an herb garden right in your own back yard.

SOURCES

-- The American Botanical Council is a great source of information about herbs of all kinds. The Council specializes in herbal medicine information and supports sustainable gardening. The Council's headquarters in Austin, Texas, is open for tours. For information, abc.herbalgram.org.

-- The Herb Society of America is another excellent source of information promoting the "knowledge, use, and delight" of herbs. For information, herbsociety.org.

Butterflies are everyone's favorite pollinators. Attracting them to the garden is easy: Grow flowers, and they will come.

To a butterfly, your garden is not just a pretty place; it's a habitat, and your colorful flowers are a nectar-rich source of sustenance. Many garden plants, including trees, shrubs and vines, are also host plants for butterfly larvae, fascinating caterpillars that, in time, pupate and emerge through metamorphosis to populate the garden with butterflies. When you plant both nectar and host plants, you're growing your own butterflies.

You don't need a big garden to enjoy the pleasure of many kinds of butterflies. A pot full of zinnias or cosmos will attract butterflies to a tiny patio garden. A window box planted with bright lantanas welcomes butterflies to a garden on a balcony in the big city. Urban or rural, beds filled with annual and perennial flowers, blooming in succession from spring through frost, will put you right on the stage for a fluttering pageant of butterflies. In gardens of any description, simply being able to follow the lifecycles of butterflies enriches your experience of the great outdoors.

When you plant flowers for butterflies, be bold. Large flowers, with big landing pads, are easy for butterflies to see, and they're great nectar sources. Daisies, coneflowers, lantanas, sedum, verbenas and black-eyed Susans all attract butterflies. Plant them in drifts of three or more plants, and butterflies will spot them from afar and sail in to sip eagerly from these handsome sources of nectar.

Garden phlox, a perennial plant with bold clusters of purple, pink or white flowers, is among the best butterfly plants. It is hardy and easy to grow, and it blooms for weeks in the heat of summer. Horticulturists at Mt. Cuba Center in Delaware made a two-year study of 94 different kinds of phlox that thrive in sun and shade, evaluating them for their garden performance and appeal to butterflies. They found that phlox Jeana, a strain discovered in Nashville, Tennessee, was the single most attractive to butterflies, but you can scarcely go wrong with any kind of phlox.

Anise hyssop, a good-looking perennial in the mint family, also attracts the lively attention of butterflies, hummingbirds and other pollinators. A single plant produces many flowering stems that stand quite tall in the tumult of a flower bed and bloom for months. They're hardy, undemanding, drought-tolerant plants. Long-blooming flowers, or an assemblage of different flowers that bloom from spring through frost, attract and maintain a thriving and varied butterfly population. Salvias, known for their long-lasting blooms, also earn high marks for their appeal to butterflies and hummingbirds. Ageratum, calendulas, and all kinds of daisy-flowered plants should be on your butterfly garden list. From late summer through fall, the purple flowers of joe-pye weed are covered with butterflies.

Milkweeds are critical flowers for butterflies, especially for the striking orange-and-black monarch butterflies, which lay their eggs on these plants. Milkweed is the only food their larvae eat. Without milkweeds -- including the brilliant orange-flowering butterfly milkweed Asclepias tuberosa -- there would be no monarchs. They bloom on and off throughout the summer, sustaining generations of butterflies and other pollinators. Milkweed plants can be found at native-plant nurseries, and they are not hard to grow from seed.

The flowers, trees and shrubs native to your region (and thus adapted to your climate and conditions) will naturally attract butterflies. Many species of aster, goldenrod, bee balm, lobelia, coreopsis, blazing star, ironweed and other natives flourish on the borders of farm fields and in the rough-and-tumble right-of-way of highways and country roads. Cultivars of these natives, chosen for their size, flower color or good garden behavior, are excellent additions to butterfly gardens.

When your garden includes host plants for caterpillars, it gives you an even deeper appreciation for the delicate butterflies they become. Voracious green-and-black-striped swallowtail caterpillars can decimate a parsley plant or a stand of fennel in no time, but watching them grow and emerge from the pupae as gorgeous swallowtails is worth losing a plant or two. To compensate in advance for any loss, simply plant more than you need.

The Xerces Society describes pollinators -- bees, butterflies, flies, beetles, moths, wasps and even some birds and bats -- as "the little things that run the world." They are "indisputably the most important animals on Earth," says the society, which works to conserve and protect butterflies and the other invertebrate pollinators. Like other pollinators, butterflies play a central role in agriculture, including backyard vegetable gardens. Butterflies and their caterpillars are an essential food for birds, which add yet another dimension to the beauty and interest of your garden. Remember, don't use pesticides in your butterfly garden: You will deprive yourself of much of the wonder of your garden's glorious show.

SOURCES

-- The Xerces Society (xerces.org) has lots of resources for gardeners on its website, including regional plant lists identifying the best nectar and host plants for butterflies and pollinators of all kinds.

-- The Mt. Cuba Center is a botanical garden in Hockessin, Delaware, with a special research interest in native plants and conservation. The center's reports on phlox, coreopsis, bee balm, coneflowers and asters are available on its website, mtcubacenter.org.