Be kind to yourself and your yard.

You work from nine to five, pick up the kids, take one to soccer practice and one to piano lessons, have dinner, attend a parent meeting at school, come home, do laundry, watch the late news, go to bed, get up the next day, and start all over again. When you do have spare time, who wants to spend it pushing a lawn mower or spreading fertilizer? Neatly clipped emerald lawns might look simple to keep up, but everyone knows hours of maintenance and many chemical applications are responsible for that uniform green look. Bruno Moser, a specialist in landscaping, Purdue University Extension, West Lafayette, Ind., urges homeowners to try something a little different.

"If you think about what you're looking over when you look out the front of the house, it's this very short, green grass. It's historically been the landscape we use in the bulk of our front yard. I'd like to suggest that you reduce the grass area, create some flower beds, create some shrub beds that are a little bit taller and that give you a background. With the use of mulches and some perennial plants that are very low maintenance, you can have borders that are not high maintenance. In fact, instead of spending every Saturday mowing your yard, you might have some time to go out and play golf or do other things."

Moser says homeowners should think of their front yards as something they want to look at and enjoy, not as something available only for public viewing and that is indistinguishable from the neighbor's. The public, including your neighbors, does look, though. "I've seen this over and over again. When someone does a creative treatment of their front yard in a neighborhood, it spreads down the street. My experience has been that it actually has a positive effect on the neighbors, and very often they'll follow the lead."

Moser recommends selecting vigorous plants hardy to your area. There are many landscape materials and...