Kill Your Lawn!

Back in the “olden days”, a sweeping expansive lawn was a sign of wealth.  Why? Because it was a wasteland, of no productive value.  Only the truly wealthy could afford to own land that produced nothing and harbored no creatures.  While a lush green lawn can still be beautiful, is it worth the impact – the water usage, the pesticides and herbicides necessary to maintain a pristine, weed-free landscape?

It turns out that grass is the largest irrigated crop in the United States!  With 40% of insects and 30% of North American birds in decline, biodiversity in our landscape has become urgent.  Native plants in particular are critical to increasing biodiversity, reducing invasives, and drawing down atmospheric CO2.  Other benefits include reducing water usage, supporting pollinators and expanding food webs.

Doug Tallamy, Author of Nature’s Best Hope (available in the church library), and founder of HomeGrownNationalPark.org, urges us to replace all, or at least some of our lawns with a variety of native plants. 78% of property is privately owned, so we can have a huge impact.  His goal is that we preserve 30% or our private property in native plantings by the year 2030.

Experts are urging us to kill our lawn – or at least make it more wildlife and native plant friendly.  Dan Wilder, on the Great Garden Grow Along, suggested 3 “gradients of ecology” based on how far you are willing to go.

1. Keep your lawn but reduce its negative impact on the environment: (This approach won’t improve the environment but it will not cause harm).   Increase the mowing height to 3-4 inches. This allows for better water and nutrient collection and lusher, greener grass.  Avoid neonicotinoid coated seeds which have not been proven more effective but have been shown to be harmful to local wildlife. Rather than fertilizing, aerate and top dress with compost. This will keep the fertilizer run-off out of our water system.
2. Replace you lawn with non-native lawn alternatives,such as Eco-Lawn (which is slow growing, requiring less water and only needs to be mown about once a year) or white clover (which is more heat and drought tolerant than grass, and has lovely white flowers which attract butterflies and bees bumble bees).
3. Replace your lawn with natives.  Carex, American Heal-all (Prunella Vulgaris) and blue violet are several lovely options, but my personal favorite is the wild strawberry, It withstands foot traffic, has sweet little white flowers in the spring, and produces delicious bursts of flavor in the form of tiny strawberries all summer long. Doug Tallamy tells us that wild strawberries are hosts to at least 87 native caterpillars and provide some value to generalist bees. Dan Wilder calls them the “lawn of the future”. I love going out in the early morning to pick wild strawberries to put in my breakfast bowl! They are delicious in lemonade or a summer dessert.  And the neighbor kids love to pick them.  (I can just see the kids coming out after church to run thru our new replacement lawn looking for wild strawberries to snack on!).

Another option is to get rid of the open space altogether and plant native shrubs and trees.  If you have a big space, Tallamy tells us that the greatest contributor to the environment is the oak tree, which he calls a “Keystone” plant for the many organisms it supports and the carbon it sequestors. He compares it to the Gingko, which, although beautiful, provides ZERO beneficial habitat to birds or other native creatures. If that seems overwhelming, consider clipping off a corner, side yard, or hard to mow section of your lawn and starting with that.  Then register the land you converted to www.HomeGrownNationalPark.org , and you can see how we are doing!

—Lisa Kjaer