Lawns - Desert Dunes or Native Eco Systems

Celebrating Earth Day and wildlife

Is a Sahara-type landscape (shifting, sultry, savorless) what you see when you look at your monoculture lawn? That is what it looks like and how it functions for our pollinators and other native wildlife.

So why do so many of us find lawns, and the idea of monoculture lawns which come with the cost of labor and money, that contribute (through mowing) to noise and air pollution, ground and water pollution, and loss of life (from the use of pesticides, insecticides, fertilizers), desirable?

An article in the Green Energy Times (Lawn Transformation: Out with the Old, in with the New) reports that "In Vermont, the median yard space is 73,979 square feet, which is the largest yard space within the United States..." The report goes on to suggest that perhaps it is time to create new traditions with how we use our green space to reflect the values of today.

Do we not have anything better to do with our weekends than to tend to a plant that needs constant attention and care year after year?

How did we become enamored (marked by foolish or unreasoning fondness) of monoculture nonnative lawns? Why did we become enamored with an imported ‘product’, and an imported idea, a sales pitch for sod which unlike good investments is a forever labor and money-hungry well that gives little to nothing in return, and for which we seldom utilize its minimum offering; when we could instead learn to love native grasses and native flowering plants that do not need anywhere near as much care, and money, and provide a much greater aesthetic, are more diverse to look at, and feeds the ecosystem of life?

To answer those questions, let's first look at the dictionary definitions of Paradigm.

Paradigm: A typical example or pattern of something;

- a worldview underlying theories and methodology of a particular scientific subject: the discovery of universal gravitation became the paradigm of successful science.

a model: there is a new paradigm for cars coming soon in the world
a standard, perspective, a way of looking at something.

When you change paradigms, you’re changing how you look at something.

A person’s paradigm is how they see the world based on all the information they have gathered and the beliefs that they possess. Paradigms help us to understand our world.

Changing our personal paradigms requires a shift in how we see the world.

Changing our personal paradigms can open up personal growth, new and better opportunities. Changing our personal paradigms takes time and effort.

My hypothesis is, put simply without going into the long history of how we became subservient to the ‘idea’ that golf course-like lawns were the model to aim work for, is that we were sold the idea through advertising, snobbery, and a bit of hoodwink.

Like many fashions of the day, once the model was established, glorified, and sold to the general public, it became the de facto along with the 1950 era American dream of a small house with a white picketed fence. And like our small house, lawns have grown in size considerably, such that it is not uncommon to see a single-family home surrounded by enough treeless, shrub-less lawn to nearly allow for an official NFL football game to being played upon. Never mind the tractor size lawnmower required to mow this super-sized seldom walked or played upon the surface. Our yardstick for living up to the Joneses utilizes blades of grass for hash marks.

And heaven forbid anything else interferes with our nondescript homogenous castle moat. One sign of a yellow-flowered dandelion might lower our social stratification. Though for a child, a handful of dandelions picked and bundled in their small hands and held up to mom cannot help but propagate a smile and create social status no uniform lawn could ever do.

Speaking of children, what effect are we imposing on them by applying insecticides, fungicides, herbicides (biologically active compounds), and chemical fertilizers on our lawns, that are harmful to pollinators, and other beneficial insects, fungi, and other life forms?

Might we change our aesthetic paradigm? The new beautiful (lawn) can be less work, less expensive, less harmful for humans and other forms of life, more diverse, more appealing to the eye, less homogeneous. For those competitive folks perhaps you can use native plant diversity for your lawn yardstick hash marks to measure up to or set a new high bar mark for the Joneses.

Once native shrubs, perennials, and trees are established in the right places (accounting for soil type and wetness, sunlight duration) we can reduce lawn care (time and money) to little more than an afterthought.

We can traverse upon pathways (think the Secret Garden story) amongst plants and insects that have co-evolved over thousands of years in the location of our homes; plants of various heights, shapes, colors, and fragrances along with butterflies, native bees, a multitude of pollinators all supporting a web of life and offering a new set of neighbors to become acquainted with and enjoy their company.

By replacing most of the sterile moat of nonnative single-species grass with masses of flowering plants that provide continuous blooming throughout the season, offering forage and host sources for insects and other wildlife, we gain free time to utilize our backyards and to see life flourishing in a biological balance of beauty.

Think of those small tender hands bundling flowers for mom nearly every week. Think of those inquisitive eyes searching for and finding new life forms of intriguing shapes, colors, and behavior foraging and creating homes in the native plants in your backyard. Think about how you are helping shape a new generation’s paradigm - in how they see the world and the interconnectedness in nature.

Dunes or Native Eco Systems? What is your lawn model, landscape paradigm today? What will it be tomorrow? Based on what we know today from science, about the earth, what standards for life and lawns will you adhere to? Will you opt for biodiversity and ecosytem function in your yard by reducing lawn size and planting more native plants?

Supersized alien monotone colored and shaped dependent paradigm or unique, local, colorful, family-oriented plants that provide a true sense of place. Your yard is your palette. Will it be a landscape of sterile grass like the shifting, sultry, savorless sand of the Sahara, or a new garden of Eden, a secret garden for your family to enjoy? Will you be one of the leaders in the forefront of the “new beautiful” model of front and backyards? (”New Beautiful” horticulture coined by John Hayden).

Might we celebrate our homestead and fight insect decline with Pollinator Victory Gardens? Pollinators and many other life forms are awaiting the invite to your yard.

Bring Nature Home again for personal growth and better opportunities for us all.

"If half of American lawns were replaced with native plants, we would create the equivalent of a 20 million-acre national park, bigger than Yellowstone or 100 times bigger than Shenandoah National Park." ~Doug Tallamy

"Urban ecologists Susannah Lerman and Joan Milam at the University of Massachusetts Amherst performed an urban-suburban lawn study in Springfield, Massachusetts in 2014. They found that mowing at no lower than 3 inches, changing the mowing interval from once a week to every two weeks, and leaving lawns untreated with herbicides provided a diversity of “spontaneous” flowers, such as dandelions and clover, that offer nectar and pollen to bees and other pollinators. One of the main findings from Lerman and Milam is that “when lawns are not intensively managed, lawn flowers can serve as wildlife habitat and contribute to networks of urban green spaces.” (UMass Amherst Research Next).

A federal study found that raising mowing height to at least 2.5 inches, mowing only every 2-3 weeks, and minimizing pesticide use can increase flower abundance by 70-300 percent (US Forest Service, 2015). Doing so also supports ground-nesting bees by reducing compaction." (From Great Barrington, Mass. Pollinator Action Plan).

Oh dear, dear sweet backyard. How I have neglected you. Starved you of your native diet, allowing mostly barren grass to grow upon your tired soils. I have rarely visited you except to drive an ear-splitting gas spewing mower about your back.

AH, but now the virus has cornered me. With a shortened leash I have little choice but to visit, to wander, to explore my own small but always welcoming backyard.

I now have time and interest to plant native plants especially those that sustain the food web by feeding essential caterpillars and other insects. I am thrilled to help sustain nature's functional ecosystem that supports all life – right here at home. I can be part of small efforts by lots of people to help our soil and ecosystems recover.

I now have less lawn and more native habitat, less yard work, more yard life observations, and enjoyment.

Now every day I follow the paths (the only areas I mow now) and find more butterflies, dragonflies, beetles, pollinating flies, predatory, and other beneficial insects, all in my once overlooked backyard.

She welcomes me home, and wonders where I have been all this time.

Related posts:

The American Obsession with Lawns by Scientific American

Meet the Ecologist Who Wants You to Unleash the Wild on Your Backyard

Favorite flower of children

Creating Pollinator Gardens - Let's Go Native

Create a Backyard Sanctuary for Pollinators, and other insects, birds, wildlife.

List of 1,458 Vermont Native Plants, their attributes, and the insects they attract.

Grass of the Homeland

Green Curb - Jericho public Greenbelt Planting project.

Yellow rose of Vermont (dandelion)

Wildflower Meadows (Dr. Cathy Neal at the UNH extension service)