You needn’t rely on noxious chemicals for lush and healthy grass

Corn gluten is the base of a natural lawn fertilizer that suppresses broadleaf weeds. WOW! Plus. $99.99 for four 20-pound bags. Gardensalive.com.

The ideal lawn, as weed-free as a putting green, may not be such an ideal after all—especially if it requires destructive fertilizers and pesticides, plus heavy watering, to achieve. Consider the environmental costs. Herbicides and insecticides not only do in pesky weeds and bugs, but they also kill the good guys: earthworms and microorganisms essential to the life of the soil, as well as pollinators such as bees. These poisons also threaten the health of humans: They have been implicated in cancers and neurological problems, especially in children under age 5.

Once the soil is depleted of its natural nutrients, what to do? Why, pour on the chemical fertilizer! Yet 60 percent of the nitrates in lawn fertilizers end up in our groundwater, damaging the health of ponds, lakes, and bays.

There has to be a more earth-friendly way to have a nice lawn. And there is. An organic lawn is actually easier on you as well as the environment. In time, a healthier lawn will automatically crowd out many of the weeds. Try taking these steps to kick the chemical habit.

The First Recliner Made for the Great Outdoors

View the Whitley Recliner slide show

As far as I could tell, my college neighbor Dan liked just two things: lounging around and being outside. Many an afternoon when I headed to class I'd see him out on the patio sprawled out on a beaten-up sofa, sunning himself. If only he lived next door to me now, I'd tell him first, get a job, and second, that La-Z-Boy (lazboy.com), along with Brown Jordan International (bji.com), have created an outdoor perch that would let him do what he enjoys most in style.

Called the Whitley recliner, the seat has a built in footrest that can be adjusted to three positions—upright, elevated leg, and full recline. It has a rustproof aluminum frame covered in all-weather resinweave, which means he could leave the chair out in the rain without fear of rot. The recliner's arms and legs are reinforced with decorative, cast-aluminum ends, so it's OK if he gets klutzy and bangs it into something, which he would, while its red cushions—fluffy and able to withstand hours of use at a time—are upholstered in Solarium, a quick-drying, weather-resistant fabric.

Fertilize Without the Smell

TerraCycle offers a range of earth-friendly fertilizers.

Gardeners like worms because they aerate soil, priming it for planting; as the critters burrow, they also leave behind nutrient-rich castings that fertilize the vegetation. So it's genius that concentrated, liquefied worm excrement is the secret ingredient in TerraCycle, a line of all-natural plant food. The odorless, spray-on fertilizers are formulated for a range of flowers and grasses; being organic, they are both kinder to the earth than chemical-based options and, according to some experts, are also more effective than their synthetic counterparts.

The idea for TerraCycle arose in 2001, when Tom Szaky, then a 19-year-old Princeton freshman, happened upon a friend's compost bin, which contained a mixture of soil, worms, and food waste. The friend used the resulting “worm poop” (aka, the broken-down organic matter and excrement) as fertilizer. It occurred to Szaky that eco-friendly consumers might be interested in the benefits of the resulting mixture, but probably wouldn't want the hassle and smell involved in making it. A business was born; Szaky and co-founder Jon Beyer dropped out of Princeton to focus on the venture. The duo successfully launched the outfit on their own, even turning down a $1 million prize after winning a business-plan contest funded by a venture capital firm because the investors wanted to work only with Szaky. Today, aside from food for a variety of plants, TerraCycle turns out everything from lawn fertilizer to deer repellent.

Monet’s Water Garden Redux

Click here to see the Giverny Slide Show

I’m gonna ask you to think about riveting blends of color for a moment. What just popped up on your visual screen? The brilliant fall leaves that just blanketed your lawn, the Sunday comics, the neon billboards of Times Square? Or was it perhaps a bowl of M&Ms? If it was, I’ll forgive you—you probably have a lot of Halloween candy left over.

What comes to mind for me is Claude Monet’s paintings of water lilies—those Impressionistic masterpieces that were inspired by the interplay of light, shadow, water and plant life in and around the landscapes he and his gardeners crafted on his property just north of Paris, in Giverny, France. Using large brush strokes and multiple layers of paint, Monet painted the enchanting scenery that surrounded his home over and over again during the final 30 years of his life (from about 1893 until the early 1920s).