What will the neighbors think? It didn’t take long for that question to become front of mind when Sara Weaner Cooper and her husband, Evan Cooper, bought their first home, in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, in the spring of 2022. One question that answered itself right away: From the first pass with the mower over their 5,000 square feet of turfgrass, the couple knew that mowing a big lawn every week was not for them. But neither was the possibility of being seen as inconsiderate neighbors in their new community.
How could they reinvent their front yard without making an unwelcome impression? This would be their first attempt at making a garden, but Sara Cooper was no stranger to the subject of lawn alternatives. She has vivid memories from childhood of a backyard with “all these fun nooks in which to play, get lost in and explore.” That yard was the work of her father, Larry Weaner, a landscape designer in Glenside, Pennsylvania, for more than 40 years and a leader in the ecological landscape design movement in the United States.
Since 2019, Sara Cooper, 34, has been the executive director of New Directions in the American Landscape, an organization Weaner founded in 1990 to promote ecology-based landscape design and practice. There, she develops and coordinates educational programs, many for a professional audience. But in response to increasing inquiries from lay people, she had an idea that will come to fruition in December, when the organization kicks off a multisession o.