I don't have Lyme disease, and I don't live in an at risk area, but I was curious, so I followed the link. Here's some additional information:
It seems most of the risk is from ticks carried into your yard by white tailed deer and white footed mice. And also ticks apparently like shade and humidity?*
Suggestions to reduce risk include:
Creating a three foot wide woodchip strip between wooded areas and your lawn/ areas that you frequent to deter ticks from migrating toward those areas. This is a point that they kept mentioning, so I guess it's a big one.
Keep your lawn area mowed.
Remove leaf litter, tall weeds, etc from your yard.
Discourage rodent activity. They mention sealing holes, I would imagine this also includes being careful about where and how you compost.
Keep your pets out of the woods. Practically, if you have a cat this means keep it indoors or build a catio.
Plant things deer don't like eating or build a fence. In my experience, they don't like herbs or alliums, and there's lots of ornamental options here. They will munch on native species, but they don't seem to go after them as much as some popular ornamental plants, which seem like deer candy.
Trim trees and shrubs to let in more light. This means you need to know the difference between a thinning cut and a heading cut.
Adopt less water-demanding gardening techniques. Like, let your grass go dormant in the summer and grow plants that can thrive with the rain fall pattern of your area.
The article also says that there's some evidence that creating increased biodiversity through native plantings may decrease the number of ticks. I hope more people look into this and share their findings.
They specifically mentioned pachysandra a few times as a BAD IDEA. I'm curious because this is a fairly tall ground cover- what about shorter ones? Like blue star creeper or creeping thyme or Corsican mint?
They also mentioned using pesticides to create a barrier.
Here's their suggestions for landscape alternatives if you don't want to have a manicured lawn:
This was all news to me, because as I said, the species that carry ticks aren't around here, so I've never had to think about it. I'm really glad it's being brought up, and I think this is a great example of why context matters when it comes to gardening advice.
* I've gotten a tick once in my life, and it was when I was on the other side of the state, which happens to have white tailed deer instead of the black tailed deer we have here. I've never found ticks on any of our animals, except the sheep we had when I was a kid. This is to say, I've almost zero real life experience, I'm just passing on the info I found through that link because in my experience, relatively few people follow links vs read long posts.
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