Good grief my lazy son in law was right all along without knowing it!
3
Some things in this article are true, but a fair amount is exaggerated and/or not scientifically valid. You can have a decent lawn without using pesticides. Home lawns are not the primary cause of the decline of avian populations, it's habitat loss. And also cats.
There are things a homeowner can do to lessen the impact on their homes to the environment - as the author said (rightly) - leave flowering weeds for the pollinators, they are a great early food source. What she didn't say - If you must apply herbicides in the spring, mow first to get rid of the flowers of these weeds, thereby cutting off the exposure route to pollinators. Plant a diversity of flowering natives in your yard (think different colors, heights, and blooming times). Know what kind of grass is in your yard and let it go dormant when it's stressed out from heat (it will come back when its happier). If you have the entirely wrong kind of grass for your climate, replace with a better adapted species for your climate - which is actually a better idea than just letting it go to weeds because a healthy, dense lawn takes up a lot of CO2. Keep cats inside and support spay/neuter efforts with $$ to address the cat overpopulation problem.
Also, the biggest source of nutrients that cause algal blooms and degrade water quality and aquatic habitats are not home lawns, but failing septic systems and combined sewer overflows. People don't want to hear because that means lots of public $$, and higher taxes to address.
2
I couldn't agree more. I made a living as a "gardener." I do not see beauty when I look at a manicured, mono-culture lawn. It is an offense to the eye. Plus, have you had that nasty chemical smell come at you from the bread isle at your local food store? Nasty on both accounts. Of course, I feel the same way about the sight of stiletto heels ... ouch, but we are nothing if not conditioned to harm ourselves to attain our standards of beauty.
5
When we lived in San Antonio for eight years, the city government and others encouraged xeriscaping, using indigenous plantings for your yard. We did that. You can garden with native plants and not use pesticides or fertilizers quite successfully, especially if you compost.
When I bought my first house here after moving to Tennessee from a city apartment in Spain, I didn't do any kind of lawn treatment. I didn't know I "had to". Soon, the next door neighbors started making snarky remarks such as "Nice crop of weeds you're growing", implying that my weed seeds would be detrimental to their lawn. Of course I then started to kill the weeds. So now the question is how do I deal with the neighbors?
Amen! We all need to reconsider what a "good lawn" is. Ever since someone from the local native plant society told me that insects view a green, manicured lawn as a "desert", I have let my lawn grow as it may, and have converted large sections of it into pollinator gardens with lots of native plants.
Thanks for writing this article!
3
Thank you for this article! Nothing makes my husband and me more frustrated than biking through the Champlain Valley, our back yard, and seeing our neighbors mowing 5 acre lawns week after week after week come summer. I hadn't thought of these lawns as fields of poison -- I had thought of them as green carpets woven with fossil fuels and wasted time. These lawns are surrounded by cornfields, farms, woods and wetlands, which renders them even more out of place.
Yes, we have ticks, but here is what we do: we use no chemicals, have planted berry bushes, fruit trees, and vegetable gardens, and try not to mow too often except near the house. In the front, where there there are mature crab apples (here when we arrived), we mow perhaps three times a season, letting the small wildflowers and grasses bloom and seed.
The insect life is increasing. We celebrate when we see a bat.
And everyday we check for ticks. Takes much less time than sprinkling poisons and mowing!
107
@insomnia data
Thank you for your comment. It's tragic to see so many lawns in my neighborhood because I know that our natural world is dying.
5
I tried to plant a portion of my big flower bed in wildflowers. It never worked. Then I began weeding selectively. I left the "weeds" I like (spiderwort, spanish needle, others that I'm still waiting to identify) in the places I wanted them to be. Now they flourish in nice-sized patches of blue, or white and yellow, or pink. The birds are happy, the butterflies are happy, and I'm delighted.
111
We should all be concerned about the impact these poisons have on our health, as well as our pets'. Children playing outside in the grass, running barefoot - they're being directly exposed. And dogs and cats walking through the grass, and later licking their feet, giving the chemicals a direct route into their bodies.
A NYT article from the early 90's references a study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, citing a 2 fold increase in canine lymphoma in dogs exposed to a particular herbicide. And, an increase in lymphoma among farmers who applied it. https://www.nytimes.com/1991/09/04/us/lawn-herbicide-called-cancer-risk-for-dogs.html. No doubt there are many more recent studies showing a link. Many of my neighbors have their lawns chemically treated. I can't prove causation, but 2 neighbors who live doors apart have had pets diagnosed with lymphoma. But I do have to wonder...
A few years ago I stopped having my lawn treated; no, it's not that beautiful shade of green uninterrupted by 'weeds'. I look instead at the natural beauty, and the array of wildlife, including many species of birds, that inhabits my yard. My hope is they continue feeding at my house, rather than ingesting chemicals in other areas of the neighborhood. Time to stop ignoring how we're poisoning the planet. We're all at risk - especially those who suffer major health problems as a result of chemical exposure
68
It’s encouraging to see an article like this, along with the various reader comments, showing shared awareness of and efforts to change our unsuitable landscaping practices. While I cannot say I don’t use any chemicals on my lawn, I fertilize once a year, mulch weekly clippings and falls’ leaves into the lawn as well. Speaking to wildlife and ways to boost populations, I encourage others to leave a portion of their property “untamed” and un-dumped with lawn clippings or leaves. It’s amazing to see how the “wild” animals will use this cover as their preferred pathway and habitat. Dig a vernal pool if you have a low lying area. “Charity begins at home”
48
My lawn looks horrible because I don't fertilize it or use pesticides. At least now I have a perfectly good excuse to do less work on it! :)
FWIW, location plays a great deal into this too. My parents had a massive yard in N. Michigan, NEVER watered/seeded/fertilized/poisoned it and it was absolutely beautiful. The secret? the lawn grass was in fact the prairie grass that was indigenous to the area...And the fact that they had a good 12" of black dirt over a bed of clay, so there was constant moisture and nutrients well into the dead of summer.
Good luck with that in N. Virginia, where the soil is better suited for a rock garden! ;p
28
There is another solution between pristine lawn and a yard full of weeds. In Montreal, Québec it is forbidden to use pesticides. We got tired of struggling every year to maintain a lawn and were appalled by the amount of water used.
My daughter, who has always read a lot about plants and insects redesigned our garden. We removed the front lawn and planted different sorts of native and some non-native plants that give flowers at different times of the year, have beautiful colors and that don’t require a lot of care and watering. The result was amazing. There are always flowers now except for the winter. A lot of pollinators and birds are back, including hummingbirds and monarchs!
We often sit on a bench amidst the plants and several people stop to admire the plants and ask for advice. In the backyard we also replaced the lawn and now have several flowers, blueberry bushes and an organic vegetable garden.
347
@M Lannes Inspring, including the news that Montreal forbids pesticides. I don't know what that means in a literal sense, but I'm encouraged.
Last year the deer devoured so many of my plants in my garden that I dug up the things they seem to like and am replacing them with natives they don't like. I already had some so I know from experience. And the "lawn" is a mix of whatever grows there. A neighbor down the street has always used herbicides, and she now suffers from a debilitating illness often linked to herbicides. Getting rid of the perfect lawn benefits us also.
41
Besides leaving off the chemicals, don't mow so fast and give the bumblebees a chance to lift off out of the way. There's been a big drop in bumble bees since all my neighbors have hired yard services that mow at very high speeds.
The clover is really looking good this spring, I have the "non-compliance" sign from the city code office saved from last year to save them the trouble of putting up another :).
295
@Liese You get a non-compliance for allowing clover on your own property?
16
@Pam
I know. How outrageous is that??
8
Perfectly green lawns are a scam. They waste valuable resources- nitrogen, water, time.
We let part of our lawn go wild 15 years ago (and planted trees in the area) and haven't looked back. The rest I mow with an electric mower and don't do anything else. I do 10 minutes of mowing every week or two.
Unfortunately a lot of people live in towns, suburbs, etc with unreasonable rules about lawns and fines to back them up.
42
Creeping charlie is the enemy and I'm all for chemical warfare to eradicate it.
2
I live in a wildfire zone. I must keep the area mowed and free of debris, but I let nature chose what grows.
1
"What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered." Ralph Waldo Emerson
11
Great essay; better? The banner ad that runs through my online screen copy for Bayers Round Up. Cowinkydink? I think not. I thought there was a firewall between the newsroom and marketing, guess not.
6
try convincing suburban housewives that the lawn does not need mowing.
5
Why keep a lawn or mow a lawn? Ticks!
1
@Engineer Inbar Yup, here in tick country it's imperative to keep a close-cropped lawn. Everyone in my household has had a tick-borne disease and Lyme is not the worst one. My last dog was debilitated by anaplasmosis, a tick-borne blood disorder that nearly killed her.
My property also slopes to a stream and parts of it can flood, so I need the erosion control sod provides. I've replanted with fescues (lower maintenance lawn grass) and use a natural lawn company, organic products applied under NJ's very strict fertilizer law. It's all pelletized and slow-release. I never water, living on a well, and if it goes dormant in summer, so be it.
I've already taken a lot of area for borders, gardens, paths, hardscape, etc. but what remains in lawn is needed. I adjoin completely wild woodlands and don't lack for mammals (deer, raccoon, possum, chipmunks, squirrels, moles, voles, etc.), birds, insects, snakes, etc. Lawns managed properly are not evil.
As a single homeowner I could never manage a 1/2 acre property without a lawn. It's an hour a week to mow vs endless weeding.
2
Uhg, every year I try to swear off the scotts four step program of chemical attack, but the next year I end up with a dirt lawn. No pretty flowers, just dirt and patches of unruly crab grass followed by dirty looks from my neighbors. They don’t even need to speak their eyes say it all, what a lazy schlepp, and he’s killing our property values, why doesn’t he just move to an apartment already.
1
cement
astroturf
power nozzle and hose
plastic flamingo
done.
2
When we see a lush, pristine lawn — and there are many in our Wisconsin village — we say, “That yard is on drugs.”
8
What flower is the picture at the top of the article. I see them blooming now in Oregon but have been unable to identify them.
How ironic that a weed & feed ad was shown on this article
4
Love the Bayer ad for glyphosate that comes with my version of the article.
5
Way to go NYT, publish an article about native plants and use a picture of an invasive plant (Lamium purpureum) to illustrate it
4
If we ditch our lawns, we won't need to mow, which will save tons of gas. If we grow wildflowers and trees to boot, they will literally make oxygen from carbon dioxide, and cast tons of shade so that our AC units don't need to work as hard! It's a win-win-win-win! (Having pollinators and songbirds not go extinct is a big win!).
Doug Tallamy, I think, did much of the research used in this article. His book, Bringing Nature Home, explains that native weeds feed native bugs, while alien weeds often support none. The songbird population is down 50% in 50 years! These flying gems have few years left before they are gone -- in the next 50, they could vanish. Tallamy's book will even tell you how many native caterpillars (the main food of the 96% of songbird chicks mentioned in the article is caterpillars) each genus of plants support. You can find that data online -- here is one source: https://chicagolivingcorridors.org/resources/creating-native-habitat/plant-lists/woody-plants-for-birds-lepidopteran-host-plants/ -- although they give slightly different info from what I've seen before (updated research?). Oaks and cherry trees are noteworthy, hosting hundreds of species of lepidopterans.
5
Ms. Renkl's call to abandon the lawn is exaggerated.
Our lawn borders my wife's planted Midwestern Prairie and there squirrels, rabbits, chipmunks, and different birds joyously "gyre and gimble in the wabe".
Standing on the rear porch, a lit cigar in one hand and a cup of strong coffee in the other, and looking at the hopping creatures, I think of the two homonymous paintings, "Creation of the animals", by Tintoretto and Master Bertram, and imagine myself the principal personage of each, God or Jesus, respectively.
I oppose to my wife's wish to expand her Prairie at the expense of the lawn, despite all my uxoriousness.
1
@Tuvw Xyz
What's exaggerated are the tons of fossil fuels we use to create fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and transport giant multi-blade lawn mowers in trailers in cities all across the country. Ms.Renkl's call must be heard, or even more of these living gems will go extinct.
4
I have been an enemy of lawns ever since I bought my first house. They are voracious water guzzlers and don't have room for nature.
Every inch of land from the tiny parking strip to the the slightly larger strip out back were filled with my favorite plants. Salvias are my favorite. Check out the New Salvia Book by Betsy Clebsch. It's a stunner.
4
Check out the Pollinator Pathway: https://www.pollinator-pathway.org . My husband and I have what we call a "Yarden," requiring no mowing or pulling out of weeds (and certainly we do not use fertilizers or pesticides). We eat the dandelion greens that grow, as well as the purslane (filled with nutrition), Lamb's quarters, and clover. We do strategically weed-wack around the native daisies, Black-Eyed Susans, and 4-o'clocks that pop up on their own now in cheerful patches. The ground cover, mainly clover, wild strawberries, and ajuga, stay low to the ground and are soft to walk on. We even have wild raspberries which are delicious in cereal and on ice cream. If you are not familiar with the Pollinator Pathway, it's a step forward to make sure our bees, butterflies, birds, bats, etc., have shelter and food. Without these insects and flying creatures, humans will disappear. You can check the science on that. We have stopped mowing, have stopped watering. Mowing pollutes (gasoline and noise) and watering is a waste when it comes to lawns. Lawns/turf return nothing except a flat expanse of green. No food, no shelter, crowding out wildlife habitat. We can't afford this "American Dream" habit any longer as a species. Free yourselves! Give yourself a "Yarden of Eatin'".
8
I'm in favor of a more natural approach to garden care. However, the following statement in the article makes the illogical assumption that juries are qualified to evaluate scientific research.
>> Last month, a federal jury ordered Monsanto, the maker of Roundup, to pay $80 million in damages to a California man with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a form of cancer. It was the second time an American jury has found for a plaintiff with non-Hodgkins lymphoma...
It may be the case that Roundup causes cancer, but jury verdicts are not proof. They prove only that a lawyer was able to convince two groups of lay people that it does.
6
City ordinances require that you cut your grass once it reaches a certain height, 8 to 12 inches. If I let my yard grow the neighbors come to my front door and complain. The city will send out inspectors and post notices on my door threatening fines and a bill for expenses if they have to cut it themselves. So my parents, and now I, let the trees grow. Look at a Google Earth photo of my neighborhood and you will see one house on the block that is so over grown with trees that the roof is barely visible. Right now I see cardinals and blue jays fighting over a place to build a nest in the roof high Azalea bushes outside my front window. I've gotten a letter from the insurance company telling me to cut back the shrubbery around the house because it encourages thieves and robbers, but I like the foliage for the same reasons, it prevents the neighbors from seeing inside my windows and spying on me. I've caught them doing that too. I also use fertilizer. It was after i carelessly tossed fertilizer on the Azaleas that they grew as high as the house, and I then added more phosphates to make them bloom profusely in the spring. Now the neighbors pause in front of the house to admire the huge pink blobs (as in the movie) seemingly devouring the edifice. I have two fossil fuel burning lawn mowers and a weed wacker to keep the lawn pests at bay, the neighbors and city code enforcement inspectors.
4
I've been practicing no-lawn gardening for the last 30 years, since we were constantly in drought. I replaced lawn with wood chips and in spring the wild flowers (euphemism for weeds) arrive, somehow manage to stay, so I had a "lawn" full of oxalis, wild iris, mustard greens, Calif. poppies, the background for my blooming fruit trees. When the pictures of this wild garden was posted, I received hundreds of compliments mostly from folks who could care less for the lawn. Yes, I've heard birds chirping and frogs chatting. Besides the pastoral symphony, I've received organic food such as miner lettuce and dandelion for salad.
9
@Michelle
How inspiring to read your comment.
This is what I want to do.
2
We have never used herbicides or pesticides. Hence lots of crabgrass and dandelions, the latter which I used to dig up by hand! But just as long as you mow it, the weeds don't show unless you stand up close. Not from the curbside
5
Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring." Prescient.
And we are in and behave as one of these awful suburban lawn situations as it part of the neighborhood norms and expectations. And then we wonder where are the butterflies? The grasshoppers? Etc., etc.
5
A green lawn distracts from chipped paint, dirty windows, the lack of landscaping and gardening, and a doorbell that doesn’t work. My neighbors deserve minimum home upkeep from me. And that’s what a green lawn is. And the whole effect is ruined by weeds, so I spray them and pull them and mow them.
As long as my lawn saves me effort and money, it’s my first choice. And when the whole lawn can be watered with a 50 foot hose, you should know that my decision requires minimal weed killers and fertilizers.
3
As a Master Gardener of Davidson County (Nashville), I am proud of our Tennessee lawn: no pesticides and only organic materials for fertilizers (especially bokashi composting). We have a pair of bluebirds nesting in the back along with 35 species of birds that visit our feeders during the year. In the summer, the area is a Monarch Waystation. We don’t have a lot of grass, but lots of everything else growing beautifully!
10
How I wish one could have a visibly pleasant yard without ever resorting to a herbicide ever. I'm 66 and have tried for decades. I limit herbicides to spot treatments and do not allow lawn " services" to blast poison everywhere. Because I do care about the birds and bunnies and insects and dogs and cats and squirrels and bats and children-all of whom can be found at my house. But unless you have a crew of young muscular men and women who will come every day one older woman cannot control every weed-I end up with hen bit, chickweed, dandelions, wild violets, wild vetch, wild clematis, wild honeysuckle, Virginia Creeper twining 20 feet high and 100 feet running. This is unmanageable. Not to mention the hundreds of baby trees that take root every year-laurels, redbuds, hackberries, apples, mulberries, oaks, crepe myrtles, privets. I pot them up, after laborious pulling, and encourage people to take them. Seldom do I get takers. My lawn is well intermixed with clover and low growing weeds. I just have it mowed regularly and use an organic fertilizer. If I am going to water I hand water because I think the watering systems are an irresponsible waste . But I've tried hard to do without any chemicals and it is not doable if you want any lawn. Even if you want a garden of flowers it is very hard to rely on hand weeding in these rougher climates. I've seen England in the spring-completely different story.
3
@Consuelo
Yes. let the clover stay. It fixes nitrogen in its roots, and when mowing with a mulching mower the shredded clover leaves help break down the thatch from the grass.
7
I had a beautiful lawn and used no poisons. I didn't use vinegar or salt either. You're correct in a lawn taking a lot of water. With some grasses, and inch in height also take an inch of water. But that is the first year. I had flower beds and domesticated flowers in them with the exception of the climbing roses all were drought tolerant, as was my lawn after the first year. I had plenty of critters and birds. If you dug a hole for post there would be plenty of earthworms.
You might be wondering how that could happen on the top of a plateau in South Texas. Easy. I worked my back side off making mulch from compost from the wild leaves that I raked as well as kitchen compost, and the leaves that professional gardeners were kind enough to give me. While that was going on I was out there everyday after work pulling of the seed heads of the bullhead and dandelions, etc. After the second year of doing that I had room to plant small plugs of grass and the compost to plant them in. By the fourth year I had a thick lush lawn and a larger plush flower/herb/vegetable beds. The red roses were heavy with perfume. I bought a bareroot Spanish Dancer rose 2 years early in late autumn at the local Walmart for, get this: $2. Many of the plants I planted came from friends cuttings that I rooted and transplanted. That is what I am doing again in France. Now. It takes time and patience. A plan with some knowledge is handy. In all, I spent $38 for that garden, and lost 50lbs+ making it.
8
If you’re using chemicals on your lawn, stop. You can have a nice lawn using only organic fertilizers and 1x a week watering, even in Colorado!
7
Thank you for this article. It's in keeping with the Audubon Society's plea that people leave at least a portion of their yard wild for the sake of birds. Changing the way we register a shaggy yard is a step toward a healthier and more natural environment.
14
Just to point out that this Opinion piece was accompanied by an ad for the "California Sod Center" with a big picture of grass being rolled out to a nice smooth green field, a la a golf course or a football field.
Is this irony or hypocrisy?
:)
6
@Mitch Avila It's a reminder that even the NY Times is a business
2
If your dear readers insist on doing something to their yards, might I suggest:
http://www.foodnotlawns.com/
Thanks for another lovely article. You're a gem!
4
Twenty years ago I moved into this hundred year old cottage surrounded by a beautiful lawn. It was as perfect as a golf course and as green as a pool table. My "City Friends" were so impressed. As winter approached my beautiful grass began to turn stark white and strawlike. I was horrified that I had somehow killed it.
Thankfully, my neighbor explained that my yard wasn't grass at all...it was Zoysia. Some crazy plant that needs no water or fertilizer and allows the clover and dandelions to grow.
Because I have dogs and neighbors I have it mowed and aerated regularly during warm weather. I grow a butterfly garden where the dog won't bother the bugs. I don't even use organic fertilizers and I have the best looking garden on the block and I have never watered my property in twenty years.
3
@Mars & Minerva: 'Round here, zoysia is known as a grass. I'm surprised that you yankees don't call it so. Fescue is fit for ruminants in pastures, not yards.
And what is the difference between a weed and a flower? Flowers suggest an intended mastery over nature, it seems to me.
Many years ago, I moved to a more rural area, the road to work had farmers fields on each side for much of it. One day, in early spring, I saw that some of those fields were covered by purple flowers surrounded by green. Because I diodn't know what those flowers were I asked a worker that I knew came from a few generations of local farmers. For all I knew it was the start of some crop. "No," she said, those are weeds. And sure enough, within a few days those purple "weeds" had been tilled to death and (that year) soy beans followed. I appreciate soy beans, but they aren't nearly as visually satisfying as those purple weeds are.
Perhaps people need to remember that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. They aren't weeds, they are part of nature's garden.
9
what would you say to the Chinese? "Let them eat weeds?'
I agree in principle with this article, but what also happens when you let your lawn go natural is pests return. Before you know it you got moles in your garden and mice in your basement, and if you live close to the city, rats.
1
I’m all for exchanging grass lawns for other plants. But be careful - I tried this when I lived in an NYC suburb. I replaced a large area of lawn with native grasses. One grass that didn’t look much like what I planted started to show up. The next Spring it took over. Beware Japanese Stilt Grass! Once it’s spread it’s almost impossible to get rid of.
3
Thank you Ms. Renkl. A number of years ago, we turned our backyard into a flower garden. Now, we will do the same with our front!
(Fellow Nashville resident)
13
We don’t really have lawns in our community—just lots of weedy non-native grasses that dry up and blow away, along with the topsoil, in the summer. Some of us have put in gardens of drought-tolerant shrubs and perennials that require little maintenance once established and provide bountiful habitat for all kinds of creatures (including human). I like to imagine the extensive corridors of habitat that would benefit our communities if we all replaced sterile landscapes with plants that are suitable for our areas. Sometimes I even go so far as to fantasize that we people might stop thinking of plants (and animals) as pretty objects that exist solely for our pleasure and instead view them as functioning members of our ecosystem. I like to dream big.
20
Home Depot...…. Just Say No!
8
You may spell it r-o-u-n-d-u-p, but it's pronounced "cancer".
16
@cb....There is less evidence that Round-Up causes cancer than there is for alcohol.
4
@W.A. Spitzer One of them definitely tastes better....
I can’t think of any place more beautiful than the American South in springtime, wrote the suthor.
I can't think of a more chauvinist American opinion. Get your passport ready. It's time to travel lady.
3
@Le Michel have you been to the American South in springtime?
1
@Le Michel
Geez, lighten up, mon ami! There are beautiful places (and seasons) all over this globe. The South IS gorgeous in the spring (unlike in the summer when it is too hot to bear, and as long as were talking about the horticulture more than the culture). Saying it is so doesn't mean that Quebec, or India, or Tuscany, etc. etc. isn't.
2
Kill your lawn. Kill your tv.
8
I'm the last to mow my lawn on the block this spring. The Joneses probably hate me but the bumblebees (bore-bees) who are making homes now love me.
Early Spring is a lean time as flowers aren't abundant overall but my lawn has plenty of dandelion and violet. Yellow and Purple go well together and it looks like I planned it or something.
I'll mow it in a week.
17
The city of St. Petersburg, where I live, likes to call itself a green city but it is anything but. We live in a single family home, no HOA and non-deed restricted. The way our city operates is that code enforcement is driven by neighbor complaints. If a neighbor doesn't like a landscape, code enforcement is called, even if the complaint is invalid. The city's code enforcement has cited us for our Florida friendly landscape - all native plants most of which are for our pollinators. My neighbors, who have lawn services, have their lawns sprayed with chemicals weekly because many Floridians believe that one must have a green lawn year round. Given our issues with red tide and toxic green algae, you'd think that there would be more mindfulness about the use of chemicals given the fact that we are surrounded by water.
32
Why not call code enforcement on neighbors using lawn services that pour poisons into the water supply? That's where the poisons go when they filter down through the soil from their lawns?
9
@Mtaylor The problem is that the city's default plan is to side with lawn care businesses. It's a $9 billion a year industry in FL. The city has been fined almost $1 million by the State of FL (yes, it's hard to believe when the State of FL fines a city for pollution) for pumping over 200,000,000 gallons of sewage into our fragile bay. The city decided to close a water treatment plant and because our infrastructure is from the 1920's, during our rainy season, we had sewage spilling out of manhole covers. Some people had sewage in their yards, so the city pumped sewage into the bay, then lied about it. We have neighbors whose sprinkler systems are on auto, so they'll be watering their lawns during a tropical rainstorm.
5
Completely agreed. I enjoy letting my yard do more than look overly manicured and unnatural - it's a rare site in NYC! The bees and birds seem to appreciate it , too :)
9
Use vinegar
5
@GM
I don't like to use chemicals. Acetic acid is a chemical.
5
Everything is chemical - every fiber of your being and everything else is chemical. Stop using “chemical” to mean “toxic”. Also, everything is also toxic in the wrong concentrations...
2
You can’t do nothing thought. I have tried that and the moles and the grubs that they came for have destroyed a large portion of my lawn. There are methods of maintaining your lawn that don’t involve using toxic chemicals and I’m trying that. Nematodes that kill the grubs and organic fertilizers for the lawn.
3
@Neil West
There is no reason to kill moles. They deserve to live. What is the human compulsion to kill everything natural that lives in the world??? When moles make a little mound in my yard, I smile and thank them for aerating and improving the topsoil.
10
Folks, there is a wonderful organic weed killer! Google the recipe! We do not need to use chemicals to kill weeds! You will need to spray se real times to get rid of the weeds but it works! Agricultural vinegar, Dawn dish soap and salt....look it up!
And in the West, it’s normal to allow our lawns to go dormant in the summer or at the very least water the lawn as little as possible!
Great article! We need to heal our Planet, let’s start with organic gardening!
12
@Mari
Agree with your sentiment. However, water, acetic acid (vinegar), nonionic/ionic detergents (Dawn)...these are all chemicals.
I hate these manicured lawn with a vengeance, because I know of the damage they do to the environment. Not only do you have to dump a boatload of fertilizer and herbicides on it, but you also have to water it almost continuously to keep it green. I never use herbicides and rely on nature to fertilize the grass. And guess what; we have the greenest lawn in the neighborhood.
Right now the grass is at its most beautiful. It's full with wild flowers and little critters that are waking up and that start aerating the soil. My grass is colorful, resilient and never, ever boring.
Btw, please plant milkweed!
20
This column is an interesting contrast to America's current love affair with Tiger Woods and golf - perhaps the most eco-unfriendly sport there is.
16
Lawns are madness. And a collective one. What, my objective self asks, would motivate millions of men to spend pointless hours tending to a lawn when life is so full of so many other interesting things to do? And if not for those men, we have the landscapers who pierce and poison the air of suburbia with their whining lawn machines and leaf blowers. Lay down gravel and paint it green, if you like. But stop the madness.
12
Great letter!
I don't have a 'lawn' but I do have areas that I mow. I don't use pesticides, fertilizers, fungicides, or rodent controls.
There are three birds in my yard that benefit from a mowed area: robins (mostly earthworms), northern flickers (ants), and phoebes (anything that moves that will fit in their mouth). The phoebes benefit greatly from a perch or fence to 'hawk' from.
Mowing is also useful for tick control; they are less likely to able to hitch a ride on people and dogs from short vegetation. Tick control has become important here the past few years due to Lyme and about five other serious diseases ticks are vectors for.
I regularly mow around the black-eyed Susan, hawk weed, goldenrod, dandelion, ox eye daisy, and red clover plus whatever else has blooms.
One effective method of defeating the lawn Nazis is to pass ordinances that prohibit a range of chemical uses on residential and public areas. Several cities in Maine have such ordinances and I see it as a growing trend that is overdue.
20
I would love to do what the author described. ..but doing so will invite the stink eye from my neighbors.
4
@FedGod...and? ...so?
2
Thank you!
It would be one thing if the Green grassers only poisoned themselves but as we all know the water, air, plants etc gets polluted as well. People who use these chemicals are ill informed or stupid. They care more about green grass than what it does to those of us who could care less about grubs, dandlions, "weeds" whatever? No concept of an ecosystem.
12
I think of suburban lawns as a metaphor for dystopian America. Bound your yard with a chain-link fence--a wall if you will--and fertilize with petrochemicals, Roundup for weeds. Endlessly waste water to keep it a bright monochromatic green that you rarely run or play on -- it's work to keep it up but often without enjoyment. There'll be fewer flowers, fewer bugs, fewer birds--less diversity. But some will guard that locked-in patch as if it's a good thing. The message is, "It's mine. Keep off!" Last year I ditched the lawn and grew flowers -- I had more birds than I can remember, as well as a very disgruntled neighbor who wielded his leaf-blower like a weapon and grumbled about how my weeds were taking over the neighborhood. My box of this year's wildflower seeds arrived today. Let the radical act of flowering begin.
14
As an environmentalist, I support the main purpose of this article. But as a medical student and a scientist, I'm disturbed by Ms. Renkl's careless use of the word "chemical." This is not pedanticism, but rather a plea for accountability to curtail the spread of scientific misinformation that has led to anti-vaxxers or worse.
Chemicals are the basic building blocks of life, and without them we would be immobile clusters of atoms. Chemicals form the food we eat, the brain circuits that allow us to love, the medicines that have improved human lifespans by decades, and yes, poisons, too.
Instead of calling poisons "chemicals," just call them poisons. And then maybe instead of already needing to defend scientific theories as factually sound, vaccines as safe, and climate change as real, I won't have to also convince patients that their life-saving diabetes medications are safe even though they contain "chemicals."
23
We do not use chemicals or fertilizer on our lawn. One year, due to problems of severe back pain we did not even mow. I was fascinated and amazed at how many species of grass grew in our yard! When the grass is short, it all looks like, well, grass. But when it grew and went to seed, we found fescue, Timothy, wild oats, clover, and about a half dozen other species I didn’t recognize. Certainly it reinforced our belief that what we were doing was right, although hiring someone to mow for you when you are incapacitated is also a good idea!
5
If you want to save the birds Margaret get rid of the neighborhood cats. Cats kill from 1.4 to 3.7 billion birds a year in the United States alone. It's senseless killing as very few of the birds are consumed.
6
How about both?
1
@Kurt Pickard
I once had an outdoor cat. It never killed birds, just mice.
the birds have wings. Raccoons & coyotes kill birds.
1
This highly romanticized vision of long grass and beautiful wildflowers made me laugh. Here in Maine I keep my dog and myself as far from the unmowed grass areas as possible when we take a walk, because while long grass may be full of wildflowers, it is certainly full of ticks. Lyme disease? No please.
6
What is the deal with well manicured lawns in America? Go to Germany! It's not that important and you see various flowers. There is way less fertilizer and pesticides used in Germany. If people realized the stuff they put on their own lawn; it would put to shame their "organic" idealism on everything.
6
I will never own another dog because you can't walk them anywhere in the burbs without walking on areas sprayed with lawn chemicals. I wish places like Home Depot and Lowes would offer products and instruction on what to plant in lieu of grass, which is not native to North America(it was brought over by the English).
8
Whenever I hear people complain about invasive species, I shake my head and wonder whether they have any awareness that they are members of the most invasive, and destructive, species of all.
12
@jr
How do you think invasive species got here? Walk? No. They were imported, usually on purpose but occasionally by accident - by people. Invasive species aren't some separate act of nature, they're just one more way that people are destroying the natural environment.
2
And this fine article--kudos!--is split on my screen by a commercial from Bayer: "Weeding wisely by Bayer..." That's the fault of Google, I think, and of my own failure to extirpate this commercial-laden provider. Weed control for commercials, anyone?
5
Whenever I hear people complain about invasive species, I wonder to myself whether they have any awareness that they are members of the most invasive, and destructive, species of all.
4
This is a little inaccurate. You can’t have a lawn of just wildflowers - a natural lawn or meadow still needs grass, usually 2/3 grass to a third flowers. The difference is the type of grass you use, which is either a warm season tall grass or fescue that is drought tolerant and looks good if you don’t mow. Still she is dead on about mainstream turf lawns. They are bad for the environment, have no wildlife value, and are boring. Natural lawns or meadows are the opposite.
7
@Matt Brand
Visit my lawn and count the deer droppings all over it! Also the rabbits and woodchucks gorging on my grass!
Scientific research has proven both here and in England that domestic house cats are mainly responsible for the drastic decline in bird and small mammal populations. It is estimated that domestic cats kill upwards of 50 million of these wild creatures every year.
8
I agree whole-heartedly with the author. The problem is many townships have laws that require the mowing of lawns and give out fines if they are not kept short ..... alas. And, a secondary problem is the massive quantity of ticks one gets when the lawn is full and high with wild flowers. Having almost lost my husband to an infection from babesiosis, a virulent tick disease, and myself ending up in the hospital from one of the newer invasions of tick - borrellia miyamotoi - I confess that I wish there was just a better way.
7
@Gillian
What about a turf alternative? Something low-growing, drought tolerant that also flowers? You could search online for turf alternatives for your area or, if you’re lucky, find books at your local library.
Scary to have almost lost your husband. I’m glad he recovered.
4
We found that budgetary cutbacks necessary to fund things like healthcare and college eliminated lawn care from our priorities. We have wildflowers. And weeds.
The tiny tiny carnations - they are smaller than my pinkie nail - are mixed in near the driveway. The violets are in the middle of the yard. The whitlow grass is everywhere. The jack in the pulpits hide in the tree line. Chicory and oxeye daisies occasionally survive the mower, along with Queen Anne's lace.
And the dandelions, plantains, crabgrass, chickweed, creeping charlie, thistles, bird's foot trefoil, garlic mustard, pig weed, ragweed, nightshades, ornamental strawberry, stilt grass, and sedges take completely over. My sister has pimpernel mixed in - and a frequent, terrible rash.
I like the butterflies and the bees, and the birds that feed on the seeds, but I have to say, it would be great to have a little grass mixed in with my au natural lawn.
7
Pulled the grass out of both front and back lawns 20 years ago, replaced it with periwinkle in the back and an under-story garden on the front, neither needing fertilizer or weed-killer. Never regretted the move.
7
@Denis Pelletier Just curious -- what is an under-story garden?
2
I keep some vinegar in a bottle for the thistles that are so hard to dig out of my yard (and I do my best to dig up the trumpet vines that keep trying to move in). I have some Neem oil for when my roses get black spot.
Otherwise, I don't spray anything and just sort of let whatever wants to grow there, to grow. Maybe I'll make dandelion wine this year.
3
I use an agricultural vinegar for the organic weed killer I make. Excellent!
1
I discovered that, in my old age, the (marketed-as) “safe” pesticide is a potent neurotoxin, leaving me with tremors and other symptoms that are foreign to my family medical history. Simply being accidentally sprayed while volunteering in my community left me struggling to heal from a careless pesticide sprayer’s poor aim - and my body’s reaction to a chemical that was introduced in my lifetime as a “safe” way to kill insects and other household/yard pests. Instead it made me a “fall risk” - poisoned by a culture afraid of bugs. It’s been a nightmare for mr and my family.
16
@Post motherhood
What a terrible thing. I am so sorry. I do use herbicides carefully but pesticides should never be used when people are in the vicinity. If you need to spray for mosquitoes send everyone to the opposite end of the yard is my rule. How could someone spray you so carelessly ? I hope that you will recover even if slowly.
I work on a college campus, and always see students protesting things occurring thousands of miles away. Genocide "over there", free Tibet back east, but those students would be wise to look a little closer to home. Vast college campus lawns are groomed for perfect pictures at graduations and on admissions tours. Students should be asking their presidents and provosts to quite putting poisons on their own campuses.
23
I refuse to use poisons on my lawn and so I lost 50% of my lawn to grubs one year. I reseeded the lawn and its back. And now I follow a practice of sprinkling grass seeds into the lawn during the spring and falls rains. The grubs still eat a little, the birds come to eat the grubs and thereby aerate the lawn. And the new seed keeps the lawn growing again. There are a few empty patches distributed all around, but hardly noticeable. I just have to spend about $15 per year to buy grass seed. No poisons.
14
Another (moralistic) expression of the natural environment in contrast to what? To roses in a city garden? To living in a city? To developing new urban environments? I don't understand. I've just given my senior back some exercise by trimming (electric) the hedges in my backyard. I supposed if I lived on a farm like my dad and ma did, I would be expressing farm environment morales. The thing is that I grew collard greens last year that were just ruined by bugs. This year I'm gonna get those bugs with chemicals.
@darius molark But, if it can kill a bug, what does it do to you? Greens are the most susceptible to bugs & slugs...grow them in large pots. Seven dust doesn't make a good spice.
2
Up here in Maine we have another fews weeks before we see all of our "lawn," even as we see a few snowbells peep out along edges of the snow and ice that persists.
Some hereabouts do do the "English" rolling, trimmed bit --but they have the money to waste... The rest of us? Spread Dutch Clover seeds (organic) generously every year for the bald spots, mowing when we remember, never chemicals, and compost on the food garden.
Gotta hurry, winter will be back before we know it!
12
My father died in 1987 at the age of 61. He owned one of those chemically-based lawn care companies. He stored his chemicals in my sister's basement. She was pleased because she "didn't like spiders," and, indeed, she had none in her basement. My sister died in 2006 at the age of 51 from leukemia.My mother died of lung cancer. My sister's ex-husband died from brain cancer two years ago. My other sister has fought melanoma (now under control). My sister's youngest child had Ewing's sarcoma, a form of bone cancer, at the age of nine, in 2000. He survives to this day. I had moved out of my parents' home before my father started his business. He was a tenth-grade HS dropout and was so proud of himself for being a successful entrepreneur. I am 70 now and so far, no cancer. I refuse to use chemicals on my lawn or garden. I am, however, surrounded by people who do. Consequently, all the insects and weeds seem to find their way onto my lawn. Grubs, dandelions, crabgrass, whatever. It's in my yard. I want to throw up when I see those yellow signs. I cannot walk through a garden store without becoming ill, smelling those chemicals. If we are to fight climate change, we must address this as well as carbon issues. And I'm sure that those chemicals killed my father and were a factor in the cancers that killed my mother and sister, as well as those that impacted my ex-brother-in-law, nephew and other sister. No one will ever convince me otherwise.
69
I am pleased to note that I have not owned a lawn mower since 1978. And I love dandelions. We used to pick the leaves and give them to my grandmother who cooked them for us.
8
One good way to start would be for golf courses and parks to omit chemical treatments altogether. Mowing is enough!
20
I weed by hand (so no pesticides). I use a mulching mower (so no lawn fertilizer). Every year I collect 25 cubic yards of leaves and green manure from my two-acre yard, and nature turns it into 4 cubic yards of rich mould.
I know that native species survive as a whole, but individual plants need not. Many bloom, then die. Many are not resistant to prolonged dry weather. And creeping charlie (which we grew up calling ground ivy) has a lovely bloom in early spring. but the rest of the year it just lurks and stinks.
It's a balance. Make your choices. But no matter what you choose, the wind will keep blowing, carrying the inevitable seeds where it will.
9
I LOVE spring in the South as well. Luckily where I live in Atlanta there is no HOA, no neighborhood yard police. A house two doors down has an amazing organic garden in their front yard. I let my autumn leaves fall where they may, and leave them there to over-winter. I do mow, but I put it off as long as possible to let all the early pollinators get their work done. I do not use weed killer or fertilizer. The interior edge of my backyard has trees and shrubs that are not neatly pruned and shaped.
I don't need to go find a natural environment to restore peace and tranquility. I just go lay in my hammock on my patio and watch all the wonderful wild critters do their wonderful wild things.
15
Wonderful! If you ever need a weed killer, there’s an agricultural vinegar based recipe you can Google.
1
Thank you, I have been doing this since the early 1980’s and never looked back. I am starting to see more meadow like lawns in my urban area as well.
13
Ah, the illusion of the perfect, controlled lawn! Why is it that we can't allow ourselves to relinquish our stringent impulses to harness nature? The evidence on Roundup ought to convince us fully.
13
I've gone even one better. No lawn at all for the last ten years or more. Just flower beds, evergreen shrubs and stone pathways meandering through our cleared 1/4 acre of an acre lot of woods. A layer of newspaper as a weed suppressant topped by a layer of mulch in the spring and we're good to go. No chemicals, very little fertilizers that are all organic, no weed killers. I pull some of the more invasive weeds like thorn bushes and some of the nasty creepers and burdock but dandelions, wild violets and especially Queen Anne's Lace are not only welcome but encouraged. Just a riot of flowers from late spring through fall. And best of all? No mowing necessary.
9
@sharon
An excellent plan! We also try to do all our weeding manually, which is a big job. The only wildflower I don’t encourage is the Queen Anne’s Lace. It is pretty and a good wild insect plant, but I get so tired of the little burrs! In our socks, on the dog, on the cats....eventually I just pull up the plants to get rid of the omnipresent burrs.
5
Living in the Phoenix area, but having grown up in the Midwest, I so much appreciate the current movement to desert landscaping that is taking place here. As I walk my working to middle class neighborhood, so many homes are sheltered behind a forest of agave, saguaro, and innumerable other environmentally appropriate plants.
The ground, covered simply with gravel stones, often are awash with color as various (seemingly ?) wild flowers bloom, much as a dandelions will turn an unmown lawn yellow in the spring.
Living within a mile or two of the city center, hummingbirds dart to and fro, and quail and rabbit abound. Yesterday I had to look up "What kind of hawk IS that nesting in our tree?"
In a plastic city build on chain store, highways, and abominably green golf courses, it's a wonder and a joy to have these immediate pockets of naturalness all around.
11
While the desert landscaping in Phoenix is a great step to reduce water usage, most all of the lawns are treated with roundup to keep the weeds from growing through the sand and rock.
In addition, along the sides of all of the freeways, desert landscaping is constantly sprayed with roundup pro, which has 2 4-D in it as well. 2 4-D is one of the major ingredients to agent orange. This makes Phoenix a very toxic place live in as the week killers are used so prolifically.
In the Sonoran Desert it only rains 7 inches a year and with Phoenix being in a valley, the pollution cannot escape. It is a soup of weed killer, car exhaust and other industrial pollutants. I know, I lived there for 28 years. So, we use weed killers to make a desert landscaped yard look good as well as the grass yards.
4
Thank you for this excellent essay on such an important topic. My husband and I are fortunate enough to live on a five acre farm free from HOA rules and the eyes of critical neighbors. We use no chemical pesticides/herbicides and have no conventional lawn. Yes, the "weeds" run rampant--but so do the insects and the songbirds I love. Many "weeds" are beautiful, important to pollinators, and often edible/medicinal (think dandelions--one of my favorites). Off the top of my head, I can't really think of an upside to the conventionally-maintained lawn--except perhaps as a play area for kids and dogs. But then who wants to let their kids and dogs play for prolonged periods on a grassy patch of poison?
11
Thank you for this! It is hard for most people to imagine how a lawn with weeds can be beautiful but this does it. Our insect population is under siege. Changing the lawn from a total monoculture of grass to patches of weeds and cultivating some wildflowers (milkweed is essential to the Monarch butterflies) can make a huge difference.
9
We should all be concerned about the impact these chemicals have on our health, as well as our pets'. Children playing outside in the grass, running barefoot - they're being directly exposed. And dogs and cats walking through the grass, and later licking their feet, giving the chemicals a direct route into their bodies. A NYT article from the early 90's references a study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, citing a 2 fold increase in canine lymphoma in dogs exposed to a particular herbicide. And, an increase in lymphoma among farmers who applied it. https://www.nytimes.com/1991/09/04/us/lawn-herbicide-called-cancer-risk-for-dogs.html. No doubt there are many more recent studies showing a link. Many of my neighbors have their lawns chemically treated. I can't prove causation, but 2 neighbors who live doors apart have had pets diagnosed with lymphoma. But I do have to wonder...
A few years ago I stopped having my lawn treated; no, it's not that beautiful shade of green uninterrupted by 'weeds'. I look instead at the natural beauty, and the array of wildlife, including many species of birds, that inhabits my yard. My hope is they continue feeding at my house, rather than ingesting chemicals in other areas of the neighborhood. Time to stop ignoring how we're poisoning the planet. We're all at risk - especially those who suffer major health problems as a result of chemical exposure
13
I read somewhere that in the US, by acreage, grass is the largest crop. That is an incredible misallocation of resources.
Every time I read how farms are responsible for the decline of the Chesapeake Bay, I ask, what has increased in number in the past thirty years: farms, or suburban housing developments and golf courses? Answer: fewer farms; more housing developments and golf courses.
There were native brook trout in the creek by my house (inside the Capital Beltway) from the ages before before Captain John Smith visited the area until 1985. The creek is still there, but runoff from Parking lots, winter salt treatments from roads, and residue from lawn services have eliminated all but the heartiest of aquatic life.
The nation should cease treating lawns for a few years and give nature a chance to rebound.
20
@NorthernVirginia
I love your idea of giving nature a chance to rebound! I wish our whole community would commit to a couple of years without lawn treatments.
7
@MidWest and @ NorthernVirginia
Maybe you can convince your neighbors/community to just stop, forever? A letter to the editor, or a chat with a neighbor could bring wonderful (permanent?) results. You know I'm going to write an LTE for our local paper right now! The earth is dying. We need to act!
3
More from Gerard Manley Hopkins:
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell; the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things...
That is, if we humans can move quickly and thoughtfully enough to save what is left rather than poisoning it and all the creatures (including ourselves) that depend on it.
10
I tried this two years ago -- in my suburban neighborhood of northern Westchester and I was hauled into court for not conforming to the standards set by the contrivances of the "beautification committee." I was forced to mow the lawn, or pay a fine.
8
@Euphemia Thompson, It's terrible how backwards places can be. We live in suburban Connecticut and, as much as I would like to do this, I don't think this would be received well. But I've asked my husband to promise me that the next place we live, we won't have a lawn.
7
@Euphemia Thompson My mother had this happen to her in the town I grew up in the Finger Lakes. Ridiculous. She actually got national press on it. Eventually the village came in with mowers and billed her.
2
Great article! On angitradgarden.se you find my experience with a small garden meadow.
4
I realize this article is about how lovely weeds are. I get that because some really are. But the reason weeds can be a problem is that some can be quite invasive and take over. That said, some people just really like the look of a lawn as a nice contrast to flower beds. Also, lawns are great for kids to play on. You can still have a lawn, just don't use chemicals. Mulch mow, leaving the small grass clippings on your lawn. The clippings will break down and fertilize. Water less (or not at all) and adjust your expectations on color. If you have a small enough lawn, you can weed out what you don't like. Or if you don't want to weed, then cut the lawn short before the weeds flower and go to seed. You can also plant ground covers within the lawn, like Blue Star Creeper or Dichondra or Clover to fill in and make the lawn more dense. Keeping it dense, will keep weeds out or keep them weak. There's lots of info out there on this; books and online.
26
Since I moved to Maine, I've noticed the mowing of the interstate medians does not commence until the wildflowers have finished.
15
All my flower beds are covered in weeds. I can’t keep up weeding them anymore. I’ve seriously considered digging up the perennials and starting a new trend: Gardening with weeds!
I’m sure I would work less cleaning out the perennials than trying to control the weeds as I do now.
5
Susan, I use a homemade organic weed killer. Base is agricultural vinegar which you can buy online at Amazon. Also, many weeds are noxious, spread and are not beneficial to our gardens. I’m sure you can look up wildflowers Native to your area and sow them in the autumn. But the weeds most of them must go, most choke out the natives. Lots of organic compost and amending your soil will keep the weeds down and help perennials grow and thrive. Just saying...
1
Though I would agree that a lawn that is fed a steady diet of chemical fertilizers and pesticides is harmful and wasteful, Ms. Renkl's categorical dismissal of all use of herbicides will leave many gardeners, both in the north and the south, helpless to defend their yards from invasions by noxious weeds like fig buttercup (also called lesser celandine or Ficaria verna). Fig buttercup in particular is very difficult to control with physical methods, and quickly spreads not only to neighbors' yards but also to natural areas. Organic farming is great, but a natural area cannot be plowed or mulched to suppress detrimental growth. Natural areas have more the character of a body. We don't tell people to stop taking medicines simply because industrial pig farms are abusive in their overuse of antibiotics. Why, then, expect gardeners and stewards of nature preserves to forego targeted, minimalistic use of herbicides? The toxicity of pesticides vary, and Ms. Renkl's blanket condemnations show an indifference towards the people who labor long to care for natural areas and, yes, are greatly aided by targeted use of herbicides to stop infestations of weeds like lesser celandine before they become overwhelming.
In addition, does Ms. Renkl have any science degrees? Seems like many of the writers these days who are telling us what nature is really about haven't taken the time to learn the science that might or might not support their claims.
9
Stephen, I am an organic gardener and use a very good organic homemade weed killer. You will need to buy agricultural vinegar for the weed killer but it works! Also, because it is organic you will need to apply it over se real times. I apply it when it’s been warm and dry for se real days and the weeds are thirsty, and there’s no chance of rain and not windy, of course. Google “organic weed killer” the recipe is well known. We don’t need chemicals!
1
Amen. But science takes a back seat to fashion these days.
We certainly tend to use too many fertilizers on the lawn, but your take our Roundup (glycophospate) is more than a little fraught, if painfully contentious. Under most circumstances--juries not withstanding--there is not much evidence of risk: https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/news/2019/01/statement-from-health-canada-on-glyphosate.html ("Statement from Health Canada on Glyphosate," Jan 2019). There is significantly more concern when blanket spraying is used for agricultural fields.
Here is a general statement--one that no doubt will conflict with many closely held beliefs--from Health Canada:
"No pesticide regulatory authority in the world currently considers glyphosate to be a cancer risk to humans at the levels at which humans are currently exposed. We continue to monitor for new information related to glyphosate, including regulatory actions from other governments, and will take appropriate action if risks of concern to human health or the environment are identified."
It is hard to think that small amounts sprayed to control a few yard weeds are a serious risk, but that will not stop some from shouting.
3
@JSK
Juries are not great arbiters of scientific truth. If they were, the scientific community would use them.
Juries can also try to redress what they see as a power imbalance between poor suffering people and evil corporations.
The person in the Monsanto case was exposed to other pesticides and did not take many precautions. Its a big stretch to blame glyphosate.
7
And yet, when our homeowners' association sprays Round Up to kill "weeds", it kills everything in its path, and sometimes everything near its path, when the wind blows.
2
@AlMac....Yes, but why does Round-Up kill all green plants. Round-up blocks the shikimik acid pathway that plants use to make essential aromatic acids. Mammals do not have a shikimik acid pathway. The fact is that Round-Up as a chemical has an extremely low level of acute toxicity to mammals.
1
You can also eat many of them, including the red dead nettle pictured. Everything from dandelions to chickweed can be used in salads, sauces and soups. Others can be dried and used as tea infusions and gentle remedies. This, of course, provided you don’t use poisons. It would be wonderful to see a great diversity of wild plants blooming again in America. You can learn more by joining iNaturalist.
9
@Patricia Goodson
Or join your State's Native Plant Society. Every state has one and welcomes new members as well as the curious.
1
@Patricia Goodson
How many times have you eaten dandelions from your lawn ? Even if you don't use weed-killer, are you sure that your neighbor is not just looking the other way when his/her dog relieves itself ?
1
@Fran I used some in quesadillas today! Added a nice bit of contrast to the cheese -- I chopped the dandelions fine and used them like an herb. I did wash the dandelion first -- but I eat my cherries straight off the tree and strawberries straight off the stalk and haven't died of dog pee or bird poo yet.
1
I don't know if these are still in existence, but we used to have a lawn service that would pull up in a tanker, analyze problems with the lawn, write a report and then proceed to unwind a giant hose from the truck and spray the lawn with the "necessary" chemicals! We were paying to be poisoned! When I moved to the desert I soon learned that the retirees missed their grass from home and the condo associations would spend ridiculous amounts of money growing grass! Talk about chemicals, and oh-the water bills! I agree with you 100%.
9
@k richards
I agree that the expense, water and chemicals required to have green lawns in high or low desert locations is obscene. For those of us who live in the Northwest, however, it is almost impossible to not have lush lawns. Those neighbors who do nothing to their lawns have tons of nettles and other invasive weeds covering their lawns. None of them look "pretty". The only thing that blooms are dandelions, Scotch broom and thistle varieties.
I apply fertilizer in the spring and try to avoid phosphates. I do spray weeds directly, but they are so few when kept in check that I feel the weed specific spray I use is very limited in it's environmental impact. 50% or more of my backyard is dedicated to flowering plants and trees.
1
There was a big landscaping company in the midwest that used to be called ChemLawn. They changed their name to Tru-Green some years ago for obvious reasons (around when Mobil Oil gas stations changed their name to BP (British Petroleum) with green sinage).
1
Reading these posts one gets the impression that homeowners must choose between an untended weed patch and a poisoned/sterile yard. Not so. Just stop dumping chemicals of any kind on your lawn but keep mowing it. I've been doing it for 11 years and my lawn is fine. Not perfect but nice and green with various species of grass. Neighbors have nothing to complain about and we enjoy our yard without health fears or the guilt of knowing we're polluting nearby waterways and killing pollinators.
24
Exactly! No need for chemicals! We have mulch, compost, etc., to keep noxious weeds out! Enjoy!
3
Great article and couldn't agree more. Let's get back to a healthy way of living, and away from keeping up with the Jones's with our "perfect", lethal lawns.
9
Our lawns are part of “The Great American Sleepwalk”. I first ran across this phrase in Ita Jones’s book (1971): “The Grub Bag” and think of it in many contexts. In large areas of our country you will be scorned and emotionally, if not literally, punished for letting your yard go natural. We do need to speak out in support of human and planetary diversity. It’s never ending, but we have to continue doing so.
9
Yes, it we can have a beautiful organic garden with native plants, etc., without the use of chemicals. May not look “manicured” but so beautiful!
3
When all the bees are gone; all the birds are gone; all the grasshoppers are gone; all the snakes are gone; all the weeds are gone; all the creepy crawly things are gone; can the human race be far behind?
My brother in law does research in Indiana correlating the planting season with birth defects that show up nine months later. It is epidemic.
Babies of all species need clean water and clean air and unpoisoned food to grow; to live. How can anyone call themselves "pro life" when they support the industries that are killing life. Indiscriminately.
Start with your lawn. Then move to your larger environment.
15
@Bob Laughlin
Wow. I hope your brother in law will be sharing his research publicly so we can all see what is happening. Thanks for sharing.
1
Ms. Renkl: Thank you for your passionate defense of a non-chemical garden. Where I live, it is a constant battle between those who want a pristine 'perfect lawn' and those who wish to permit nature to bloom. Those who obliterate dandelions as weeds are doing harm both to their gardens and to the wild creatures that feed upon it. Woe to those perfect green lawns. But alas it is like speaking to the deaf and blind. Roundup is a terrible chemical used to achieve 'the perfect lawn', and it should be banned, and has been in some European countries. We all pay for this wanton disrespect of nature. So thank you for your lovely perspective as well as the poem by Gerald Manley Hopkins.
9
Tell it to my homeowner's association. They wrote me up last year for letting a lovely patch of clover bloom next to my house.
4
Then you’ve got to become an activist for nature! You don’t have to have weeds if you compost the natural fertilizer! Organic gardening is key to healing our Earth!
2
My father was a slave to his lawn, and he died from a horrible neurological disease that may be linked to pesticide/chemical use. Ironically, when I posted of his death, one of my childhood friends said he remembered the lawn. He never understood why I wouldn't let him use his products on my lawn. I was not about to expose my children to them.
6
Every day I go out to my lawn and pull up masses of weedy wildflowers whose names I always forget. I do this to avoid using chemicals, while also preventing the weeds from killing my centipede grass. No doubt the neighbors think I'm pretty nuts, but it works, it gives me some stretching exercise and doesn't harm the environment.
3
Yes! After reading this I feel redeemed for letting the moss grow all over my shady lawn! There is grass, too, but it is not the lush green seen in ads. In the spring my yard had carpets of Ajuga ground cover with it’s lovely purple flowers. My husband and I let wild phlox grow with abandon. I planted one columbine and now it has self-seeded around. Under a big white oak the variegated Solomon’s seal is spreading! The bees love my missy, gently wildflower filled yard. We do not live in subdivision and do eventually use the lawn mower. Thank you, horticulturalist first cousin David, for many years ago responding to my complaints about my difficulty getting grass to grow by responding, “What’s wrong with moss?” The bees thank you, too.
11
This quiet movement toward a healthier, pollinator friendly yard has been gaining momentum in recent years. For more information on establishing a healthier yard and environment, check out the website and book by Dr. Diane Lewis, The Great Heathy Yard Project ( tghyp.com ). Incidentally, the Great Healthy Yard Project is an affiliate of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. Additional local resources include state extension services and master gardener programs. Another great resource is Dr. Douglas Tallamy’s book, Bringing Nature Home.
10
Thank you for the suggestion! I’m an organic gardener, love not using chemicals.
1
The neighborhood letting their lawns go grow wild is a wonderful idea.. until you're ready to sell your home. Will you still find a buyer? Sure. But let's not pretend that their won't be a discount.
3
most comments interesting indeed. however, what is never mentioned is that every time you eat you are most likely shooting up the various chemicals you fear. are the flowers and insects the new Canaries in the coal mine?
2
“ and the foul chemical stink they emit, even in sealed packages, will give you a headache if you linger long.“
I too have noticed that and wondered if anyone’s taken the time to do an epidemiological study on the workers there.
Monsanto cleverly sold out to Bauer just in time to avoid the first big roundup ruling.
Non hiochkins lymphoma rates might be one place to start looking .
5
Where do u think the rainwater laced with pesticides and fertilizers go? End up in our drinking water!
5
I've got to admit, I've never had much problem with this.
2
and where are all the picts of her amazing all-natural lawn ... ?
3
I live in a neighborhood where some use chemicals (with fully manicured lawns that look like golf course greens) and some do not--so their gardens and lawns have dandelions. I am anal retentive enough to not want dandelions or creeping charlie, but I just pull them out. It's so satisfying to dig out a dandelion or to pull through long strands of creeping charlie--as though anything could ever fully eradicate that! I have resisted chemicals and people wonder how I stand weeding, but it is such cheap therapy! One can accomplish so much, just sitting there, sun hat on, among the bees. Really a great hour every summer afternoon. And the more one plants naturally spreading or re-seeding native flowers, (in our region that is monardo or bee balm, daisies, brown eyed Susans, coneflowers, flowering sedum, lysimachea (gooseneck loostrife), evening primrose, colombine and others), the less and less one has to do and the happier the pollinators are. Mission accomplished.
10
It still amazes me that these poisons are sold. Many stores offer shelf after shelf of bio-toxins to kills plants, moss, wasps, insects, tons of herbicides and pesticides. And so now the bees are dying off, the birds are dying, the insects are disappearing, and soon perhaps humanity it self will go into extinction, a species that never appreciated or cared for the beauty Earth and her abundant and beautiful and magnificent and fascinating life forms.
The American solution to any problem seems to be poison it, kill. I consider myself fortunate never to have fallen into the diseases of the American mind and no herbicide or pesticide or poison has ever touched my yard. Still the bees are gone, the insects no longer dance, because all around the neighbors hate Nature and poison her.
And then people wonder why 1 in 50 children are born with autism, why most kids these days have allergies or asthma, why cancers kill over half a million Americans a year, why the brains of the millennials are so addled that they think there are 161 genders and that one can decide one's sex by self-identification. The poisons get into the brains and bodies of the children and make them diseased, sick, unstable, toxified.
"All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself." Chief Seattle
5
I just mow my lawn. No chemicals and it still looks good from far away.
2
Eureka! Therein lies the secret!
The grass is always greener on the other side!
@Cam
How far? 10,000 ft.
tell this to my HOA.
HOAs are a plague on this country.
13
@Scott Robinson - Is someone forcing you to live where there's an HOA? Lots of places that don't have them, so I don't understand the problem.
Then there is the grass that grows where you don't want it. Currently doing battle with some invasive grasses in my beds. Sometimes you just can't win.
2
Automation and AI will never be able to take over the massive amount of hand labor involved in keeping an individual's property free of invasive species and maintaining an attractive appearance. You can't just "let nature take its course." Too bad we don't have a work force poised to take up the massive demand for chemical-free labor-intensive landscape maintenance. Seems like noble work, if we were willing to pay for it.
2
Live in California and am fortunate enough to be next to a canyon with coastal sage scrub plants. I have cultivated those on my backyard slope, pulled out all non-native invaders, and now have a wonderful permanently green backyard with some color in the spring. I do not have to water, even during our eternal drought. I would encourage anyone in California to experiment with native plants in your yard. I do not think you will be disappointed--attractive, water + money saving, and encourage native pollinators and birds to hang around your property. A win-win for you and and your ecosystem.
13
I have had an equal opportunity lawn for many years now. Whatever grows there unassisted is welcome. My daughter made mini strawberry tarts one year from the wild strawberries scattered in amongst the violets, clover, ajuga...and who knows what else that I can't identify. There may be some grass in there. I try to keep the dandelions under control for the sake of my neighbours but I'm looking forward to the day when everyone enjoys dandelions the way that children do.
10
@Kath I've always loved the scraggly lawns in my sister's Ottawa neighbourhood. Sign of sanity--putting kids and nature above worshipping one's lawn.
2
Before the advent of herbicide/pesticide over- use in the 1950's, a clover lawn was considered one of the finest landscapes where honeybees foraged freely. Now we have killed all the beneficial insects and the imported honeybees only survive under intense management. We are reaping what we sow with the collapse of the biosphere.
15
I have planted clover in patches of my lawn, and I love it. The ideal lawn is all clover.
I agree with not fertilizing my lawn, especially since it cant be seen. I do not use Round UP, but there is no science to back up the claim it causes NHL, except in lawyer science.
4
Letting nature take its course is the right thing to do. But, tell this to city governments and citizens who do not believe this. Warnings, citations and fines will fly. Home owners are judged by the tyranny of lawn care.
6
Wonderful!!!! Presently, I have a bounty of little wildflower wonders about my yard. To some, until the first mowing, it may look a bit untidy, but it is not. It is a display of beauty. Last week, my husband and I visited Monticello to behold the tulips in the yard. I was happy to note that the lawn was natural in appearance. There were several little children sitting on the lawn admiring the clover. Lovely.
5
I believe lawn care uses as much chemistry as agriculture these days. . This needs to change. Mowing alone is enough for most lawns anyway.
6
Yes, yes, I wholeheartedly agree. Nature is not just "out there", far off in a distant, remote wilderness. It is all around us, even in cities and suburbs. We can have it near us if we let it exist rather than crush it and poison it into oblivion.
I live in a Phoenix suburb and have chosen to plant (or let grow) desert plants and trees rather than grass. After 25 years, desert birds of all kinds, lizards, insects and even an occasional fox or two, have decided it is an ideal place to raise a family or have a meal. And this year's wildflower show was nothing less than magnificent.
Years ago, I erected in my yard a sign that I obtained from the National Wildlife Federation. It declares the yard a certified bird habitat with sufficient food, water and shelter to allows our winged friends to flourish. I placed the sign there mostly to let people know they can encourage beauty and nature right here in town. I think people get it, especially those who walk by, stop, look, listen, marvel, and whisper to each other, "That's a certified wildlife habitat." I get more smiles from that than from any sterile, "perfect" green lawn.
20
@Tom
Bravo! The NWF sign shows that you understand how valuable even a small habitat is, and are not keeping nature "out there" but where you are, has inspired others. Having a clean mowed edge and no obvious weedy plants (i,e, ragweed or thistles) works wonders.
1
The company that maintains my in-ground sprinkler system was just here, tuning it on for the season. My garden is starting to look wonderful - lots of hosta, ferns, astilbe, daylillies, phlox starting to come up, daffodils and Virginia bluebells in bloom, plus my lilacs, redbud, dogwood and forsythia either just starting to bloom or just ending. It's a small garden, both front and back, with two small bits of grass - I call them my "area rugs" of grass. But it does require water in order to survive our hot summers. I get great pleasure from this garden that my late husband and I made together after buying this house nearly 35 years ago.
My next door neighbor's front yard is now a sea of dandelions and another purple weed that is blooming. It's not pretty at all - it is certainly not a "meadow". It's an unkept front and back yard, and all those seeds will blow into my gardens and my yardman will spend the summer pulling/digging them up so they don't take over.
My lawn guy feeds my grass every spring, and later in the spring, will apply a fungicide - essential in this area of high humidity. Neither requires a "stay off the grass" sign and both are safe for my dogs.
If I lived in an area with little natural rainfall, I would landscape my garden very differently - lots of rock and native plants that can survive. But I don't - I live in the midwest and sometimes we get too much rain and sometimes too little. My garden requires water when there is too little.
7
I replaced a lot of my lawn with native shrubs and grasses, but still have some lawn. I hand-weed it every spring because I can't bear the thought of pouring poison on it to kill what the wind and birds have brought in to grow. It is a very labor-intensive project, and I might have to give it up because my next-door neighbor has turned his yard into a weed-choked jungle full of chiggers, ticks and god knows what. I'll admit I like an orderly, tidy yard, but I won't use chemicals to keep it that way. Right now, my hands have a number of blisters from weeding, but it goes with the territory, so I'm off to buy some bandaids instead of weedkiller.
5
Having worked for a couple years in prairie restoration, I can tell you that it's not as easy as "let nature take it over" and that's that. If you get a bad invasive species taking over your yard, good luck getting rid of them without herbicide or burning your lawn. Teasel, phragmites, crown vetch, the list goes on and on, and this is just Chicago. I think the more palatable solution for the general public for now is to support prairie reserves and bringing back natural lands. Having a wildflower garden can be rewarding, but it's easy to get more than you bargained for.
13
If I neglect my lawn, it becomes a haven for cheat grass, prickly lettuce, yellow toad flax, sow thistle, and other nonnative weeds. I live downwind of a big field full of things with airborne seeds. I pulled about 200 weeds this weekend, and my sixty-something back is feeling it today. Some days, I'm tempted to bring out the heavy-duty chemicals.
Hard to get grass or ground covers started in my climate without an obscene amount of watering.
3
Totally agree with all this but....I took out most of my grass, and planted some fun mostly native or at least easy to care for plants, and I enjoy some of the weeds. The birds and bees love it, so do the deer and bunnies. The problem is, I am in the middle of a bunch of fastidious baby boomers. Now they have more weeds...some of them probably put chemicals on their lawns to make them go away. In retrospect, I would recommend moving wildflowers/non lawn area out gradually from the house with a bit of planning, and not going right up against someone else’s property.
2
I always thought the people who have overly manicured properties were psychologically damaged. I think towns that enforce overly stringent ordinances regarding people's properties are oppressive, in the name of esthetics.
10
@Tim Lynch why would you think that? Would you think the same if someone was a perfectionist in another area of life - say, oh ,your surgeon?
2
My yard is a combination of grass, moss, and wildflowers. I've planted clover to help the bees, and milkweed to help the butterflies and will do whatever I can to help feed the birds, insects and forest critters. There is absolutely no sane reason to douse your property with poisonous carcinogens.
10
Nearly 20 years ago, I seeded nearly 95% of the front of my property with prairie plants. The remaining portion was planted with “No Mow” grass seed. No Mow grass matures to about 5-6 inches in height, is soft, slow growing, and requires cutting once or twice each summer......if at all. My neighbors all have planted turf grass, all using lawn care services to fertilize and apply chemicals. Yet, many have expressed interest in my native plants, no doubt with envy as I sip a cold beer on warm summer days......while they spend hours mowing! For now, my town allows the prairie. That could change. However, I relish the opportunity to defend native plant communities versus turf grass monocultures.
8
"As individuals, we too often feel powerless in the face of the corporate and political forces that drive our culture, but in this matter we are not powerless. We can change our preferences and train our eyes to see the “perfect” American lawn for what it is: a field of poison. We can put away our chemicals, make a haven of our own yards and welcome the wildflowers."
"I can't think of any place more beautiful than the American south in springtime." I can't either, Margaret Renkl. Thank you for another amazing, enjoyable, worthwhile column.
10
About two years ago, I killed my lawn by sheet mulching it with layers of cardboard from shipping boxes and wood chip mulch. Since then, my former lawn has become colonized by an amazing variety of volunteer plants. Freesias, aloe, parsley, various flowers and arugula, to name a few. I have to pull weeds occasionally but I also get a free daily salad and flowers for the house. You can find sheet mulching directions on the East Bay Municipal Utility District web site.
8
I recently redesigned my lawn. I planted fruit trees (fig, apples, peach, pear), raspberries, blueberries, strawberries. A wide variety of smaller shrubs and flowers. Rather than grass, I planted a variety of ground cover and clover, with patches of wildflowers scattered along the edges. It is such a joy watching it fill in. Seeing the birds, frogs, bees go to work. It was a lot of work, but then, so is a lawn. I hope this garden lasts for years and becomes a source of food for myself as well as the creatures whose homes we destroy for a sterile lawn.
9
After living in a Florida HOA, I have changed my ambivalence for lawns to a burning hatred. To me they are symbolic of a wanton thoughtless destruction of nature by chemicals and the elimination of untidy habitat. When I finally settled my dispute with the HOA, I sent them a list of the plants on my property, virtually all plants that I knew from my childhood in Jacksonville FL. Not a one was on their list of approved plants. When I planted my garden in FL, I was exasperated to find that there were no bees for my flowers. It took six months for bees and butterflies to find me in the wasteland of colorless drab mausoleum like landscaping of the HOA.
The required St. Augustine grass that was originally intended for shady areas typical of FL needed huge amounts of water in the direct sun. All my neighbors had subscriptions with chemical companies whose trucks swarmed like giant beetles dragging hoses through which they inoculated the soil with fertilizers, pesticides and fungicides.
That is the number one reason that I moved away, that and the people who actively embraced their role in turning a place that loved in my childhood into a nearly lifeless cesspool.
23
Snakes. That's the best argument for having some grass around the house--so you can see the snakes approach. That doesn't mean you have to water the grass or put chemicals on it.
1
@Flo Sorry but that's a bit off the mark. As a professional biologist with a specialty in Herpetology I can tell you that snakes can travel a well manicured lawn as well as an overgrown lot. But then again I always welcomed the presence of snakes on my property. You do know that you are in much more mortal danger from a stray dog than any snake in this country right?
Thank you for this article!! I completely agree!!
We don't water our lawn, we mulch mow it tall, fallen leaves and all. Because our soil is acidic, we add some lime, and rarely, organic fertilizer. That's it. And we hand dig some invasive weeds (I didn't realize that yarrow could be so invasive!). I love the clover and other weeds that dot the grass. We do seem to have some crabgrass -- but the worms and birds love it!!
And we love our birds. We knew that they ate insects, but we had no idea that they fed so many to their young. We have bird houses and bird baths. And our suburban/urban yard is full of other wild-life -- including hawks and even a bobcat.
11
Yes, but. I'll give my yard over to the wild things if you'll promise to pay the difference between what I get when I sell my house and what I'd get if it had a lawn.
3
@Martin Kohn {shrug} I am willing to take that financial hit for the many years of pleasure of a life-filled, wild back yard. With any luck, a kindred spirit will buy my house when the time comes. If not -- again, it was worth the price.
11
@Martin Kohn Don't bother, keep your grass and insecticide and chemicals and take that difference of a few thousand dollars to the grave with you. Must feel good.
4
@Martin Kohn
I wouldn't buy your chemically-poisoned property for all the money in the world. My neighbors all have horrible cancers. Some have died. They dump Roundup by the gallon on their lawns. One of my neighbors cannot walk, she's so obese. But God forbid she would ever bend over to dig up a weed.
4
I agree completely. I have been doing this for many years, and I love the surprised that pop up in my garden. The neighbors and the code enforcers are starting to catch up.
9
Thank you for publishing this. I've lived in several parts of the country, but one of my favorite places from a landscaping POV was when we were stationed in a part of TX that was so dry most of us threw in the towel on the idea of a lawn. We had stones and plants native to the area in our yards. I've tried to recreate this in other parts of the country, but HOAs, town codes and neighbors have made it more difficult. I am seeing more and more people planting vegetables behind a wall of herbs in their front yards, but even that still requires quite a bit of water and upkeep.
It not just our yards, it's our homes and neighborhoods too. It feels more and more as though home improvement stores, TV networks, builders and real estate agents are pushing me in a direction I just don't want to go. It's hard to find a home in this area without a huge garden tub and separate shower (but no linen closet) vaulted ceilings and a host of other things I don't want. I have nothing against people who love those things, but I no longer feel like I have much choice in the matter.
6
I live in a neighborhood with an HOA. My solution is to keep the tiny strip of front lawn looking immaculate (minus chemicals; it's not too hard to weed it by hand) and let the back yard, hidden by privacy fence, do what nature does best. Though I'm inspired now to spread some wildflower seeds.
13
I could not agree more about the wastefulness and destructiveness of green carpet monoculture lawns. Most of my yard is shrubs, trees, and vegetable garden. My little lawn area is a patchwork of grass, weeds, and moss. BUT, if I were to just let nature take its course, it would not take long before my yard became an impenetrable thicket of English ivy, Himalayan blackberry, and hedge laurel. Those three non-native interlopers effortlessly outcompete all other plants. The ivy will even eventually entomb and kill mature trees. I have planted lots of native plants that provide food and habitat for insects and animals, but my main yard maintenance chore is fighting against the invasion of aggressive non-native plants. Because I do not use poisons, this entails physically removing them. I cannot say that I enjoy it, but the survival of the beneficial plants in my yard literally depends on it.
20
Loved the ad posted for yard weed and feed that came up next to this article online. I'm sure the ad buyer loved it also. Also a perfect commentary on marketing driving things like perfect yard and tons of mulch I see everywhere this season. Mulch is great for business since it rots away and you need to keep buying more each year.
6
@kathy
Mulch can be obtained free in many towns through the solid waste authority that chips up Christmas and other discarded trees. Mulch also keeps down weeds without chemicals and adds nutrients to the soil as it breaks down--and it's inexpensive.
2
Excellent. I try to spread native wild flowers wherever I can in my lawn and beds. I spend 30$/ month on bird feeders (1-2 lattes/week worth?). I just picked up a "bee hotel" for the insect pollinators at costco. I'm trying to find some milk weed to toss around for the Monarchs. Does this make up for what I/we are doing to the planet? unfortunately not, but I think we all need to try to make a difference personally in our daily behaviour and in choices we make that affect the big picture. Making your yard insect and animal friendly is a small step but might be part of something bigger if we all try.
19
I appreciate this article, green is good, we need all kind of green to live in healthy environment. You don't need to cut your grass. When the grass is cut in the city its for cosmetic reasons, if your downhome let the grass grow, don't waste energy cutting the lawn, grasses will grow to about 2 feet, wildflowers and nature will follow, off the highway grasses absorb co2 from grass cars. I have natural grasses and wildflowers around my property that are not quite natural but carefully landscaped. If your not in a shopping or special tourist area where you want a clean look, let the grass grow, especially along the highway an unused fields or even in back yard if your not using it. If you let it grow you will see dandelions, over time wildflowers will take over or you can add them to the grasses. Dadilions are actually good for the environment as well.
1
I lived for 31 years in northern Ontario on 2/3 of an acre and while we seeded a lawn to start with, it quickly became a natural lawn when my husband decided to plant meadow grass seeds and flowers, clover, and other species that would require little to no mowing, and we loved the look of it, even the dandelions!
3
We all need Re-education and re-orientation regarding perfect green lawns. There are weed-killers out there that market themselves as not harmful to pets and/or other living things (like us, birds, bees, etc).
I do not trust these products and their “ethos” of being harmless. It seems after years of being in the marketplace, that the medical world plays catch-up and realize a correlation between unexplained cancers and these poisons/chemicals applied to our lawns and yards for aesthetics.
18
My two purple plum trees just finished blooming. Usually, as they bloom, they are covered in both honey bees and small, native bees. This year, although I went out to smell the flowers every day (they smell wonderful) I saw not one bee on the trees. Not any bees at all.
The world is in trouble and so many people don't want to believe it.
27
Where I live this approach would get me a summons for property maintenance violations.
9
@Susan The trick is to make it look well cared for. Mowed grass paths through gardens, for example, rather than an untended prairie. Using the backyard instead of the front yard. Using some native plants that stay in place - like butterfly milkweed - by mixing them in with nursery plants. Any little bit of native plants can make a difference. Also you might want to find some nearby communities with native gardens and see if you can soften the regulations where you live.
8
@Cam Mannino
I go heavily for native plants, especially shrubs and perennials that don't require a lot of fertilizer or watering. Each year, I try to extend the flower gardens a bit more, cutting down on lawn. They are easy to tend and look so pretty.
1
My father always said 'if it's green, it's good.' He did hate dandelions and I spent way too much time pulling them. Since they are so beneficial, I leave them alone unless they are in the herb/vegetable/flower beds. Iremember my father fondly every time I see them.
5
I live off a dirt road in the woods. Once in awhile during the warm weather I'll use an electric trimmer to keep a few paths near the house clear and the pollen away from my decks. But I've never mowed a blade of grass or raked a leaf. And I have a hard time understanding why so many people want to live in places where everyone must spend so much time & money "tending" lawns when they could just be letting nature do it all for them.
15
@Bob Excellent. I love your approach and would like to do similarly. We do mow the parts of the yard which have a conventional "lawn" which I have little interest in. I'd be happier to replace most of it with "meadow" or wild-flowers.
We live in a semi-rural area along the Potomac River. Since our acre lot, next to a larger horse property, is full of toads, skinks, rabbits, tortoises, ground hogs, and an occassional black snake, we decided long ago to prohibit all toxic chemicals. We don't use any insecticides nor herbicides. The amphibians are so sensitive. If we poison the yard, they would be the first to die.
6
@Bob because like other projects, some people love to tend a lawn.
@Bob
You never know dried out grasses or weeds can lead to a fire.
Our “lawn” this month is a mass of daffodils and jonquils, with clumps of tulips pressing up through the moss and rough grass, much of which we let grow knee-high in summer — along with wildflowers and mushrooms in profusion. Soon the surrounding meadows and pastures will be blindingly yellow with dandelions for a week or two, and then white as snow when they go to seed. Pesticides? Nein danke!
12
@Richard Janssen Are daffs, tulips or jonquils native in your area? I love them but I want to "go native" for the sake of increasing caterpillar and hence the bird population - and creating healthy native habitat. Even a lot of wildflowers - like Queen Anne's Lace - are not native and 90% of insects won't eat plants they didn't evolve with.
My lawn is far from perfect. Bare spots and clover here, too much shade from the ash trees there, wet areas from underground springs--the yearly mole uprising. When the spring thaw comes the deer trails and droppings make it look like a pasture. Turkeys came through recently and scratched a big dirt spot under the bird feeder. Still we all live under the pressure of keeping certain minimum standards so as not to upset the neighbors. No, we don't have to have perfect lawns but maintaining a lawn acceptable to ones neighbors is key to domestic tranquility.
5
Wonderful article. I'm a birder and once I became interested in birds and understood their interaction with nature, I never again used chemicals of any kind in my yard. I planted native and adapted flowering plants for bees, butterflies and birds, and I have been rewarded with many songbirds raising their young in my yard and have spent countless hours enjoying watching them carry unpoisoned insects to their young.
16
I live in Germany. Most Germans have at least a little garden, which is normally kept in pristine order. Except the dying off of insects and bees is constantly in the news and average people want to do something. We recently all got wildflower seed packets attached to the local newspaper (sponsored by a bank!) to plant and today we just got back from helping out at the local kindergarten to turn some of the grass there into wildflowers. We also did this at home. Today i was at a store and they were also giving away wildflower seed packets.If we could only actually get the farmland to also have “bee highways”—- as these huge plots of land with often a monoculture are food desserts for insects. Thankfully, I heard this discussion being brought up in the news last week.
But we must reduce our fertilizer use, roundup chemicals etc. in order to really give things a chance.
13
There has to be a happy medium. There's a big difference between planning to get rid of your lawn and just simply letting the weeds take over. I have a 100x100 suburban lot. It is on ledge, very uneven, lots of hills and plateaus. It is very difficult to mow. I do not fertilize or water the grassy areas. I do mow and weed whack them because of ticks. When my kids were growing up we never saw a tick. Now they are common so I don't want an overgrown lawn. I have garden beds and weed them. I am gradually working to make my property more low maintenance by transforming hillsides into plantings of large perennials and shrubs. However, my neighbor has let her lot go completely to weeds. I now annually fight two very invasive weeds: Japanese Hops and the worst one -- black swallow wort. Both of these creep under my fence and the swallow wort was so bad last year that it took my daughter and I hoeing and shoveling to get it up and since then it has been covered with thick, black plastic. I won't use Roundup or other chemicals so I have to fight these invasive weeds as best I can. I have young grandchildren and a dog and we want to enjoy our yard. Invasive plants will destroy everything in their path, so it is important that homeowners take the time to pick appropriate plantings and get rid of the invaders. A young professional gardener who helps me with big projects jokes about throwing napalm over the fence. Believe me, some days it's tempting.
14
Lovely idea, but not always possibility. Our neighborhood HOA would go bananas.
Vertical living has its charms.
1
When I first moved into my townhouse (almost 20 years ago), I saw salamanders, glow worms, lightning bugs, praying mantis, spiders and crickets. At dusk, I saw bombardier beetles, and at night I sometimes saw bats. I could hear the frogs (but never saw them).
It's been at least a decade since I've seen (or heard) any of those. It's been almost three decades since I saw a snail trail on my steps in the morning. (Remember those?)
Our lawn is beautiful, but I miss the bugs...
13
@Laura Well this is really sad. Has absolutely everything living in your townhouse community been exterminated? Sounds like it.
How can you not have crickets? snails?
We have all of the species you mentioned, and we do not use any poisons or herbicides on our property. I know it is not very "American" of me, but we try to live with nature (bugs, bats, frogs, turtles, ground hogs etc) rather thank killing everything that crosses our paths.
1
Reading through the comments, I am thrilled! It seems that more and more people are waking up to the thoughts expressed in this article. A "perfect" grass lawn is a toxic waste dump with little life.
We can't wave a magic wand and change the whole world, but we can take the steps to wave a magic wand and change the bit of land we tend. The bees and frogs and birds will thank you. The land will sigh with relief.
19
@Bedora I completely agree, but the idea of scrapping the conventional idea of a lawn around a house is not new. Jim Van Sweeden was publishing landscape design books at Random House in the 80s "Gardening With Nature," & "Gardening With Water" etc., and one of his mantras was "never, never mow another blade of grass!" He despised "lawns" from a design perspective (as do I), and perhaps also as just a bit too conformist & middle class.
4
And as for what your neighbors think? Forget about it!
9
@Nobis Miserere. Very neighborly of you.
1
Manicured lawns are going to be the smoking of the 22nd century.
28
If you remove your existing grass, plant some kind of ecology lawn seed mix and keep out the worst of the invasive weeds in your area, you should end up with a beautiful meadow. But it's nuts to think you can just let your yard go and get a favorable result.
16
What does it tell you about our society when almost every man to the last one drives around with a noisy small engine polluter like he is an overgrown child on a go-kart, every weekend? You cannot even discuss the single-species backyard they dream about...more than 80% of American men (and women) do not want a wild-flower yard. For fear of *gasp* ticks...diseases! Zika!
Sorry but I will mock your crazy American society when you don't shut-up about some stupid illness after another stupid illness; all the while spending many times more human capital on wars and bombs than on life and health.
12
Lawns -- one of the all-time stupidest and most harmful inventions.
20
@Jamila Kisses actually no. If you take a cursory look at history going back hundreds of years lawns were part of larger projects to surround palaces and create beautiful spaces.
3
Dear Margaret, how dare you you suggest such a socialist un-American thing! Unmanicured lawns - never! Pave the Earth, and do it with US companies.
10
We live in a paradise if lawn weed killer and fertilizer is one of the countries major problems. My parents lived through the Depression and WWII, Korean War and Vietnam War. If you asked them that lawn care would be the subject of such angst in 2019 they would weep tears of joy. Sometimes I think the goal of some is perfection. That’s how great life is today in the US for the majority of people. That’s a big improvement since 1980, let alone 1944.
2
I don't have any standard turf grass whatsover in my lawn at all anymore ...
Instead, I have a variety of native grasses and plants ... large pockets of clover, these little violet flowers, these tiny, tiny dandelions, corn flowers and these beautiful crocus-like plants that bloom all over my lawn and in my backyard but not in the neighbors' yards or anywhere else that I have ever seen ...
Slowly seeing insects returning ... some butterflies and dragonflies, more and more bees, hummingbirds, wolf spiders and yesterday for the first time in forever a big fat black junebug ...
Still, it's unnerving to think that I haven't seen many kinds of insects that used to be everywhere ... like pillbugs and even ants ... around my yard for what seems like many years now ...
4
There are few things more distractingly annoying than a neighbor who lets their yard go. We think, “maybe they are sick and bedridden?”, or perhaps the house has been abandoned? No, it’s just that whacky cat lady, earth mother nut. Neighbors plot who will clandestinely mow it while she’s away. It’s a source of consternation every time you pass by. And if unlucky enough to live next door, the weeds jump into the yard and the gnats and mosquitoes invade my property. No, this is not some noble calling. It’s the yard equivalent of an anti-vaxer.
7
You don't have to let your yard go to have native plants or to avoid using chemicals for pest/disease control. I have plenty of roses and other non-native plants, as well as native shrubs, trees and flowers. I keep my lawn cut on the long side, which means cutting it more often, because keeping it short favors weed growth. I allow clover to grow wherever it wants because I don't mind the look of it. I just pull the dandelions and some other pesky weeds I don't want to look at. I grow native bee-balm, native wisteria and other wild looking plants that are pleasing to look at in part because they are contained by nicely groomed edging and rock walkways. You can follow every principle the writer talks about here and have a yard your neighbors are happy to look at. And no, an ugly yard offender is not the equivalent of a non-vaxer. Yard neglecters don't endanger the lives of others.
14
@Pam
But pesticide use does endanger the lives of others--and their pets. Lawn pesticide use is a public-health problem, and not necessarily a minor one.
15
@Pam So well put. I completely agree.
Thanks. I try but mostly fail to care for my unnatural grass aka lawn. I am not as diligent nor as wise as Mother Nature. I can't maintain tallgrass prairie nor oak hickory climax forest.
2
My dog died last fall of tumor in her nose. No way of knowing for sure, but I suspect a decade of sniffing Round-Up laced verges. Bayer/Monsanto needs to be called what it is: evil. They market poisons to the gullible, they control the seeds, they slip cash to the pols. This is what “free” enterprise often produces: freedom to lay waste to ecosystems. Obviously encouraged now by Donald and his cronies, but sadly, even Obama had little knowledge of these issues, at least no desire to buck the corporate agriculture barons. We need to regulate these insect killers, pollinator killers, earth-killers out of existence. We can rebuild healthy soil and insect/animal diversity, and feed people, and store carbon in the earth, with regenerative agriculture. Google it. No pesticides or herbicides needed. No Bayer/Monsanto needed.
13
Another spring, another article extolling the merit of letting your property “go native”.
I respect your choice, but I’m also glad you don’t live next door.
40
@Peter Craig
I am glad I don’t live next door to a pesticde-riddled lawn that requires lawn care companies in spring to advise even humans to stay off it after it’s been “treated.” Do you really want to live in a world that may look pristine, but can’t actually support natural life, like the bees that pollinate the very crops we depend on for our own survival? That just seems crazy to me.
120
@constant reader I have a nice looking lawn and a six large flower beds that attract thousand of bees, butterflies and an assortment of insects. You can have both. And I use a lawn service to treat the sod, and I reseed every fall and it is lush. The first line of defense against invasive weeds such as crabgrass (which are highly invasive here in the south) is a healthy stand of grass. Once you get your grass thick and healthy it is a natural barrier to weeds.
20
@Peter Craig
As humorous as your comment is, it reflects an old-school approach to the garden and lawn. Everything we do in our front and back yards is done with the neighborhood creatures in mind: the walked dogs, the cats on territory patrol, the bees, butterflies, and other insects and the birds that eat them. Each year, the local garden society nominates our front yard for recognition as one of the most well-maintained and attractive in the area. No grass in the front yard, just weed barrier, mulch, and lots of various ornamental and flowering plants and trees. We weed by hand AND we have a full social calendar of dining, concerts, plays, opera, festivals, etc.
32
Great article - thank you!
7
Yes, let's start a Wildflowers revolution! And let's start not only with our modest lawns but with those environmental abominations called "golf courses," turning them into flowering meadows full of butterflies and bees!
8
"They paved paradise and put up a parking lot" -er, lawn.
Joni Mitchell
9
How about golf courses?!
6
I can never understand why our society takes 200 -300 year old viable farm land builds houses on it, than the home owners engage in dumping tons of chemicals on it just to grow grass.
Seems like a total waist to me.
6
yes!! Thank you, Ms. Renkl!
6
“A garden is a lovesome thing god wot”
All these lovely descriptions of gardens make me think of the beautiful line from Thomas Brown’s poem.
PS. Good thing I checked spell check or my quote would have become “ A garden is a lonesome thing good wool”
1
Wonderful! My loan is in fact full of pretty yellow dandelion flower. I refuse to kill them.
5
A lawn is the only crop known to man where we spend great money and effort to cultivate and grow it, then we harvest (mow) and then throw out that which we harvest. Makes perfect sense to me!
9
@Johninnapa I don't throw out clippings. I have a mulching mower the clippings go back onto the lawn for decay and fertilization and most people I know do that too.
I completely forgot I was reading a column in the NYT, reads like a love letter. Beautiful writing.
7
'“Chemical” is just another way of saying “poison.”'
Seriously? Gee, oxygen is a chemical, does that mean it's a poison? Water is often classified as a chemical... you better stop putting it on your plants, it'll kill them!
3
@ELaw You might be more careful, because nope,
oxygen is most definitely NOT a chemical. Oxygen is an element, like nitrogen or hydrogen. Hence, I think your effort to be snarky has failed.
So true. This was a great peace. You forgot to mention one thing. Local governments have the power to make you cuy your lawn. Believe it, about three years ago a local town Andover Ma. brought to court a person who wished not to cut there lawn. The home owner lost. I believe they called it a nuisance but I am not sure.
@oscar jr most townships and cities have ordinances that outline maximum height of grass (even it if is weeds). They also regulate unimproved lots too such as a requirement to have them cut twice a years.
Many people just don't know it until they get a citation or the city moves their lots and sends them the big bill.
It is best to get informed on the requirements the city lays out before you overstep - you could end up in court and your property encumbered with a lien if in a HOA.
Agree wholeheartedly. More than 10 years ago I let my lawn go back to its natural state. After cancer I wanted no chemicals. Now I have many visiting bees, 5 species of butterflies, many visiting birds and occasionally a painted bunting. The bees especially love the very tiny wild flowers and butterflies love my bouganvillia. Our toxic algal blooms are also fed with Roundup that flows into all waterways when used on your property. If you value nontoxic water, you should think about how Roundup is polluting our rivers and estuaries. And ultimately your children.
7
Yes, I did that and the HOA & neighbors had a melt down.
72
@Deborah, which is why when we were looking for a homecoming to buy (fifteen years ago now, wow), I had only two non-negotiables for the real-estate agent: gas heat and no HOA. (When an agent showed us a home in an HOA neighborhood, we told him to take us home and that he was fired.)
HOAs are little more that nattering nabobs of neighbors peeking over your wall, looking for any way to make your life miserable. That they can put a lien on your home is the main reason to avoid them at all costs.
29
@Andy I have lived in HOA's all over the country, and each one is run differently. Some are very strict, other, like the one I live in how are very lax. Broad based statements about the nature of HOA's are not reality. Some are great to live in, others not so much. But, townships and cities LOVE HOA's because they generally have private roads that the city does not have to maintain, all the while collecting property taxes. HOA's are a win for any city.
2
@Andy right:
The modern version of “ hey you, get off my grass”
4
"Let’s be clear here: 'Chemical' is NOT just another way of saying “poison.” Life itself depends on chemicals.
6
@Robbbb, you and the author aren't using the term in remotely the same way. You're right, of course, after you've expanded the definition beyond lawn chemicals, far beyond what the author means.
1
The third of three ads I’m seeing within this column is from Bayer, which took over Monsanto, apparently claiming that herbicides are not harmful.
3
If you can trust the EPA you can trust Monsanto.
Most people in California probably aren't aware of the fact that carcinogenic weed killers are used to protect wildlife. Round up and atrazine are both dumped directly into rivers to protect native fish habitat.
The California Department of Public Health also has an agricultural pesticide mapping tool online at www.cehtp.org/pesticidetool.
Love your weeds.
1
Michael Pollan wrote a great article about the stupidity of lawns, which I once read for a required writing class in college. I was made into a forever foe of the standard American lawn.
Some facts: Most grass species we use on our lawns are *not* native, and this applies to the entire country. We have built hundreds of thousands of homes in places where grass, and especially the homogeneous, adolescent-stage grass we prefer, was never meant to grow. This is why it takes so many chemicals and so much mowing and money to maintain a basic lawn. Unless you're out on your lawn 4 days a week, running cartwheels and holding picnics, your money is wasted.
We didn't used to be obsessed. Lawns were originally a sign of wealth (look at the money I can waste on this giant manicured lawn). Then, in an attempt to clean up the cluttered neighborhoods that had chickens and animals running around the actual houses, lawns were made out to be a community project, a sign of openness and orderliness. Now we've got a billion dollar industry centered around maintaining what isn't supposed to exist, to say nothing of actual laws against people who don't maintain their lawns.
Let's do away with this nonsense homeowner commitment, which only annoys us and wastes our money. I've never yet heard anyone say they love mowing their lawn.
22
“We treat nature the way we would if we were illiterate and could only see a library as a stack of firewood.”
- Dan Janzen, Univ. of PA
On Insects: "Those trillions of unaccountable lives, those crawling, buzzing, intense presences which nature created to fill some unknown purpose or perhaps simply to satisfy a whim for a certain sound, or a moment of exquisite color…"
- The Outermost House, Henry Beston
5
thank you thank you thank you for writing this article!
9
Aesthetically, it is easy to keep a yard looking nice with lots of wildness—any mix of cultivated and native plants that please you. Just need to put thought into the heights and shapes and composition of what you grow, and have some sort of structured edge—like a stone path or wall, or a low wooden fence to justify it all—and then, voila, you have a "cottage garden" instead of a weed patch.
6
I completely agree with the author. Perhaps she would explain her viewpoint to my neighbors and my HOA?
8
@gzodik
She just did. You can forward them her article.
@gzodik a lot of the rules in the HOA are also city ordinances.
Thank you for these words of encouragement and all the great comments too! We also are letting the "weeds" take over in the field and rejoicing in the butterflies, bees, birds and others who have shown up to do what they do for free. I understand that what used to look pretty and park-like to me is sterile to the rest of the animal kingdom...
5
Do this in most neighborhoods and you will be ostracized, if not openly criticized.
@paul And that needs to change.
14
How do you get the homeowners associations to let you get away with wildflowers?
3
@H, you either don’t move into an HOA neighborhood in the first place, or you run for president and make new rules.
@H We have lived in Chandler (near Phoenix, az) for the last 22 years...We have a gravel lawn with trees and shrubs. A few years ago I sprinkled wildflower seeds in front. Got a “courtesy notice” from HOA about weeds. Sent them a photo of said “weeds” (our wildflowers) in bloom, and assured them we would pull out actual weeds, as well as spent plants after the blooms were gone. The have left us alone ever since!
1
I agree with the entire concept of this article though I must point an error and an unrelated inference. The author writes about “pesticides and herbicides” which is incorrect as an herbicide is a pesticide just as any “cide”, fungicide, algaecide, etc are all pesticides. Secondly, I agree about what the author says about roundup (glyphosate), however, no one puts roundup on their lawns as it kills grass too. In stead they should point out the indiscriminate use of broadleaf weed killers (herbicides) used on lawns, which preserves the grass but kills clovers and all the beautiful wildflowers the author mentions.
6
Along with saying no to chemicals, could we please say no to Bradford pears? They're the new kudzu. They're showing up everywhere, far from where they were originally planted. Here in the Shenanodah Valley, I'm afraid they're wiping out our beautiful redbud. Years ago if I saw a tree bearing white blossoms in the woods, I knew it was wild cherry or service berry. But now it's that god awful Bradford pear taking over the world. The plant version of the Japanese beatle.
7
Michigan wild growth is relentless.
1
Misleading headline.
Getting rid of grass lawns is a great idea, but it cannot be done by neglect.
I tried that once with my first home. Naively thought to do just what the headline suggests and watch the native plants thrive.
No. An ugly weed patch resulted. Choking invasives. No flowers.
Takes intention and thoughtful gardening to replace an urban or suburban lawn with beautiful wildness or anything else.
13
@David Grinspoon exactly. The first line of defense against choking, invasive weeds is a healthy stand of grass. If you don't want to to that, then it takes careful planning and it is not easy and just as much work as a lawn. There is no free lunch here.
3
@David Grinspoon
I mow, therefore, I am.
Great, another article that makes me feel like no matter what I do it’s never enough. Is there anything I can feel good about these days?
@AL26 WS Merwin wrote “on the last day of the world/ I would want to plant a tree”. Plant trees and native plants, give back to the landscape. It helps neutralize the poison that is the news cycle.
4
@AL26 you can have both a beautiful lawn and attract bees and butterflies. I do. It takes a bit of planning. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Judicious use of chemicals to control weeds (premergence), etc. can work.
While we’re condemning the artificiality and chemical pollution induced by suburban lawns, let’s not forget that much larger and even more artificial “green” space: golf courses. Not only do they consume vast amounts of land so that duffers can chase a little white ball over a tiny fraction of that space (by one estimate, golf courses collectively add up up to two Rhode Islands and a Delaware), their chemical needs dwarf what individual lawn-lovers apply. And much of that is done relentlessly by groundskeepers employed by local municipalities at taxpayers’ expense.
There was indeed some irony that we had this loving essay about keeping one’s personal space chemical-free in the same edition of the Times crowing about Tiger Woods winning the Masters. And of course, not only is that land saturated by weed killer and fertilizer, it’s either member-only country club land, or it’s off-limits to anyone except golfers, lest anyone enjoying the land for its own sake get beaned by an errant spheroid.
6
@Jena-Auerstedt Indeed, but such cognitive dissonance is inherent to any major newspaper. Note how many dire climate change reports run in the same issue as pieces extolling global luxury travel.
2
@Jena-Auerstedt, the worst is that “we” allow golf courses in deserts. The amount of water needed to keep them green is unconscionable. That too many golf course managers refuse to allow reclaimed water and instead pump groundwater to maintain the courses is criminal.
4
@Jena-Auerstedt. While you are it, why not ban football fields, soccer fields, tennis courts, baseball diamonds, playgrounds, parks, and any other open spaces that can be used by anyone but you.
My yard is probably the only yard around that does not use a landscaping service, and I stopped using chemicals years ago. I see honey bees, but have not seen a lady bug or praying mantis in decades. I feed the song birds in the colder months (it becomes too expensive in the warmer months), but the feeder attracts flocks of an invasive bird known as a grackle, who will empty the feeders by mid-morning. The grackles over-winter somewhere else, but turn up here earlier and earlier every year, now in mid-March, and stay at least six months. I have tried everything to keep them from the feeders, but without success. Vis-a-vis dandelions, it is possible to eliminate them by going out once a day and using a dandelion tool to sever the plant below the surface before it goes to seed; next year, viola, no dandelions. If any dandelions do go to seed, I have found that a tiny squirt of Weed-B-Gone will kill them (sorry). I do find it necessary to use a stronger herbicide on the poison ivy that always sprouts on the edges of my property, but I take care to limit the spraying to the poison ivy only, and not to spray on a windy day.
2
@Miriam Dandelions are a crucial food source for honeybees, as is clover. There are times of year when the bees are on to other sources of food, but by all means please don’t spray with weed killer.
3
@Miriam I have ladybugs, crickets, praying mantis, bees, fireflies, and every other insect, and I use a lawn service for the chemical applications that are needed to keep weeds at bay and fertilizer. I oversees once a year in the fall. I have several large mulched flower beds and a nice. green, sodded lawn with an pop up and drip irrigation system. Our yard is beautiful. You can have both with good planning.
2
I'm clearly in the minority on this thread, but I think there's room for everything on a property. My quarter acre lot is about 50 percent cultivated lawn and 50 percent perennial borders heavily stocked with the flowers and shrubs the pollinators love. Tall shade trees keep portions of my yard cool in summer. I have assorted bird feeders dotted throughout, and it all lies within undulating edges surrounded by the lawn. The grass is soft underfoot and creates a picture frame for the riot of continuous color. I hang my laundry out to dry and get free compost from the town dump. Like those who let their lawns go wild, I'm saving the planet is small ways too.
14
@Maureen I have both too. A nice, small green expanse of lawn well cared for, and several big, mulched flower beds buzzing rightnow with pollinators, and in the summer all sorts of bugs to include praying mantis, ladybugs, fireflies. etc.
1
We stopped mowing more than 10 years ago. The wild flowers, insects and birds are fabulous (we are both naturalists) . We don't waste time or gasoline with mowing, don't pollute the air with mower exhaust, or ruin the peace of a summer morning with the noise. I do have a scythe with a brush blade to maintain the yard in a desired successionary state, and that affords me some easy and enjoyable exercise.
7
I don’t have a blade of turf grass in my yard. All of my plants are local natives. I use no chemicals. I have a yard full of birds and buzzing bees and other useful insects. But non-native invasive “unwanteds” like cheat grass would take over my yard if I weren’t willing to put in the time to pull them out. While I don’t approve of having a large green lawn that is maintained with chemicals and often landscapers who come once every week or two, I can understand why people do it. But they’d be doing the world a favor if they’d just put down fake grass and plastic flowers.
5
Agree with sentiment of the article, but would add that growing a wildflower, wild grass meadow requires some work. Highly invasive weeds like crab grass will take a lawn over fairly quickly. You have to weed frequently and use organic fertilizer to enhance the growth of the species you want.
1
@Tom exactly. A healthy stand of grass will help reduce crabgrass population - where one crabgrass plant produces 150,000 seeds.
We still have some grass, but we removed most of the grass from our quarter acre and replaced it with flower beds, which incorporate mostly native (but, in any case, non-invasive) plants and rain gardens. Each of our downspouts empties into one of the rain gardens and then drains into the soil within 24 hours. The New York Times did an article on rain gardens and their environmental benefits a few years back ("A Rain Garden that Even the Neighbors Seem to Like") but, alas, the photographer assigned to the article forgot to take any photos of the rain garden.
8
Biggest problem is neighbors who wage war against you. Finding a home without an HOA is a hassle in many areas, and neighbors often feel entitled to what is going on in your property.
Nice idea, one I agree with in principle, but good luck fighting back against the snakes around you.
4
We're tearing out all our grass this year, replacing with low-water flowers, native trees, and a few fruit trees that are worth their water. That 50s lawn look should be gone.
7
Love this. The only thing I disagree with is that a lawn requires chemical fertilizers and conventional herbicides. Plenty of people are growing lovely organic lawns these days, using organic fertilizers, along with horticultural techniques such as watering and mowing properly. But whether you grow an organic lawn or a wildflower garden, it's a good idea to ditch the conventional herbicides. Even mainstream medical organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics have warnef people to minimize their use.
8
It is quite beyond me why so many spurn the modern lawn. I maintain a nice lawn for the same reason I maintain nice carpeting in my home. It is functional and it is attractive.
No one should claim a lawn is or could ever be natural. Neither is a garden natural. The moment you begin mowing or turning the soil, you are working against nature.
Lawns are not a new interest. History, literature, and art all document well-groomed lawns as part of attractive landscapes in Europe in the 16th century and earlier. Humans seem to like to be surrounded by attractive vegetation, and we are averse to nuisance plants such as brambles and poison ivy.
One commenter suggested just letting indigenous grasses grow. In fact, what appears to be wild and natural are grasses introduced by Europeans which, like the settlers themselves, thrived in the new environment.
As to “saturating the soil with chemicals,” the most common chemical applied to the lawn is urea. That’s the same chemical we all flush from our bodies upon rising each morning. Urea supplies nitrogen in a form which causes the dark green color and the dense growth most of us desire in our lawns. A relatively small amount is required; too much and the lawn is seriously damaged.
I like my lawn, and I like it that my neighbors also maintain attractive lawns. Here’s a deal; I’ll ignore your plastic water bottles, your use of the garbage disposal, and your cat which kills backyard birds, and you lay off my lawn.
3
@Cirar3226 love this comment. A cursory look at history will attest to the beauty of a well tended to lawn, in the right proportions.
Nobody seems to care about this problem of poisoning our environment. People still go on watering and feeding and shredding money into their lawns!! I did that one year and quickly realized how pointless it is. You water and feed the grass that isn't really natural and then you waste time trying to keep it short!! Insects are at the bottom of the food chain. Sooner or later, we humans are going to feel the effects, in fact we already are.
11
Mono-cultures are harmful everywhere - we grow our corn, soybean, wheat for hundreds of miles creating space for only one thing the crop we want. This displaces everything else and is done with chemicals and gene altering. what happened to the things we gained in the Silent Spring. EPA is becoming more and more of a tool for the big chemical machines. I know we need to feed the world but at what consequences are we do having on the great planet we live on. Lawns wow what a waste.
14
The best way to deal with "weeds" is to re-label then as wildflowers. Several problems solved in one fell swoop!
11
My parents' home in NJ back in the 1960s had a huge meadow in the back instead of more bluegrass lawn. It was a formative experience to watch that meadow's succession to young forest as I grew up with it, although the town always cited us for harboring ragweed (it was actually goldenrod). I became a biologist as a result of seeing biology unfold before me, and still try to minimize herbicides and pesticides on my much smaller piece of land here in urban Texas. The result is plenty of birds, earthworms, and butterflies.
11
Loved your article, but many municipalities and gated communities have ordinances against wild lawns and yards. The fines are excessively high, and neighbors might trespass in the night to cut down one's most beloved wildflowers!
Sad, but true, the manicured lawn and precisely trimmed shrubbery are still valued and legislated. However, as a lawn-lover, I must say I feel safer when I can see what's crawling around in my yard and on my vegetables. Groomed lawns are nice when we need play-space for croquet, bocce, etc.
4
@ultimateliberal. You’d be doing the world a favor if you just put down some fake grass.
2
@Randy nope. Most synthetic turf surfaces absorb rather than reflect sunlight, causing the emission of heat. These high temperatures impact the surrounding environment. SO that is no solution either.
Amen Margaret. Think about the sheer volume of acreage that American lawns make up. The amount is impossible to calculate, but let's just say it is MASSIVE. If even part of each lawn were devoted to wildflowers, we'd be covering miles of dead space with a living tapestry. And we would be providing valuable way stations to birds and butterflies. Conversely, if all of those lawns were drenched in fertilizer (as most are) than we'd be poisoning the water and the planet (which we are). We need to rethink the lawn as we know it.
15
I always have a problem cutting the oxalis with their pretty yellow flowers when it's time to plant tomatoes. of course, they can grow alongside the garlic.
1
Ok. I' ready to do battle with my husband over the lawn care..
I'd rather have a good bug population than a perfect lawn.
21
@memosyne
Good luck! Just remember that you are fighting for a plethora of underdogs who need us to help them survive and replenish the environment.
Besides, a "perfect lawn" is greatly overrated.
4
@memosyne go for it! for inspiration and great advice, turn to wildseedproject.net (maine based org- website is amazing) and to convince your husband, give him the book "Bringing Nature Home" by Dr. Doug Tallamy. best of luck luck!!
Love this article. We're in the process of transforming our lawn to wildflowers for the pollinators. Last summer I noticed how much bees, especially honey bees, love the plantain "weed." We just let it grow over a large area of the lawn - I asked my husband not to mow it. The bees were all over it all summer. We've also started planting milkweed, joe pye weed, wild irises, monarda, astors, and some others, and the pollinators love them all. Section by section we're turning over about 3/4 of an acre of formerly all lawn to wildflowers. We're aiming for zero mowing.
28
When we bought our current house almost 13 years ago, there was lawn but no flowers (and no birds). My wife vowed that she would eventually tear up all the grass and plant shrubs and flowers. That's basically been accomplished, and we've also had birds for quite awhile.
14
As an inhabitant of the piedmont of North Carolina, I tottally agree with the sentiments expressed here. However, I think the tensions in creating a wild space around the home (especially in the American south) are these: 1) venomous snakes, specifically copperheads. Yes, they will be there no matter what, but I want to keep them away from my house. 2) erosion. I my lawn has no grass, lots of old growth trees, under-story of dogwoods, etc, but I have issues with erosion. How can I have both the variable density "wild" growth and prevent my yard from washing away? 3) Unwanted tree and bush growth (makes it difficult to maintain the rest of the lawn). Wilderness will take over if not tamed. And fast (where we live). I learned this the first season after moving to the area from an arid part of Texas. It is a lot of work to keep up a yard here!
4
@Katie. Plants hold the soil and prevent erosion. Plant some native understory shade loving plants beneath the trees and shrubs. I’m sure N.C. Has a native plant society that could advise you.
2
We just moved in December to our third suburban lawn, and I am already preparing my secret weapons to turn this wasteland into a thriving ecosystem in a few short seasons: I have fennel and oregano sprouting in pots on the sunporch, and I have packets of dill and sunflowers ready to plant as soon as it's warm and dry enough. Let all herbs flower, go to seed and stay in place from year to year and you will have tons of butterflies and pollinators with no effort whatsoever. Plant sunflowers anywhere and everywhere to attract birds. Both will return every year. So simple.
17
@Cheryl
I tried sunflowers once. A squirrel cut the tops off and the giant flowers fell to the ground where it was much easier to eat every one of the developing seeds. The squirrel's name is Benny, and she's happy now with birdseed and peanuts.
7
@Occupy Government I love sunflowers too and so do deer! They will shear them off quickly.
Wonderful article. What a critically important message amidst all the horrors of politics and climate change. I love the line:
" see the "perfect" American lawn for what it is: a field of poison".
If only others would truly wake up to the damage we are doing.
27
I completely agree with SAO. Ground ivy (my name for Creeping Charlie) is, I believe, the flower in the picture in this article; the flowers are very pretty. However, it is non-native and extremely invasive; it pushes out native plants. I have been told that it was introduced as nice groundcover. It sure does cover! I have no idea what to do with it, since I don't want to spray, and the only thing I can think of is to plough under the whole lawn. Not too practical for me. It's dreadful stuff for our natural habitat.
4
@JRM The picture of the purple wild flower is purple dead nettle. The bumble bees LOVE the flowers and it is available for them to feast on as soon as the bumble bees emerge (along with dandelions) in spring. Purple dead nettle - like many other "weeds" - are a very powerful medicinal plant and edible. Many of the "weeds" that are not native were actually brought on purpose by early settles for use as food or medicine - like plantain, dandelion and dead nettle. So while it is not a true native, it is providing great use in nature. It is by far more useful than the grass that we plant everywhere!
6
@JRM. Non-native invasive are a scourge. If the Times put a picture of one with this article, they should be ashamed!
1
Thank you for this eloquent and thoughtful piece! This should be required reading for every overly law(n) and order-obsessed neighborhood association ever ready to fine anyone for leaving wildflowers undisturbed long enough to actually bloom in their yards...
20
My feelings toward dandelions changed when I realized the flowers close up at night. I have dogs so my backyard is a wreck anyway. I just mow everything, weeds, grass, bare patches, until July turns most of it brown.
4
@Jerry
Dandelion leaves are great in salads and the flowers make a pretty fair wine. One puff in a flower pot and you get greens all summer.
4
@Jerry . Dandelions are God's gift to little children.
2
We've always had what we call field grass in our yard. Upon inspection one will see that it's not really grass at all but all sorts of green leaves. Yesterday, it was full of wild violets which I love. It was always a joy to witness the delight my daughter had every spring when she'd go to pic flowers in the yard, filling many little bud vases with violets, buttercups and dandelions. I've never understood the fanaticism about lawns and always worried about the chemicals --particularly since we live in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Plus--the kids ran around barefoot. Who wants chemicals under their feet!
12
We let our 2 acre lawn go many years ago, watering it was akin to throwing dollar bills out onto it and the sound and noxious fumes of mowing and blowing every week was grotesque. Over the next few years it naturally morphed into a beautiful meadow; full of poppies, sweet peas, asparagus, and other volunteer native grasses and wildflowers. And it changed beautifully throughout the seasons. Every year we have more bees, birds, bugs, even gophers, but it was so intensely alive. We kept it maintained by removing invasive, non-native plants and trimmed at the edges, along with the trees and other plants. However, our neighbors complained, albeit nicely, about our "wild" "unkempt" yard. With great sadness now, every spring we weed whack it all down to appease our narrow minded, manicured-lawn-loving neighbors.
I'm anxiously waiting for the day when we get over this nonsensical necessity of a lawn and I can have the thriving meadow in its place again.
20
I saw the first dandelion of this Spring yesterday. I thought of all of the chemical companies that are lined up with massive marketing campaigns to convince us that this little flower is even more evil than cannabis was once thought to be.
Yet, children (and unsullied adults) delight in its happy brightness and dust their noses with its pollen. Bees--so incredibly vital to our very food supply--adore it and pack their little leg sacs full of its pollen for transport to hives for food and sustenance. Earthworms use the pathways afforded by its deep roots to wiggle their way skyward and to surface just long enough to be yanked into the beaks of hungry robins and the maws of their young. Early leaves of the plant spice up salads. Seed heads are blown to send wishes aloft.
We are so very, very gullible to fear mongers wishing to sell us bills of goods for power and profit. We are so very, very willing to see something of beauty and worth as enemy and invader. We are so very, very willing to buy the notion that a monoculture "lawn" of a singular species of plant is desirable and good and perfect and worthy. We are so very, very willing to vilify and to kill anything that threatens this myth.
We use deadly chemicals and we use walls to stem the tide of "invaders." And, we are all so very, very much poorer for our folly.
40
@Leslie. Dandelions are native to Asia and Russia. You see fields of the yellow flowers everywhere there and they are quite beautiful. Here they will out compete our native plants.
1
@Randy: True, dandelions are not native, and they are prolific, but it's not that hard to dig some of them out, and they are very nutritious. As for the flowers, when they become tired-looking, not so pretty, if you cut them before they set seeds, they won't proliferate so much.
2
My mother was a Master Gardener who was taught more 25 years ago to encourage people to mow what they have to make it look like a lawn, even if a lot of the growth are weeds. The age of pristine grass lawns is long gone. We have not right to pollute the environment. Where I grew up, summer lawns were dotted with buttercups and clover which was before environmentalists started talking about poisons. Of course, some of the biggest polluters are golf courses. Even though they claim they are environmentally friendly, unless they are hand picking all the weeds, they are poisoning the environment.
8
My Father in Law, a firm disciple of green lawns, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, was aghast last year when no bees came to pollinate his apple trees. You reap what you sow.
33
Where there isn't much foot traffic, consider planting clover rather than grass. It requires less water and mowing, and it's good for bees. It looks especially nice among stepping stones.
19
Not only as an individual, private citizen is the feeling of powerlessness acute. I am and have been an organic gardener from coastal Massachusetts who has (not quite) made a living lo these many years by the practice of gardening for others. I am dismayed by the push back and reluctance many of my clients generate as I lean further into the importance of native plants and the practice of planting for the benefit of wildlife and pollinators.
I am discouraged daily by the persistence of a deadly suburban aesthetic that so many hold on to as not applying to them personally.
How many customers can I fire if they won't play nice with the new reality of our environment? All of them I guess and hire new ones who get it.
I will not stop or quit and take what measure of hope I can from small victories.
My only regret is not arriving here sooner.
20
I remember sitting on “non-manicured grass” making clover flower necklaces and crowns with my friends when I was a little girl. Clover flowers were everywhere and we also hunted for four-leaf clovers. Now there seems to be only “grass” and few of the other wildflowers or even dandelions which so delight small children. Very sad.
15
I now live in Fort Lauderdale where the state and local governments talk about beneficial planting and restricting water use, but they fail to revise their local codes and ordinances to support it. I removed my grass after buying my home and panted water wise plants, shrubs and wild flowers.
A Gladys Kravitz type of the neighborhood promptly complained to the city and I was cited and instructed to, per city code, cover my lot with ¨90 per cent¨ ground cover or plantings. Meeting this standard without grass is practically impossible. The code even has references to lawn and grass. On the other side of the city there is great talk about saving water, eliminating pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers but it turns out it is just talk.
Like in many cities, the idea of beauty is a green lawn which is anything but naturally occurring, especially here in South Florida.
23
@AlexMcC- My sister lives in Colorado where there are watering restrictions in summer. Her HOA said their bi-laws made it mandatory to keep a certain percentage of the lawn as grass and to keep it watered. Wrong. The state said their law supersedes the HOA. Since then, my sister has added xerophilic plantings and decreased the grassy areas. Luckily for her, the neighbors are doing it too.
17
@AlexMcC
Bring in a lawyer to notify the HOA. It won't be expensive. Just a strongly worded letter.
You will be done with Ms. Kravitz. :)
3
@AlexMcC We live in Central FL, and perennial peanut has been a good, low-maintenance groundcover for us. Check and see if you're allowed to use it.
The saying, "the grass is always greener in the other side" comes to mind. Growing up, my parents house was the only one on the block with a natural lawn. There was always this feeling of shame because it look shabby. It's hard to deny that in the heat of the summer the green grass looked better than our brown clumps of grass. Aesthetics means more to most people than environmental impact.
7
Thank you so much for this article. My lack of success until now in "improving" the quality of my lawn had lowered my enthusiasm for the whole endeavor. However, because my wife regularly reads the opinion pieces relating to daily living, and takes the advice quite seriously, this will help tremendously to improve my quality of life this summer.
18
@R. Rodgers
I believe not only the quality of your life and that of your wife's will improve this summer, but all of Mother Nature will benefit greatly as well.
Madison is such a treasure trove of wildflowers and song birds. The Nature Center and Arboretum are just two of the magical areas that are as relaxing to meander through as they are educational. I have always found either place so heavenly and rich with sweet aromas of the flowers and beautiful singing from the plethora of songbirds.
8
@R. Rodgers
Quite a few - back to nature front and back yards here on the Isthmus - Madison, WI central city. My front yard looks bare now but will be covered with violets in a few more weeks...
1
I removed all of the grass from my shady front yard and replaced it with good soil, lots of shade plants, an apple tree that gets enough sun, blueberry bushes, hostas, etc., w/ flat rocks found here and there while driving, picked up, and placed in my yard on either side of my front sidewalk as a perpendicular uneven walkway. It's a small space, but now it's filled with birds, blossoms, and all the signs of spring that make it worth looking at from my front porch swing, especially this time of year as things come into bloom.
Wild strawberries cropped up on my path last year. Ferns also have decided to drop in by the bird-bath I placed near the older established large sycamore that's probably been there for 100 years.
I have lived in this house since 2015. Each year I plant another bush (hydrangea, blueberry, laurel, etc.), add more dirt, and throw down some more mulch.
When I moved in, I found wild grapes running up one side of my house. The leaves frame my windows. The birds love them. Mourning doves have put their nest on one of the ledges. I have accepted that I won't get the grapes before the birds get them, and that's just fine.
The work done is very gratifying. It's worth it. Especially this time of year!
40
@Jbugko
Grapes employ a twisting tendril (correct me if I'm wrong). While it is not acting chemically, the growth and expansion of these tendrills can get into small cracks and crevices and enlarge them. Bigger hole, more rain damage. A home is a considerable investment for most folks. Protecting it would be prudent. https://permies.com/t/38650/grapes-house-bad-idea
2
@Lawrence
I just keep it off my gutters and have it on just the one side of the house. A roofer cleared the roof line when I I had the gutters cleaned. They are not as strong as ivy. I'll probably re-do it one day and place a trellis 6 inches from the but I'm keeping an eye on the window, sides, and gutters for now.
I'm pretty sure it's been up there for decades; when I bought the place in 2015 the building inspector said the wall looked okay except for where some brick mortar loosened on a different wall in a different area. A gentle pull brings a vine down, so it's not as strong and clingy as ivy or some other vines that can pull on structures.
2
"Anybody who’s paying attention would see them for the gifts they are: flowers that arrive, through no effort at all, to feed the bees and the butterflies.
But Americans generally aren’t paying attention."
I don't think it's an issue of people not paying attention. I think a lot of people are paying attention, they just don't like what they see. For some oddball reason, a lot of folks believe or feel that unless a lawn isn't the greenest, most manicured and picture perfect lawn on their block, then they have failed as a home owner. All of that skewed advertising for having the plushest, richest, thickest green lawn is hogwash in my book.
The competition for the "best lawn" should be based on how has the most butterflies and bees in the day light and who has the most fireflies in the night time. Who has the most hummingbirds and song birds in their yards?
It's this kind of neighborly competition that I would hope to see and want to have. Nothing sings Mother Nature like the enchanting sounds of those early morning cardinals or red wing black birds or red headed woodpeckers or that lush and colorful array of wildflowers glistening in the afternoon sun.
What's key and critical to the environment has taken a back seat near the cliff to arrogance and pristine looking lawns that depletes rather than adds to the environment.
Thank you Ms. Renkel for these important reminders in your weekly articles. Your words are so desperately needed.
28
I saw the first dandelion of this Spring yesterday. I thought of all of the chemical companies that are lined up with massive marketing campaigns to convince us that this little flower is even more evil than cannabis was once thought to be.
Yet, children (and unsullied adults) delight in it's happy brightness and dust their noses with its pollen. Bees--so incredibly vital to our very food supply--adore it and pack their little leg sacs full of its pollen for transport to hives for food and sustenance. Earthworms use the pathways afforded by its deep roots to wiggle their way skyward and to surface just long enough to be yanked into the beaks of hungry robins and the maws of their young. Early leaves of the plant spice up salads. Seed heads are blown to send wishes aloft.
We are so very, very gullible to fear mongers wishing to sell us bills of goods for power and profit. We are so very, very willing to see something of beauty and worth as enemy and invader. We are so very, very willing to buy the notion that a monoculture "lawn" of a singular species of plant is desirable and good and perfect and worthy. We are so very, very willing to kill anything that threatens this myth.
We use deadly chemicals and we use walls to stem the the tide of "invaders." And, we are all so very, very much poorer for our folly.
10
"Anybody who’s paying attention would see them for the gifts they are: flowers that arrive, through no effort at all, to feed the bees and the butterflies.
But Americans generally aren’t paying attention."
I don't think it's an issue of people not paying attention. I think a lot of people are paying attention, they just don't like what they see. For some oddball reason, a lot of folks believe or feel that unless a lawn isn't the greenest, most manicured and picture perfect lawn on their block, then they have failed as a home owner. All of that skewed advertising for having the plushest, richest, thickest green lawn is hogwash in my book.
The competition for the "best lawn" should be based on how has the most butterflies and bees in the day light and who has the most fireflies in the night time. Who has the most hummingbirds and song birds in their yards?
It's this kind of neighborly competition that I would hope to see and want to have. Nothing sings Mother Nature like the enchanting sounds of those early morning cardinals or red wing black birds or red headed woodpeckers or that lush and colorful array of wildflowers glistening in the afternoon sun.
What's key and critical to the environment has taken a back seat near the cliff to arrogance and pristine looking lawns that depletes rather than adds to the environment.
Thank you Ms. Renkel for these important reminders in your weekly articles. Your words are so desperately needed.
"Anybody who’s paying attention would see them for the gifts they are: flowers that arrive, through no effort at all, to feed the bees and the butterflies.
But Americans generally aren’t paying attention."
I don't think it's an issue of people not paying attention. I think a lot of people are paying attention, they just don't like what they see. For some oddball reason, a lot of folks believe or feel that unless a lawn isn't the greenest, most manicured and picture perfect lawn on their block, then they have failed as a home owner. All of that skewed advertising for having the plushest, richest, thickest green lawn is hogwash in my book.
The competition for the "best lawn" should be based on how has the most butterflies and bees in the day light and who has the most fireflies in the night time. Who has the most hummingbirds and song birds in their yards?
It's this kind of neighborly competition that I would hope to see and want to have. Nothing sings Mother Nature like the enchanting sounds of those early morning cardinals or red wing black birds or red headed woodpeckers or that lush and colorful array of wildflowers glistening in the afternoon sun.
What's key and critical to the environment has taken a back seat near the cliff to arrogance and pristine looking lawns that depletes rather than adds to the environment.
Thank you Ms. Renkel for these important reminders in your weekly articles. Your words are so desperately needed.
1
When my parents retired, they moved to a 4-acre corner of a friend's farm. After dredging out a couple of fish ponds they had quite an expanse of nice, fertile soil. Unfortunately, it was a very big job to mow that lawn.
At about that time, I came across something called "Meadow in a Can". It was a can of wildflower seeds big enough to cover about four acres. All it took was a nice close mowing and sprinkling the seeds evenly.
From then on, for several years, a great variety of wildflowers grew and bloomed in rotation. After the snow melted, something was always blooming until the frost came. Maintenance was one mowing and raking in the fall. Think of it: a beautiful field of flowers all summer, with almost no work. Sounds like a retirement dream come true.
13
I have never understood wanting and maintaining a lawn. It seems a giant taker of time I'd rather spend doing other, less boring things. So, my front lawn is now all native wildflowers. People stop to take pictures, say 'I wish I could do that.' My answer 'You can. And you should.' My back yard is grass, for the dogs. Really, it's mud. Which doesn't require mowing or maintenance.
10
Right now my untreated "lawn" is dotted with short, gorgeous purple, yellow and white wildflowers.
The shady part is covered with another type of wildflower and with soft moss that's a delight to walk on barefoot.
We mulch a good portion of the fallen leaves in place in the fall to nourish the soil. The excess goes into a pile in the bag that's teeming underneath with rich black leaf compost with thousands of earth worms. I spread some of that around the rest of the yard in the spring.
We mow about once a month and spend a few dozen bucks on neonic-free seeds and other gardening needs a year.
We have a sprinkler system but haven't needed it in the last five years, which saves us the expense and time for the fall flush and reconnection. I don't expect we'll need it again.
My neighbor across the street has an emerald green commercial lawn and appears to spend about half of his weekend maintaining it.
To each his own, except that we do still have to hear his tractor lawnmower at least once a week.
9
Those pretty purple flowers in the picture are dead nettle, which is not native anywhere in the US. Non-native weeds proliferate because they don't have any wildlife that keeps them in check (ie eats them). They aren't supporting wildlife, either.
If you want to have a native wildflower meadow, you have to get rid of all the non-natives. If you just don't mow, you'll soon have a seed-generating plant for invasive weeds, which as the article points out, will be spread by animals and wind.
I agree that people shouldn't fertilize their lawns, but if you want to support wildlife, the reality is complex. Are you better off using Round-up until you've established a healthy, native meadow? Having a non-native meadow? Or giving up and going back to grass? I'm not sure the ecologists would agree on the answer.
7
@SAO
I would recommend judicious use of roundup for hard to kill non-natives like torped grass. Most everything else can be removed using a thick layer of cardboard under a thick layer of melealuca mulch. I would avoid cypress mulch because it contributes to the deforestation of our native woodlands. Then I would focus on introducing as many native trees, flowers and shrubs as possible. Remember, even non-native wildflowers support pollinators as a food source. The native plants are required for wildlife reproduction. With a little support from the homeowner the natives will work together to keep invasive out. Try it! The rewards are worth the change.
1
@Martha Grattan There is no judicious use of Round Up. That mind set has to change. Wouldn't it be better to hire a local teenager to pull weeds than "judiciously" spray poison and funnel money to one of the most evil corporations on earth? Round Up and all its equivalents should be banned. I am so sick of the attitude that the efficiency of chemicals is worth the payoff of a dying planet. The whole "native/non-native" issue is an arbitrary "time framing device" that is biased towards a limited subjective point of view that is not necessarily based on a true understanding of the incredible complexity of species progressions in nature.
3
Gillyflower
Sorry, I disagree. Invasive exotic plants are a serious and underrated issue. Certain species are not easily removed and the damage they cause in Habitat destruction can result in the extinction of Native plants and animals. Native plants are not an arbitrary time framing device. Many insect species are dependent on specific plants. In turn many animals are dependent on specific insects. No plants, no animals. I agree that RU should be banned, but, until it is, I plan to use it for habitat restoration. I am not sure what subjective/bias you are referring to. I felt that I offered resources that would appeal to anyone interested in supporting backyard wildlife.
Here in southwest Colorado, it is high desert. When we moved into our home, our neighbors all had perfectly manicured green rectangles, constantly watered in a region where water is scarce. We went natural: sunflowers and daisies sprang up along with desert grass that deer would feed on. The occasional tumbleweed would nestle against the house. A "committee" of neighbors came to complain that we weren't doing our job to uphold the standards of the neighborhood: poisoning anything natural to the area, constantly watering and mowing a green carpet. And this, when there was a water shortage in the reservoir.
18
There is another side to having lawns as well, versus having beds and wildflowers. Due to the nature of lawn grass and its root network, the grass and the dirt underneath it has the penetrability of water that is almost like asphault, anyone who has tried to dig up a lawn knows this.
This is bad for two reasons: 1)In order to get water to the roots, people have to overwater to get enough water to the roots (I once observed someone in my neighborhood watering his lawn after 2 straight weeks of gloomy, wet weather, when everyone else was glorifying in a bit of sun, because his gauge told him the water hadn't gone deep enough....), wasting water
2)the water that runs off goes into storm sewers and drains and then ends up in rivers and waterways, instead of seeping down into the ground. For people who have their own wells, or in many places where the water supply comes from groundwater, the result is that water becomes very scarce very quickly and many places are having trouble with having enough water. Worse, the runoff water is often full of chemical and fertilizers, which if the water goes into groundwater gets filtered out by dirt and rock before going into the pools (assuming they are deep enough).
8
It is indeed about choices. You can have a small functioning ecosystem, or you can have a "perfect" lawn, but not both. I did resort to chemical warfare on an abundance of poison ivy that had settled in before we moved in five years ago.
Since then mowing and some digging and pulling when some areas get out of control are quite enough. I'd rather not worry what our dogs and children are rolling around in. I like the birds and the bees, and the worms and snakes too.
7
@Wendy Roberts Sorry, there is no "balanced" approach to using Round-Up. There are plenty of gardeners who don't get poison oak / ivy that could have been hired, or goats, or simply buying an inexpensive hazmat suit and gloves and going at it yourself - as I do. Round up and its equivalents should be banned and never an option. Humans have to stop their love affair with false efficiency.
3
"Just say no to grass." I have absolutely no grass on my 1 acre suburban Atlanta home. All the grass that was growing when I moved in is now dead. I never raked the leaves or the pine straw and most of the grass was smothered. I planted groundcovers and any surviving grass I sprayed with roundup. I planted flowering bushes and trees and perennials. Annuals reseed themselves. As a consequence, there is not one day in the year that I do not have flowers blooming. I have not watered anything since a severe drought about 5 -6 years ago. I use no fertilizer nor pesticides. The birds, bees, bugs, lizards, frogs and toads, chipmunks, squirrels, and rabbits are always keeping me company in the garden.
Aside from contributing to the environment, getting rid of grass saves so much time and money. Just say no to grass!
9
I have no lawn, and am gradually replacing everything in my yard with drought-resistant natives. I was naturally, then, nodding along with the first half of this piece. But the author lost me at chemicals = poison. The case for glyphosate as a carcinogen is pretty weak. That a jury of non-scientists find glyphosate responsible for illness in particular individuals doesn't have much bearing on my judgement of that particular chemical. Now, I hardlyr use glyphosate, except as a spot application on invading eucalyptus roots from next door (which, I assure you, doesn't kill those hardy invasive exotics, but just kills the root back a little farther than where I chop it). I favor non-chemical means for attacking garden pests whenever possible. But, as a chemist, I bristle at the idea that all chemicals are equally harmful and therefore forbidden. Iron phosphate to control slugs and snails (more invasive exotics) is vastly preferable to metaldehyde.
12
I often fish on a lake with backyard lawns that roll from the houses right down to shore.
I often wonder about the effects all those fertilizers and chemicals that the landscapers use to keep the lawns so green have on the lake.
8
But let’s be clear here: “Chemical” is just another way of saying “poison.” Unfortunately, this is the way that most people think. Water is a chemical all food is made of chemicals. Everything is made of chemicals (except for light). But call something a chemical and everybody gets scared.
7
Lawns help keep Lyme disease carrying ticks in the woods which are prevalent in our area. We fertilize once or twice a year with no pesticides and no weed control and water only a small area that would not survive without it. Our lawn is rather rough and a little environmentally unfriendly but it's a lot safer than unmowed weeds or pavement/rocks which are also prohibitively expensive.
3
@Peter DeGregorio a mowed lawn doesn't deter ticks that much. There's a growing consensus that increasing amounts of monoculture caused by invasive plants pushing out natives contributes to tick populations and particularly an ornamental plant called Japanese Barberry is causing explosions in tick populations. I don't think most people here are saying that you need to have waist high grasses right up to your front door, that's obviously not conducive to a usable yard for you or your kids but there's a balance to be made by having a habitat that's friendly to a diversity of life (and come on, birds, frogs, possums, bats etc are going to be eating nuisance bugs like mosquitoes and ticks) vs. a totally wasteful artificial ecosystem that doesn't benefit most of the local life.
1
@Hern according to the CDC a mowed lawn reduces ticks:
https://www.cdc.gov/ticks/avoid/in_the_yard.html
Amen! All home-owners should read this, understand it and act on it. That one gigantic change would do wonders for the environment and all living things. At this point, I see carpet-lawns of green grass as offensive. Trusting Nature fosters Nature, and ourselves.
3
Thank you, Margaret Renkle! Glyphosate is a deadly poison for most of the bees that pollinate our plants, and the butterflies that grace our world. Monsanto was ruthless in promoting Roundup, and talked most seed makers into inserting glyphosate into their seeds. I remember having to go to a special small tent at a large nursery to buy non-Roundup treated seeds and seedlings.
What people don't realize is that bees are essential for pollinating most of our food crops. Furthermore, all of our song birds feed insects, who have consumed Roundup-filled plant matter, to their nestlings. As an avid birdwatcher, I have seen our bird populations across America drop in significant numbers--in some cases catastrophic numbers--since Roundup was introduced in 1974.
The American fetish for having their own "golf greens" lawn has been terribly destructive across the country.
7
What a wonderful column! You have said it all Ms. Renkl. I have turned my yards - front and back - into habitat for birds, insects, and, yes, squirrels. I, too, love wildflowers, especially dandelions which are persistent and hardy. I even have a sign which reads, "Dandelion Preserve"!
The obsession with a green, perfect lawn has brought about a sterile world, in addition to harming the ecosystem.
I must check out the Hopkins poem.
3
I happen to love wildflowers too, and was enchanted last spring when, on a drive from my home in South Florida to Tallahassee, I came upon miles and miles of bright yellow and purple wildflower fields on a stretch of highway I had not traveled before. Driving my state is rather boring; there’s only some hills toward the northern part of Florida, so this was such a lovely and welcome surprise.
That said, in suburbia, there are strict rules on lawns. Homeowners associations and code compliance in most municipalities require healthy green lawn in the front of homes, in addition to some landscaping. I’ve taken to planting only tropicals; those colorful plants that thrive in both dry conditions we experience in winter and the fantastically wet conditions during hurricane season. They’re hardy, inexpensive and their shiny leaves look stunning after a rain.
Last year, I found what appeared to be a gracefully slender, tiny orchid with a soft lavender flower growing on the side of my house. I instructed the man who trims my hedges three times a year to please let it grow, and it remains there still, with two more unfurling from the area surrounding it.
With so much going on in this world, taking comfort and care of what grows of this earth is sacrosanct. To get lost in that from time to time is precious and oh, so necessary.
4
Thank you once again for another wonderful column, Ms. Renkl. I very much appreciate the range of your musings, including your recent ode to public university.
Here in California, we’ve had a solace for the soul super bloom that not even the legion of instagrammers can trample. And many of us have ditched the traditional lawn as years of drought have turned us towards a more native garden.
5
To nurture nature, neglect your lawn?
A good scientific project would be an attempt to understand once for all and get under some sensible control, the drive for sterility in human affairs, to identify, locate, make explicit and give all the reasons for and dangers consequent upon not understanding, the instinct (as it seems so powerful as to be instinct) for purity, cleanliness, sterility, utopia, the perfect, the unchanging, the saintly, the moral, the divine.
Typically we would say of a person if the person is depressed about existence, despises surroundings, contemplates suicide, and longs for a better world, that the person has problems, is maladjusted, needs to somehow find meaning and become reconciled to the world once again, yet in so many aspects of our everyday life people might not express a wish to die yet they perform any number of actions in an attempt to alter the environment toward some ideal which if not directly killing themselves seems to leave only themselves left in the world and therefore really nothing to celebrate.
The perfect American lawn, and of course home, seems an obvious expression of this instinct toward sterility. It really does appear a hatred of the earth. It's so striking and so many human centuries exist of humanity dreaming of the metaphysical that science should really ask if perhaps humans, perhaps life itself, has its origins elsewhere than this planet we currently live upon. We so try to get off the earth.
2
Five years ago we got rid of all the grass in our yard and replaced it with native plants with a path winding through it. The yard is beautiful now. We let the leaves fall and rot where they are and just do a little cleanup in the spring. Everyone comments on how lovely it is and all we do is a little pruning. This spring the ground is carpeted with native violets we did not plant and living things abound. Best decision we ever made.
20
Here are some hard core numbers, read somewhere, about Australia.
Australia is roughly 7,686,850 km2 in size making it the 6th largest country in terms of size worldwide. Reports say approximately 768,685 km2 of land is actually habitable in Australia. This means Australia’s habitable land takes up approximately 10% of the actual land mass, with 90% being ‘termed’ uninhabitable.
In comparison The Unites States is made up of 40% habitable land, South Korea 30% and The United Kingdom 70%.
Presently 63.9% or 14.5 million Australians call the eight major capital cities home.
This land makes up 38,272.5 km2. These 8 capital cities have a combined population density of 378 people per km2.
If, as a species, we do not become good stewards of this Earth, we will slowly "eradicate" land, water, insects, fauna, flora and start to resemble Mars.
There are too many galaxies and attending planets in this universe for anyone to care about our tiny Earth and its eventual demise!
My lovely lawn in Northern California is a collection of ' weeds' that I water and mow. I'm lucky to have lots of irrigation water and a good well to keep it green all through our long, hot summers. Who cares if there are irregulars in color or height? The deer love to graze it and we lounge on our luxurious. pesticide free lawn and watch the bees gather pollen from the clover and plantain.
1
When I turned my old lawn into an English garden, I realized that a lawn is a dead zone. My garden literally buzzed with thousands of bees. Scores of birds would rise out of the raspberry patch when I stepped outside. Unfortunately, rabbits would carpet my garden with their pellets each winter, but I suppose they fertilized the soil. Now I have a 1.8 acre woodland/Japanese garden and I wish I had more space for all the trees I want to plant. I just ordered three more hybrid chestnuts, hoping to reseed the great chestnut forests that once stretched from Maine to the Mississippi.
8
@Callie Your description makes me wish for pictures! I live in one of those soul-less, hyper-manicured suburban subdivisions in the South and I'm not sure I could get away with not having and mowing a lawn in the front yard without getting my homeowner's association on my back. I have, however, let my admittedly small backyard go and would love to turn it into a bug and bird friendly refuge.
1
You nailed it Margaret, when you penned: "...But the flowers I love best are the tiny ones, so tiny they’re mostly invisible from a car window. Exquisite little flowers, most of them smaller than my pinkie fingernail, are blooming all around my house right now..."
Years ago I purchased a jeweler's loupe. I consider it as essential as water when I go hiking in the Sonoran desert. We are experiencing a great wildflower season here in the Southwest...but yes; you have to get out of the car and meander afield.
6
“Show me your garden, and I will tell you what you are,” wrote Alfred Austin, British Poet Laureate, 1896-1913.
”A garden that one makes becomes associated with one’s personal history and that of one’s friends, interwoven with one’s tastes, preferences and character, and constitutes a sort of unwritten, autobiography.” The Garden That I Love (1894)
He may as well have been talking about our own part in the destruction of nature.
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@Douglas
The US made nature illegal when it started a war against "grass"
We are a family with young children. In fair weather, our lawn is the stage for endless hours of joyful play. We use no chemicals. I fertilize with fresh clippings and compost. If the lawn needs water in midsummer, we all run around under the sprinkler. Our lawn has weeds, bugs, toads, garter snakes, fungi, and lots of rich, healthy soil. Crawling around on it with your eyes to the ground is an education.
I’m not especially virtuous, just practical. I don’t want my kids to get cancer. If I spray herbicide on the lawn, I am effectively spraying them with it as well. However, an untreated lawn is also good for the environment. It absorbs more carbon and stormwater than a garden, and can be at least as biodiverse.
Adjust your expectations. Live with the small weeds, and pull up the big ones. Use a mulching mower. Spend your money on quality grass seed instead of poisons, and overseed in the spring and fall.
11
Right about chemicals, but think twice about mowing. Grass has evolved to be grazed, or mown by teeth. Without mowing it can become decadent and die. Mowing and mulching, properly conducted, will preserve plant health.
5
@John Walker exactly. And universities in every part of the country publish optimal lawn heights for the type of grass grown in their particular area, borne from research.
I agree in principle, but, yet again, "chemical" (the generic) is being conflated with "poison". Modern life, an example: driving your car to the grocery, would be impossible without myriads of "chemicals", some useful, some potentially hazardous, some downright dangerous.
It's true that obsession over the "perfect" lawn is ridiculous, but. like many things in modern life, we have become slave to the artificial, and to the realtors, HOAs and lawn-care businesses that promote it.
And, no, one homeowner at a time won't make much impact, but it can be satisfying to push back, even if it's just a little bit.
Oh, and Pundit, goats will take care of the poison ivy. Look for a local goatherd.
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@Charles Murphy
The only problem with that is that in many places, it would be illegal to use goats to get rid of poison ivy, it is illegal to have goats yourself or to hire some to come and eat the poison ivy. The sad fact is many town have laws that all but require you to have a lawn, which is ridiculous.
1
@Charles Murphy most towns will not allow animals such as goats, barnyard ones and the like to be on property within the town limits.
Thank you for this thoughtful article! Living in Brooklyn and "nurturing" the little green patch in front of my house for the last 34 years. It never really looks great, causes a lot of pollution (of every type) and yet, I keep doing it. I hope that this will be the impetus for change.
3
Our lawns (and gardens) are another negative inheritance from the European Colonial era. Beautiful and exotic plants were gathered from every part of the globe while nostalgic colonists brought plants and animals from home to make a foreign land more familiar.
The result is excessive use of water to try to grow an English garden in Arizona and rampant invasions of non native plants and animals all over the world killing off the native species.
We can't undo all the damage in one generation, but we can start with our own yards and support organizations that work to preserve and expand native species. Before they end up on the extinct species list.
9
Perhaps this message of lawn reform should be addressed to church grounds, insurance company properties and pharma lands, all of which own lawns of mammoth proportions, for no legitimate reasons. All the mowing and gas consumption are practices not advantageous to the planet.
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I love native landscaping. it's challenging, but interesting and rewarding. A great way to combat climate change and make a contribution as individuals. I have a small, chemical-free lawn, too.
This message can't be preached enough!
12
There is one important omission in this article, namely, the intensive utilization of large power mowers and leaf blowers. The leaf blowers operate at especially high volume and maddening frequencies and can bring instant ruin to a peaceful afternoon or, in my neighborhood, even dinner time.
Activists here in NJ that have tried to have towns pass ordinances to limit the hours and days that lawn equipment can be used but were met with stiff opposition from the landscapers and some homeowners who seem to feel that a putting green lawn is essential to their sense of home, and precious few municipalities ever end up doing anything about the problem.
15
I couldn't agree more with MH from South Jersey. My husband and I are ardent gardeners and our home frequently surrounded by exceptionally noisy landscaping crews and it sounds like a battle zone and ruins peace of backyard. I think landscapers use the noisiest leaf and grass blowing equipment to promote their business.
6
@MH Indeed. My lawn mower runs on rechargeable battery packs. It is extremely quiet and stops running very quickly, so it is safer as well. I can actually talk to my family while cutting the grass. I rake leaves for the same reason. Last fall, someone offered the use of a leaf blower. I said that I liked the quiet. I think the wildlife appreciates it as well. I seem to have far more birds, bees, snakes, squirrels, etc. than my neighbors.
3
Let me share a success story:
I visited Grand Canyon Village in 1976. Everyone there was talking about the drought, all visitors were encouraged to use as little water as possible, and the hotels had velvet green lawns as if they were designed by Capability Brown for the wettest portions of England. The lawns not only used enormous quantities of scarce water, they actually detracted from the park experience by driving a wedge between the visitor and the fascinating desert flora around him.
When I returned to Grand Canyon Village in 2018, I found the hotel lawns had been replaced by landscape-friendly xeriscaping.
A small victory, to be sure, but one worth celebrating.
21
Better still, go yard-less: move to or stay where you can live in an apartment building, walk, bike or take public transportation for errands and commuting and enjoy shared green space in a neighborhood park. You’ll be more physically active, shrink your carbon footprint dramatically and help fight sprawl. Compact urban communities beat suburbs for conserving contiguous natural habitat and wetlands while reducing the expansion of paved roads, driveways and parking lots that exacerbate polluted storm water runoff that degrades water quality.
4
@Tom Matte - I'm familiar with "smart growth" principles, but sometimes wonder, who would own the land? And what would they do with it? It would be financially impossible for state and local governments to own and manage all the land if the suburbs were emptied.
And land is power. To quote Gerald O'Hara in "Gone With the Wind": "Land is the only thing in the world worth working for......as it's the only thing that lasts."
The best land use policies might maintain zoning with adoption of native plant gardening to create bird/wildlife mobility corridors through inner-ring suburbs, and large tracts of land preserved as a mix of both public lands and private land trusts in the outer suburbs.
So, Katy Scarlett, don't give up your land. Learn about local species, preserve your land as a natural oasis and encourage biodiversity corridors through local private and public land.
2
@Tom Matte I lived in multi family housing for my entire career (25 years) because I moved every 2-3 years. That meant no garage, no kiln, no garden. Once I retired I immediately bought a house in the suburbs with a 2 car garage and a lawn. I love it. I moved to the south now, built an even bigger house to contain 4 adults, with a yard and lots of flower beds. We love it. I am not going into multi family housing again until I get old. I like my patch of land, my three car garage, my kiln, my neighborhood. No thanks to apartment living with 4 adults. I want space, air and light and no sharing of walls.
Sorry, I love a good lawn and use very few chemicals. I leave the weeds to my neighbors.
3
For many years my lawn care regimen consisted of regular mowing, strategic fertilization and watering only when necessary. My success varied widely from one year to the next and I have since become an enlightened turf tender.
Visit the web site of your state land grant university for tech sheets on lawn care applicable to your area. Like many tools, glyphosate and pre-emergent products are useful labor savers when applied thoughtfully. You don't need to overdose on either and glyphosate won't work unless the weeds are actively growing. Pick your time wisely as a little goes a long way when you know what, how, and when to treat the landscape.
In my area the typical lawn is Bermuda grass and in the hottest part of the summer it takes an ocean of water to keep it green. Fuhgedaboudit. Let the Bermuda brown off, you can skip a week or two of mowing and it will bounce back after the next rain.
As for the concept of weeds as wildflowers, the photo chosen is a variety of Henbit. Chickweed, Henbit, Dallis Grass and Crabgrass are all a total pain-in-the-turf to mow and will turn your lawn into a 'field of screams' if allowed to dominate. Pump up the sprayer at the right time with the right mix and understand that 90% control is good enough for a residential lawn.
1
Permaculture
5
Let us not forget the companies who offer regular pest control services. Homeowners just need to write a check to them once a quarter or so, in the belief they won't have to pull weeds or have any insect or disease pressure. These companies mix a tank of chemicals (poisons) in the morning and every stop in that route gets the same spray regardless of what is present in their yards and gardens or whether the spray is even justified. This is a very real problem, especially in Florida. Then I watch as the neighbor's yard crew pulls up an hour later and are trimming and touching the just sprayed plants with their bare hands, not to mention the pets walking on that newly sprayed yard. For the last 30 years, my gardens have received slow release fertilizer twice per year and soapy water on the rare occasion an insect problem crops up. Is the price we pay both ecologically and monetary worth the damage to our environment and our pets and our children?
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@Marie
You and the author misuse and mis-define chemical. Chemicals are like everything else in nature, some good, some not. Many “natural” substances (comprised of chemicals) can kill or cause grave harm.
I don’t use fertilizer because of the environmental impact of the runoff, but I do use weed killers such as Roundup in specific cases. I read the label and follow warnings.
To use the recent Roundup lawsuites as “evidence” of anything scientific is another serious error. Winning a lawsuit does not prove anything scientifically; it only means you have a good lawyer and a jury as scientifically illiterate as the average person. The plaintiffs both had very heavy exposure apparently without proper protection.
No, I don’t work for any chemical company in any capacity, but I do have a good basic science education. Chemicals are useful and some can be dangerous. We need to use them wisely and regulate their use to prevent abuse fueled by greed, but to simplistically lump them all as “poison” is just ignorant.
1
@MarieHomeowners -----"just need to write a check to them once a quarter or so, in the belief they won't have to pull weeds or have any insect or disease pressure."
No, I don't think like that and neither do most my neighbors. Applications of chemical only help control weeds (especially the spring treatment for pre emergence). There is still work to be done and that includes pulling by hand. Stop with the broad based generalizations about the motives of all homeowners. It is tiring and helps solve nothing.
I SO agree.
Amen. Good article.
1
We need more landscapers who will help folks maintain this type of landscaping. I bet they could make a bunch of $$ if they marketed it right. This is a terrible problem in Florida especially.
A lawnless landscape with natives still requires managing and maintenance, and it will evolve over time and change with the seasons. A creative landscaper can help!
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@Polly Perkins
There is not a lot of money to made no matter how it is marketed. The people with all money profit from destroying the environment and selling poisons marketed as cures. They are not going to buy what your selling.
They build barriers to keep out their neighbors and protect themselves from reaping what they sow. Terrible idea for Florida especially, the native landscape is mostly swamp land.
Thank you so much Margaret for reminding us that a "perfect lawn" is not. I gave up trying to grow a lawn and decided that wildflowers were way better for the environment. The bonus is that I get to enjoy all the songbirds, insects, butterflies and beautiful flowers. I don't miss mowing and I sure don't miss all those chemicals. Now if the borough would stop insisting that I have weeds that need to be controlled...
9
I too have a lawn... full of wildflowers. I keep it mowed, but generally leave the plants alone, unless something is growing where I don't want it. My father used to pull up dandelions when I was little, but I've never minded them. I used to blow away the dandelion seedlings, and pull the pips out of red clover to suck out the nectar.
I like the grass, and the moss that covers the ground where the grass doesn't. I have countless violets and some grape hyacinths coming up in the old garden that hasn't been tilled since I was a child. The snowdrops have come and gone, including the escaped one in the hedge that took a year off from blooming but put out leaves. The daffodils my mother planted decades ago still bloom every year, and it looks like a bumper crop for the resurrection lilies.
But the wildflowers are everywhere. White clover, red clover, and maybe if I'm lucky, a little yellow clover called black medick. I tried and failed to start some, along with some scarlet pimpernel from my grandparents' yard. The yellow wood-sorrel is what most people think of as a shamrock. I love the towering stalks of narrow-leaved plantain, with rings of tiny white flowers that remind me of "Jetsons" architecture, and the little wild strawberries I see by the driveway now and then. That's purple deadnettle in the picture at the top of this article: ubiquitous where growing conditions are right.
This is how a proper lawn should be: full of familiar friends, and a few surprises.
18
Where I live, the village fines homeowners who let their lawns grow wildly--- the grass growing too tall. Neighbors complain that the lawn that is not cut regularly destroys the beauty of the neighborhood. So much for the beauty of natural nature.
4
Ah, the perfect lawn! The bane of suburbia, the epitome of American foolishness. I live in an old neighborhood, where some neighbors eradicate lawns with full yard plantings/gardens, others let them go wild, and most bring in the Chemlawn trucks every month to ensure that no rampant growth other than fescue will flourish. My next door neighbors both spray, and they look at my moss covered, weed friendly lawn with horror. Forget that the perennial beds are a riot of color and foliage...that damn dandelion is spoiling their day! I've caught the spray guys trying to pooch onto my property and lay down strips of weed-free lawn with their sprayers at times. Sometimes it's hard to understand people.
6
Great article, HOA's are a big culprit in suburbia, since the often have rules to maintain a lawn. With that said, rules can be changed and change occurs through knowledge and action.
Maya Angelou said, "When you know better, you do better." At least we should live by that thought and awareness of our actions is the beginning to changing them. Your article does a good job explaining the benefits of putting land back into its natural state. Many commenters below express how one can enjoy their yard (with flowers and other plants) without the need for a lawn.
We all need to make the change because we know better and can do better.
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@Laticia Argenti most townships and cities also have ordinances about maximum lawn height. The HOA must be in line with city ordinances. If you live in a city, even without an HOA, you are subject to city ordinances. It is not all the HOA fault.
Here is yet another example of someone encouraging the "single actor" approach to the poisoning and destroying of the environment. It really makes NO difference what one person does with his or her lawn. Please stop encouraging this idea that if one or even 10 or even 1,000 people change their behavior, we will solve the environmental issues we face. We need governments to pass laws that prohibit the use of chemicals and other destructive agents. "As individuals, we too often feel powerless in the face of corporate and political forces that drive our culture"? Yes, we do - because we are. They're spending millions to lobby for laws and we think that admiring the wild flowers and telling neighbors not to use Roundup is going to work? Come on, in what world? People need to stop worrying what they're putting on their lawns and call their representatives and go to protests against these companies. Outlaw the poisons, then figure out what goes on the lawn.
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@Joe
Waiting for the government to make laws is futile, because the chemical industry owns the government. Right now, crops like soybeans are being grown bathed in the chemical in roundup (these crops have been genetically modified to not be affected by it), and that chemical is in the soybeans and so forth, it doesn't wash off, and you are ingesting it. Meanwhile, the FDA allows them to spray roundup on produce that will be eaten, and has refused to study whether ingesting roundup is toxic, despite the fact they have standards for inhaling it, they have no standards for ingesting it.
People are going to have to change this, they are going to have to have a mindset change, if no one buys roundup or uses fertilizer, Monsanto and the rest will not make money from it and will stop pushing it. When I was growing up, people thought nothing of smoking anywhere they wanted and close to 50% of people smoked, these days smoking is down around 19% and has the social cachet of picking your nose in public, so change can happen.
8
@Joe it’s not either/or, we’re at the point of all of the above. Personal responsibility and actions are important and necessary.
3
@Joe
Forced or coerced prohibition does not work, it just increases profits and power for the most vile and ruthless outlaws. Alcohol(a poison) prohibition is a perfect example. You can't get a 1,000 people to do something without starting with 1, 1 becomes 10, 10 becomes 100 etc. Start by prosecuting 1 CEO for mass murder and terrorism using chemical weapons, things will rapidly change long before you get 1000 without adding more expensive unenforceable and useless regulation. Faceless corporations use government as a poison and kill independent individuals (1 person) to keep the weeds of freedom from spreading to every lawn and land in the nation. Protesting against a criminal corporation is useless when they are protected by the government, signs and slogans don't defeat fascism. Individuals willing to stand up for liberty/justice do by fighting from house to house. The government will only fight the battle till the next term(paycheck) and will destroy an entire village to "save it". Some poisons are beneficial tools in small amounts, in large quantities they become deadly weapons, government is that kind of poison.
The notion that neglect is all you need to transform a lawn into “wildflowers at your feet” is pure hogwash. I inherited a lawn when I purchased my property 20 years ago and have spent hundreds of hours trying get a few wildflowers to grow. Skipping mowing was easy – but entirely unsuccessful. I also tried turning over the soil, sowing wildflower seeds and praying – all equally unsuccessful.
Not every homeowner has your dirt, your climate, your exposure. I read this article because I thought it might offer some practical advice. Instead, I was subjected to fifteen paragraphs of “blaming and shaming.” I couldn’t have been more disappointed.
4
@Kathy
While there are harmful things with a lawn, you can raise a lawn and not use the ton of chemicals to keep it green. There are hardy species of grass that are drought resistant and tough and while they won't give you the golf course putting green or British manor grand lawn, it will be natural. The real problem with lawns is that people insist it has to look like the 17th green at Augusta national or the grounds of Blenheim castle, they want it 'perfect'.
2
@Kathy So you've done nothing to your lawn in terms of chemical weed control for 20 years and you have no dandelions, no clover? It's a perfectly consistent field of nothing but fescue/bluegrass with no attempt to keep it that way? That seems unlikely.
Maybe the problem is the kinds of wildflowers you've been trying to grow.
Told you so, Neighbors. I’m known as the mean old Lady, on the Corner, undoubtedly. I’ve never, ever, used any of these noxious
Chemicals on my Yard. It’s Three entire acres, and I’ve been here almost twenty years. Almost all of the owners in the subdivision behind my property maintain a golf-course like appearance on their quarter acre lots. Emerald green, even in Winter. Sprinkler systems pouring water onto their yards, even during thunderstorms. Chemicals galore, on their own private dead zones. NO Thanks. Give me life, and give me liberty from HOAs. I blame them, and the sheep that join them.
Seriously.
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@Phyliss Dalmatian you do realize that if you live within a township or city, even while NOT in an HOA, that you are subject to city ordinances?
The HOA must comply with city ordinances - do you realized that?
Nothing you said will resolve any problem. It is just derisive.
Good piece, but how depressing that nearly 60 years on from “Silent Spring”, the chemical companies are stronger than ever, and Americans still need to be reminded that dumping poison on your lawn is bad for everything, including humans.
15
Both parties are too much in the service of big industry. These poisons should be outlawed. A perfect lawn is a silly goal, especially in the Southwest, and I now find artificial turf equal to concrete in its appeal.
5
I'd rather surf the net than mow the grass, so there's that.
6
better, don't have a lawn, don't have invasive species, don't buy from big box stores whose plants are treated with neo-nics that kill pollinators
plant local, no poison
i've seen people put their kids on the grass for a picnic an hour after the chemical truck comes and sprays it
7
I am no fan of “chemicals” but like the anti-vaxers they condemn without understanding the how these “chemicals” work.
An understanding allows you to use them sparingly also try to use natural versions of when possible.
I bought a house from a woman who could not rid herself of bamboo and couldn’t understand why it wouldn’t die.
She was unsuccessfully using Chlordane she found because it was poison.
Homeowners are the worst abusers of garden products.
2
@John
I agree with you, and for example there are natural fertilizers that don't cause the problems that runoff from Turf Builder does, and there are grasses unlike bluegrass and the like that don't require a lot of water. Likewise, you can use weed killer sparingly, where it really needs to be used, and use other methods in beds like mulch to keep weeds down.
The real problem is people overspray, they see some bugs and get out the malathion and sevin spray, or they call in some cluck with a tank truck to blast the yard, and people who call in companies like Tru Green have their yards blasted regularly for fear of a dandelion. It is probably better not to use the standard chemicals at all, but sometimes you have to, and there are ways to use them sparingly, to minimize the impact, but what many people use is overkill.
2
I'd let everything grow as it wanted if I could. Except for the stuff in my large backyard that's called bamboo (which I believe isn't correct) that grows about a foot per hour. Since no one can tell me what to do about it, I've been covering it as fast as I can with plastic tarps -- pinned down every few feet. Not a good look.
In front, my small "lawn" is a lumpy mess of ugly grass mixed in with the huge clods of earth dug up by the guy who plows the snow.
Wondering if there's something I could do about it all that doesn't take much work or money.
1
@Rea Tarr I had a cottage in the Catskills for 10 years and that sounds like what neighbors called Mexican bamboo. Grows like crazy and science-fiction hardy. I would have been fine with it if it didn’t also spread fast and take over. I was advised and it turned out exactly: cut/machete to lawn grass height, then mow down new shoots just like grass every week or two. Incredibly, you do this for 3 years. I was a tad skeptical but sure enough it was still coming up 3rd year, was gone 4th year.
Your plastic (black?) May work, but MB sends underground roots far and deep.
Good luck!😉
1
My husband and I live in an upscale townhouse neighborhood. The time and energy the association spends on the darn sprinkler system as well as the mowing service is ridiculous! This year I am going to suggest we at least use organic only fertilizers and weed killers. I know this will not be well received. I think I will have to say I’m “allergic” as opposed to I’m against poisoning the environment because now it’s a political thing.
5
Lawns exist for three basic reasons. One, an early warning system against predators. Two, an early warning system against attacks by those we were were hellbent on wiping out. And three, vanity.
We white folks won the first two, the battle against vanity will take much longer. With local laws requiring a lawn and with vested interests to protect in terms of lawn care businesses and equipment manufacturers I expect this nonsense to go on long after I am dead.
All hail the urban desert!
1
@secular socialist dem so minority populations don't have lawns?
Right. If anyone can tell me how to get rid of poison ivy without Roundup, I'm all ears.
2
@Pundit, Personally I don't believe that *very* limited, spot application use of glyphosate to control noxious weeds around one's home is terribly harmful. Not much else will kill poison ivy, which sometimes even requires a repeat application to finally kill the root so it won't come back. That sort of use is a far cry from blanketing thousands of acres of farm fields planted with GMO's with Roundup to the point where even the rain has been found to have traces of glyphosate in it. Lawn "services" that come every few weeks and spray chemicals for weed control aren't much better. One of my friends lives in a sub with strict HOA rules where the landscapes are so sterile one never sees a bird or squirrel. It makes me uncomfortable to visit there.
I'm a practitioner of the "mow and let grow" philosophy advocated in Ms. Renkl's article. My lawn is a hodge-podge of clovers, violets, ground ivy, and yes, dandelions, and it hums with life every spring and summer as a variety of bees and insects find food there and become food for birds that live nearby. No chemical applications of any kind; my only maintenance chore is an occasional mowing in summer, and a few passes over it in the fall with a mulching mower to pulverize the leaves, which are left on the lawn as fertilizer.
Better to live in harmony with nature than continually fight against it.
1
My mom used to go out in a hazmat type suit and dig up the poison ivy rather than spray it.
@Pundit I agree with cfluder. I have a half acre property which I mow with a scythe and have never sprayed with herbicides, commercial fertilizers or pesticides. The small garden gets compost and targeted applications of diatomaceous earth. Flowers just love chopped-up banana peels, and tomatoes thrive with a good sprinkle of crushed eggshell now and then.
For the lawn, I load up the spreader with dried, used coffee grounds whenever I gather up enough to bother. It is as green and lush as any on the block, liberally sprinkled with clover, dandelions, violets and countless other small flowering plants, and humming with bees.
It is also a magnet for poison ivy and some invasive plants (poison hemlock, multiflora rose, garlic mustard) that are not so easy to live with. Years of pulling, hacking and digging proved futlie. Glyphosate is the safest most effective way to deal with these. I apply it to individual leaves with a smallish paint brush, carefully avoiding surrounding plants. It works well in small quantities and only has become a problem through rampant overuse and indiscriminate application over large areas.
It's like salt; a little can work wonders. Too much is ruinous.
Alas, Southern Living magazine just wrote that what people want most when looking to buy a house isn’t an updated kitchen or bath, but a lawn.
3
Intentionally poisoning your own surroundings is insanity. Poisoning the insects that pollinate our food sources. Poisoning birds and butterflies which give us beauty and joy. Poisoning your dogs and cats. Poisoning your own CHILDREN!
On purpose.
This lawn business (and it's a big business) is appalling self destruction.
All to create a fake green turf devoid of life and not even remotely interesting.
Please, stop.
7
Lawn chemicals should be banned, plain and simple. And, I have no doubt that they will be eventually.
7
There are pretty little wood violets now showing, and I'll let them be. My lawn is also fodder for the Canadian Geese that live next door! So, NO poison!
2
Oh no. This nature lover tactic was subject to repeated lawsuits in a Baltimore suburb. The homeowner refused to maintain the grounds of his home with the excuse of letting it go back to nature. The heated exchanges inside and outside the courtroom were legendary. While Ms Renki sees fields of wildflowers and bluebirds, I know better. Try multiflora rose and a broad spectrum of poison ivy laced with plastic grocery bags. Then there's the notion of vermin associated with the ground cover. Nope, not in my yard or my neighbors'. Never without a challenge.
@Mike
Some of what you describe is what noxious weed laws, funded and enforced, are designed to handle. While extremes are popular these days, solutions always lie somewhere in between.
What a beautiful picture, all zoomed in of the little flower! And the romantic sentiment in the article, so cheerfully springtime! And everything so natural (boo chemicals)!
I’m just curious what the Venn diagram might look like between folks who equate glyphosate with agent orange, vs folks who bought into the idea that vaccines cause autism (and some apparently still do).
1
@Holden Caulfield Glyphosate is designed to kill plants. Some of the plants it's designed to kill are those which are beneficial to pollinators and other insects. Pollinators are essential to our food supply, and insects are bird food. If you value birds and butterflies, stop using poison on your lawn.
I sympathize with the worry that people are not sufficiently sensitive to science, but there is a huge difference between vaccines, which function to sustain life, and glyphosate, whose function is to kill. Maybe in some contexts it's necessary (we do need to grow food) but on your lawn -no. There's no need, and it does harm.
You had me until the creeping charlie, which chokes out everything else and is almost impossible to dig out.
2
Let’s not forget how real estate developers have stripped the land of all native species and replaced them with ugly, gulag looking housing with zero lot lines and 10 foot square “lawns” all in the name of “dense” housing. I have never seen such poor urban and suburban planning as I have living on the west coast. Seattle was a gem. It is now a mini-LA. What a sad pity. The opportunity for open space, tree preservation and natural environments has passed. We are left with mile after mile of cheap, inefficient, developer housing. Not to mention the effect of this ugly mess on global warming. It makes me nuts.
11
It's TV. The public sees the geometrically pristine green expanses on Downton Abbey and similar Brit shows and thinks this esthetic should be replicated in the much drier climate of North America.
This ignorant impulse is a gold mine for all the lawn care companies.
1
We decided to let the weeds, and Mother Nature win this battle. Clearly the rabbits that steal our flower bulbs agree. Oh well.
2
Here, here. I have embraced my higgledy piggledy yard and flower garden. Every time a lawn service knocks I remind them their treatment entails poison. They leave warning me against all the weeds! Well....bring them on...free of poison.
Lovely and targeted, too, at the foolishness of those perfect lawns. Here in Texas they add to the lowering of water tables or other straws in the water that's as precious as the black gold, and yet, and yet large trucks drive plots of the popular St. Augustine all over to cover the sprawling suburbs. These lawns are representative of England and estates, I've always thought. Golf in West Texas when you go out of the green (watered again w/the precious stuff), you're really in the brush! Yet golf courses continue to spring up around here. The Colorado River's going dry. The infamous Rio Grande dries to a trickle, often. I've lied in a drought, 7 long years, and we curtailed showers, lawn watering, all of it. The wildflowers and Hopkins poems a loverly accompanient. Thanks.
4
Companies like Tru-Green and ChemLawn (I'm sure there are many others) inundate us with ads about their product... the "perfect" lawn. And often these ads are designed to shame us, because we aren't keeping our property up to neighborhood standards. To tell us that our own little piece of land is a depressing site amongst our neighbors. Now throw in the actual neighbors with their remarks and gossip, and it reaches a point where you succumb to these lawn building companies, because the perfect lawn is not something you can accomplish on your own given your time restraints. This is why I enjoy living in an area where there is not a lot of disposable income for the luxury of lawn services, and to a point, neighbors don't care that your lawn isn't pristine.
6
Bravo, Ms. Renkl. I live in a neighborhood in which people have eschewed grass. We are well wooded and have large lots. The lot I live on had a grass yard when we moved in, which my husband, a city boy, tried to maintain. When he died, I let go of the grass and encouraged moss - which is far more beautiful and a lot easier to maintain if you don't mind weeding. As I've grown older, much of the weeding has been left undone. Now I pull dandelions as they are so invasive, although many escape me. It's interesting to see the progression from maintained flower beds to wildness.
No Roundup, no fertilizer and very little water maintains what some people would call a mess. I'd probably never get away with this in a "normal" subdivision, but here in the woods it's just fine.
4
When we lived in Tucson, we left the our desert-yard alone, and for once I lived without a lawnmower. Grass doesn't belong in the desert. It doesn't look right when green and most of the year it's dead or dying. We had dozens of species of birds, the cacti were kept in control by javelina, and every spring the hedgehogs had lovely purple, the stately saguaros had white, the prickly pear yellow and visitors expressed surprise that the desert could be "pretty." Of course it can be pretty. Just like rain can be good, for we harvested it and put it on the native mesquites so they could shade us--and the javelina--a little better during summer.
5
I am, with a smugly approving nod of self-righteousness, forwarding this to my companion now, whose zealousness for culling weeds and grass alike in our yard come their first appearance of the season of the season is quite a sight to behold.
We have converted our front and back yards to flower beds and concrete or patio tiles many years ago and enjoy flowers from spring to fall with no need to mow or weed the grass. I heartily suggest similar solutions to all. It requires less maintenance and provides greater variety and enjoyment.
2
Yes, the corporate and political forces that drive our culture make us feel powerless. But another force continually undermines our ability to improve our environment and reverse the destruction. That is the willful ignorance of so many. In my neighborhood alone, it is so disconcerting to see how many neighbors continue to pour on the chemicals and engage in so many harmful practices. Trying to politely engage them in considering an alternative is usually met with indifference at best and hostility at worst. Unless enough people become more open minded and willing to change their ways, I remain afraid that we are fighting an uphill battle and that our eventual self destruction is unavoidable.
9
I much prefer to let the grass in my yard grow and let volunteer plants thrive. Sadly for both me and cat who loves to prowl through tall grass, my neighbors and my landlord don't agree.
2
Absolutely. I can never understand why so many people saturate their lawns in chemicals to kill the moss. Moss is flat, green and beautiful if you look closely enough. I have been encouraging moss on my lawn for nearly thirty years, and now, along with broad-leaved 'weeds', it accounts for about 80% of the area. I'm just hoping I live long enough to finish the job.
8
When we changed from being an agrarian nation to an industrial one perhaps the greatest change is that we went from being a nation of producers to being a nation of consumers.
I know that if you have a bit of yard and a bit of water not only can you avoid becoming chemically dependent on maintaining a essentially useless patch of decorative flora, you can begin the process of growing and producing again. The amount of resources deployed to make a lawn green or a pool blue can be redirected to feed yourself. How much food and how much time this takes is essentially a personal decision about values and ecology. It seems rather obvious that living in a neighborhood where everyone grows food or raises animals rather one that fertilizes the concrete, pollutes the air and water, and wastes resources on curb appeal is the neighborhood of the future.
Great essay.
8
Thankyou for your article Margaret. My wife's gardening books written around 20 to 25 years ago about South African indigenous plants say much the same, with chapters such as A garden nust be alive to thrive, and Soil must live too, and Make the most of mulch. Her book "Creative Gardening with Indigenous Plants: A South African Guide" starts with the sentence: "Really healthy and attractive gardens are alive with creatures of all types". Landscape gardeners have been using her books to plant beautiful indigenous plants in South African office complexes, along streets on pavements, in new security and retirement complexes, in new business developments etc for the past 25 years. Her first book "The Gardeners Guide to South African plants " was used by horticulturist to start growing indigenous plants. It is now out of print. The book quoted "Creative Gardening "went through 5 printings and was reintroduced as a 2nd edition with updated plant names, new hybrids, etc in collaboration with a young horticulturalist Tinus Oberhzer. Her original text remains virtually intact. She authored the books and took most of the photographs under her nickname Pitta Joffe. I would love to send you a copy. I am a NYT subscriber. Thanks again for your contributions to this subject. Leon Joffe
3
I have been working to restore just a small portion of my 1/2 acre of oak savanna back to its natural splendor, maybe 10% of my lawn, over the past few years. It has been nothing but a battle with my neighbors and the city. I’m now to the point of facing $2000 in fines and at the final jury trial appeal level through the county court system to hopefully get the issue resolved once and for all. I understand the use of glyphosate and did have to use small applications to get my restoration process started, I understand the farmers who need to use it as well. The fact that a monoculture lawn usually has 4x the amount of chemicals applied vs the average farm field while we all utilize well water in my neighborhood is frightening. We have had pets battle cancer as well as neighbors. We don’t drink our water anymore as a precaution. I appreciate the nature that comes along with my certified natural habitat landscaping. It’s quite beautiful most of the year and especially when in full bloom. The amount of bird species coming around has increased in amazing ways. Call me a liberal nature lover, but also call me a conservative freedom fighter for just wanting the landscaping I want. To each their own. I like my natural landscaping style and wish more did, but I don’t need to force it upon my neighbors. I borrowed my landscaping inspiration from a lot of the projects my hometown has done locally that utilize natives and now face fines for following along...
10
If you build it they will come...
Love my little half acre oasis - where nearly 40 species of birds visit annually. I feed them and provide water throughout the year. True joy is to see birds sitting in warm birdbaths on the coldest winter days. They eat voraciously during blizzards so I ensure my ten feeders are full before snowstorms arrive.
The weeds grow happily too - -I do manually remove the larger clumps of dandelions.
Our kids and dog grew up walking and rolling in the grass barefoot, never having to worry about chemicals in the soil.
The hummingbirds come and stay and stay and stay till pretty late in the year thanks to the many honeysuckle plants, salvia and the fresh nectar I make.
Yes, butterfly numbers have significantly declined in the past ten years, but large honeybees have thrived as all my hydrangea and wildflowers are the bee friendly variety.
Our small pond has given us hours of peace these twenty five years. The sound of running water has attracted many small creatures.
My husband thinks I'm nuts when I go around collecting earthworms from our driveway whenever it rains as we have an abundance of them throughout our yard just below the surface.
I compost and grow fresh vegetables in a tiny 240 sq. ft patch.
This year I have planted two apple trees - not for myself but for the birds.
Truly blessed.
27
For those who can't get away from all the rules of HOAs, consider what I call my "Mullet Lawn: Business in front but all natural in the back." I keep weed and feed to absolute minimum in the front to keep things 'nice' for the neighborhood, but allow my backyard to go natural. I stopped cutting 1/4 of my backyard and planted another 1/4 area for wildflowers. Pick trees and bushes for their berries and the birds will come! I cut the back but no chemistry is allowed there - only minimal in the front. Try a Mullet - it's fun and the birds will want to nest in it. :)
16
@Horse is gone We do pretty much the same here. Except for the garden beds present in the front yard (our back yard is too shady to allow us to successfully raise our vegetables), we keep the front yard mowed and trimmed as best we can. The back yard doesn't get much mowing, maybe three times per summer. I gave up raking the leaves back there in the fall. The first spring mowing mulches the leaves, and that's good for the insect and avian life the back yard supports. We tried on a handful of occasions planting grass seed in the back yard, but the birds eat it or the rains wash it away. For now, the green grown is mostly slow-growing weeds, plus some shrubbery planted by previous owners. We have ruminated for years about landscaping the back of the house. But nothing positive has happened in that direction. Now, with our spring canopy almost turned into a summer canopy, we have a shaded suburban Serengeti for a good six months. My home office is in the sunporch, looking out on the back yard. Here, I can look up from my work and see blue jays, finches, robins, chickadees, titmice, wrens, and other nesting songbirds; along with the occasional appearances of a hawk, an owl, and a falcon. Yes, our lawns can be described as "a Mullet", and it works just fine for us.
5
And while we're at it; leaf blowers! My neighbors wage war year round against fallen leaves. Disturbing the peace, fouling the air for what end, a lawn and garden bearing no resemblance to the natural world or America the beautiful they sing about .
22
Bees love the little white flowers on my Nelly Stephens holly trees, but the season for those flowers is short, now passed. For two weeks, the threes literally shake with busy bees. I love moss and English ivy, and to my neighbor's horror, am allowing it to live and spread throughout a few areas in the back yard. I love my wild violets, too. But I also have a service spray four times a year because I think a lawn of zoysia is lovely too. There are those who know what they're doing with respect to maintaining and encouraging wild growth; it's a deliberate decision, and the end results, can be interesting, or a terrible mess that's a blight. I cringe, though, when I see beautiful shrubbery with interesting architecture buzz sawed into perfectly geometric cubes and spheres.
3
I'm in southern California and my third of an acre (a "huge" yard here) is mostly California natives. Along with some Mediterranean and South African plants. Zero lawn. And a pond. And about 5 rose bushes, which I can't resist - and which I care for organically - no poisons. Right now, the garden is a riot of color and life - flowers, plants which seem to grow overnight, insects - bees, butterflies, ladybugs, spiders - birds nesting (and squabbling, from the sounds of it), frogs. Ms. Renkl is right - ditch your lawns folks. You will be glad you did!
11
Has anyone looked into micro clover? I am seeding my yard with it. It’s beautiful!!
5
While you're making your natural lawn, how about no burning off of fallen leaves.
They are the trees' blankets for their roots in winter, as well as returning nutruients to the soil.
This odd habit seems still popular in England, especially by people who worry about what the neighbours might say about them not raking up their leaves. "Look, such untidy people".
British migrants are horrified when they come to Australia and find that native trees here lose their leaves every day of the year (and strips of bark often, too).
I have Kangaroo grass (Themeda triandra) growing in my front yard. It is drought-resistant and requires no watering at all. It can be cut back every few years to promote growth.
I also have wild Brush Turkeys roaming the yard to clean up any annoying or dangerous insect pests.
9
As far as I can tell, the only reason to maintain a proper lawn is to avoid the aggravation of WASPy neighbors, who tend to associate every eyesore with an indefinite drop in property value.
9
I've been waiting for nature to take over the shady, damp, and small yard behind my house in Brooklyn for five years now. Even threw down clover seed on the theory that many suburbanites hate clover because takes over their lawn. Alas, it's still a mud-pit. Any suggestions?
2
try looking online for bulk violet seed and see if it takes. it depends on how dark!
2
@Mercury Descending
Moss, moss and moss. Research it, it’s beautiful.
4
@Mercury Descending
Learn what native species thrive in dark damp forest in your area. Send an email to your local native plant society and I bet you'll get tons of advice. You can have so much fun with this!
I would love to do what the author suggested, but I would be hassled by my HOA to no end with letters and fines. I do feel powerless and without choice in the American suburb where I own the house and the land, but am not free to leave the weeds alone in my own yard. So its easier said then done.
8
@anonymous. The HOA was there when you bought your home. It protects you against the quirks of your neighbors (think junk cars in the front yard) and insures the value of your home, so be glad it exists and give more consideration to your neighbors or move somewhere you can go your own way.
1
@anonymous I wonder if sending this article as well as a good selection of the many other sources out there to your HOA would have an effect. At this point, I think settling for shortsighted policies is no longer an option.
2
@anonymous
That sounds terrible. I hope for your sake though that these things can change over time as culture changes. In our neighborhood in Seattle, we look with horror at the one house on our block where the owners have a lawn care service come that uses fertilizer and weed killer. Everyone else has a happy profusion of various degrees of tidiness, and it's beautiful
2
Twenty five years ago I planted a bee/butterfly garden and let a 15 foot strip along the back of my yard which abuts a small stream remain wild. In the garden I find not only butter flies and bees but also a variety of birds who, especially in the fall and winter, eat the seeds from the shrubs. Great blue heron, rabbits, fox, and wild turkey use the buffer zone by the stream. All these animals to entertain me every day of the year. I am blessed. Hoping Renkl's article spurs readers to take action to create a safe, natural habitat for these animals who need our help.
47
@Linda just keep those randy tom turkeys away from your mailman.
Thanks for this article. Natural "lawns" are best for the health of the planet, and lovely too. And glyphosate is the devil in a jug; I hope people are finally paying attention. I had to laugh, though, at your choice of photo: red dead-nettle (Lamium purpureum) is pretty, with its wierd little flowers, and especially when mixed with little yellow flowers, like lesser celandine (Ficaria verna), but both of those spread aggressively and will soon carpet large areas to exclusion of everything else. I spend a good deal of time digging them out (pulling doesn't work because of the root systems).
3
In my neighborhood I've been alarmed at the trees that have been downed over the years by rot, storms, or taken down to make way for new structures. No one seems to care about replacing them. For my yard, I've recently purchased trees from the non-profit ArborDay.org. With an extra donation of a few dollars, I was offered 10 free trees. (These would be small for ease of shipping.) Since I don't have enough land to plant all of them, I approached one older neighbor with a large empty lot (he uses a large tractor to mow) and proposed planting some of the free trees in his lot. I even gave him a salesman-type speech of all the environmental benefits of trees. His answer was "no". The reason he gave me? It would be too much trouble to mow around the trees.
Same with a corn/soybean farmer whose trees line the edges of his fields adjacent to the neighborhood. I've seen several of his trees die off from storm damage, and he hasn't replaced any of them. From the size of them, my guess is they were planted during a time when farmers were advised by conservationists to plant trees for the health of their fields. His answer for not replacing the dead trees? It would be too much trouble to mow around them.
So that's the simple, short-sightedness I see around me here in Illinois, and I can't help but think this may be the mindset of many others.
Thankfully, the Arbor Day Foundation offers to plant the free trees in our dwindling national parks forests.
29
I've often wondered what diseases humans have suffered due to the use of lawn chemicals? I can't imagine a more occupationally dangerous job than working for a lawn chemical company.
8
My little suburban lot is a certified wildlife habitat. Never used chemicals (no weedkiller or fertilizer), mostly plant natives, have a shade garden, herb garden, two compost bins (great fertilizer), a birdbath (great for entertainment), shrubs, and a very small front lawn (rarely seeded, never watered). A few trees, and a long flowering season, often fragrant if you get close or crush a leaf between your fingers.
My philosophy is to plant for birds, bees and butterflies. It’s been one of my greatest joys over the years, and my garden journal (weekly entries) help me keep track of weather/climate changes.
Despite my efforts, fewer birds, bees and butterflies, alas.
38
I have lived on a little dead end road in central Texas for 40 years. Back in the day when there were only 6 families out here the bar ditches were rampant with wildflowers. Fast forward and now there are over 100 houses, each apparently equipped with a riding lawnmower. I’ve watched the flowers get mowed year after year and the heartbreak of fewer bees and butterflies.
There’s a 300’ stretch at the beginning of the road that’s never been mowed because it borders a large property whose owners only maintain their entryway. This spring I painted a sign “look what grows where no one mows” and posted it there. As each wildflower arrives I write it’s name on a construction stake and place it nearby. My hope is that if folks learn these flowers actually have names they will see them as something real, something precious, instead of a “weed” to be destroyed. It’s early days yet, but I’m seeing more properties where the mower has yet to come out and the verbena, bitterweed, fleabane, dewberries (and more) are making a comeback. Fingers crossed.
253
This is a wonderful idea. I live on a similar road also in central Texas, and I write for the local paper. Maybe I can do a little “weed control” by conversion in that medium, too.
34
I have a similar idea. As my planting beds are transformed to natives & more beds added, I'm going to hang a sign on my mailbox inviting neighbors to ask questions about my gardens so I can also encourage and awaken more people.
25
@Melodie Greider
Planting that kind of seed makes a real difference. Thank you.
"I write it’s name on a construction stake and place it nearby. My hope is that if folks learn these flowers actually have names they will see them as something real, something precious, instead of a “weed” to be destroyed."
21
It’s the time of year when little red, white, and yellow signs sprout at the edges of lawns in my neighborhood, warning people to keep kids and dogs off the grass. How people can have their yards coated with a substance that is poisonous to their grandchildren and their goldendoodles is a mystery to me.
78
@Alison Baker I know a family that lives in a gated community where all the young mothers insist on buying organic food and toiletries for their kids. But when she tried to organize a group to protest the aggressive use of pesticides in the development, she got pushback from neighbors worried about property values. No amount of organic applesauce is gonna counteract the blanket applications of pesticides on the lawn.
8
So many Margaret Renkl articles read like a calming cool breeze on a warm afternoon or a deliciously warm scone from the oven to be nibbled on over a cup of hot tea on a chilly Spring morning.
The perfect accompaniments to her rich articles are the many informative comments which are always shared.
My favorite part of this article is the opening photograph - those deep purples against that lush, deep green - brilliant and fantastic display of Mother Nature.
Thank you!!
36
And thank you, @Marge Keller, for your lovely writing which augments Renkl’s. A wonderful way to start my morning.
5
@Nansie Jubitz
Your kindness is greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
1
My lawn has not seen "chemicals" in at least over 20 plus, neither has it been watered. But then, Houston is very humid, that might help. My lawn gets mowed during the warm season on a regular basis, but that is all. The only areas to be watered are the beds of beautiful plants that I slowly replace with native ones. And if you want to get rid of your dandelions, invite some European friends, they will dig them up and put the leaves in a salad - I have several, dandelions as well as European friends who eat them.
8
@Gaby Franze Re dandelions: Dandelion flowers are, in many places, the first food of the season for bees and, therefore, essential! My strategy is to let them flower and then pop off the clocks so they don't totally invade. And yes, we eat the leaves (but only when small).
3
@maudpowell - I grew up on spring dandelions. Haven't found any in stores the even match the taste of those my mom would bring in from our yard. That was in Michigan. Here in Georgia the soil has a lot of acid and they aren't as good.
Elizabeth Kolbert wrote about the problem of the American lawn in the New Yorker a while back, which is when I learned the term ‘freedom lawn’ to describe a plot of grass that’s weeded and seeded occasionally, maybe aerated, but not treated with chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
We have had a freedom lawn in Vermont, and in Seattle, where most people let their lawns go brown/dormant in the summer— who cares if it’s yellow in August when the green comes right back in October?
I’be just learned that the house we’re moving to in Maryland has an irrigation system, which I’m excited about because I am an absentminded gardener who forgets to water. But I’ll turn it on sparingly.
4
Please, Ms. Renki, spare us the uninformed, ideology.
Contrary to your assertions, lawn management techniques exist and are in wide use that avoid your "poison desert."
Soil selection and condition, application of composted materials (including liquids), natural soil amendments (Texas
green sand (glauconite), appropriate species selection, and irrigation management are well within the capabilities of the typical homeowner or gardener. It just takes more work than buying bags and bottles at big box stores.
You may like ticks, chiggers, rattlesnakes, rat snakes, brown snakes, rodents, and other vermin in close proximity to your outdoor entertaining spaces or pool, but many of us don't.
A variety of lantana and other drought-tolerant plants, combined with a well-managed lawn, has low water demand, quality appearance, and minimal undesirables.
6
@Mack If you're actually in Los Angeles, I don't think ticks and chiggers are an issue for you. As for the rest, nothing Ms. Renkl wrote was uninformed. And I don't have a problem with ideology in the service of nature. My own plot, with zero lawn and native California plants, doesn't see rats or snakes. Although since we are adjacent to the San Gabriel Mountains, we do have bears, mountain lions, deer, coyotes and bobcats. Which make our "entertaining spaces" even more entertaining.
7
@Mack you add good information to the conversation. Did you have to start out with an attack on the author and her perspective? We would have listened to yours without that--and more peacefully.
1
@Mack
Those aisles of toxic chemicals are in every hardware store and garden center in California for a reason.
Have always had a Darwin lawn (survival of the fittest). I once read that more chemicals are used for growing grass than food in the USA.
5
I am so glad you are publicizing this issue - especially in such a positive way (suggesting the good things about not mowing everything down and killing the rest). Hope the Times keeps this issue in the news as this is something every suburban household can do to save money, effort, and nature. And you didn’t even mention the noise pollution from leaf and grass blowers that destroy our peace and spew gas fumes all summer long.
14
I totally agree. I have all sorts of wildflowers in my lawn and because of it, many birds looking for insects. Ms Renkl left out one culprit, the real estate industry. They are the ones pushing for "curb appeal" and that, in their opinion means a pristine green chem lawn.
People travel to national parks to admire meadows yellow with buttercups and take photos of wildflowers which they then post on facebook and instagram. But at home they hire companies to kill the very same wildflowers on their own property.
19
Millions of people just spent the weekend watching The Masters golf tournament, an intensely seductive and effective advertisement for a deep, deep green, weed free, and perfectly trimmed lawn. These images are deeply ingrained in our culture, and difficult to change, even by beautifully written essays in the New York Times.
7
Nice theory; but if you live in a subdivision you have little if any control over your yard. I recently sold a townhome in VA; the HOA was responsible for mowing the front yard. They also wanted to issue citations if they thought your lawn wasn't green enough. Or too brown. The only way I got them to back off was to point out that I couldn't be held responsible for how the lawn looked since they were cutting it and their mowers were transmitting/transplanting what was on everyone else's lawn. I would have loved to let it go towards wildflowers but not possible in that community.
I'm in a single family home now and responsible for cutting my own lawn. I also have a lawn fertilization company who bombards me with "we were just there for routine fertilization and noticed.....". Issuing vague threats and dire warnings like "if you don't buy this additional service your lawn won't look like (picture rolling golf greens)". So, you consent to an aeration. That leads to..."we were just there and saw you need"....I finally told them to give me one price for a scheduled yearly plan. No more ads beyond that or I'd drop them.
I'm just trying to do enough to stay out of trouble, again, with the HOA. I'd love to brick it up and be done with it but unfortunately the lawn comes with the home.
Our thoughts need to change, a lot, about what lawns should look like before this will be successful.
3
@Ann
Hi Ann,
For many years, I've been a Master Gardener & can recommend one way to change your HOA's policy & procedures for lawn care & appearance. Every state has Master Gardeners who receive 100s of hours of university-level training. They are more than glad to speak to HOAs & community groups about specific horticultural topics, especially reducing pesticide/herbicide use in lawns.
Offer to arrange a speaker for your next HOA meeting and/or get it on the HOAs board of director's meeting. Contact your local county extension office, ask for the Master Gardener coordinator & schedule a speaker. I've made these presentations many times. It works - viewpoints & attitudes do shift. Hope this helps you.
22
A nicely written article, to be sure. There is another, larger threat with modern farming methods which douse the formerly fertile soils with toxic materials instead of rotating croplands or other sensible and sustainable methods.
5
All over neighborhoods in our town, little signs are popping up in yards advertising companies who guarantee the elimination of all your mosquitoes, while other neighbors are working hard to plant bee and butterfly gardens, even setting up bee hives.
These opposing approaches are clearly at cross-purposes. When will we realize we can't have both?
6
@KHL and of course the more insects, the more birds (and bats) - a natural mosquito eradication campaign!
The writer envisions here a beautiful bouquet of wildflowers, blossoming in the spring in the absence of herbicides.
What the writer doesn't see is what's far more likely to happen. The yellowing, patch-bare piece of property, strewn with broadleaf weeds like dandelions or worse, migrating into neighbors lawns, with little to no upkeep.
Lovely for property values, while making no discernible dent into our state of affairs with nature.
3
@Chris I understand your concern. What the writer envisions is not a yard left to itself without maintenance or care. In fact, the opposite is true. Natural landscapes engage the homeowner in design, ecology, and direct inputs (getting your hands dirty!)
One does not need chemicals to maintain a healthy yard. Nature doesn't use them yet the fields are filled with life. Compost is a great soil amendment that will keep the plants in your yard growing happily. Ground covers keep soil moist and reduce weeds. If you aren't up to it, call a natural landscaping company to advise you.
8
Oh weeds and grass.. Here in this little slice of South Carolina, a quiet neighborhood of mostly retired and aging people you can see the results over the years with the struggles of trying to grow grass where grass never grew before. What was once part of the Piedmont and Sand Hills, vast yellow pine forests and meadows developers have long been ripping these wonderful ecosystems apart to build more and more subdivisions.
So...now days most of the folks around the lake no longer try to maintain beautiful green lawns, instead most of us merely cut the grass and otherwise let nature take its course.
Luckily around the lake we have plenty of trees, shrubs and bushes so the birds have plenty of areas to live. Sadly there are precious few honey bees so I let the carpenter bees do the bulk of the pollinating of flowering plants. I used to try to battle with the carpenter bees, but no more. They produce their own songs all summer long and as for the grass? I'm to the point that I could care less if nothing but weeds take over, but I still have to cut it all down per county mandate. God forbid anyone let their grass grow longer than a few inches these days. Luckily the summer sun here does most of the work for us.
4
@Martino. The ecosystem was “ripped apart” to build your house too. Everyone wants to be the last person in and slam the door behind them.
When I was a child I spent a lot of time sitting in the grass and would see all manner of insects crawling, hopping and flying around. Now when I sit in my lawn (a combination of grass and weeds that have never seen a chemical), I see hardly any bugs at all. This scares me. Bugs on the lawn are like canaries in the coal mine, and we are not just killing the insects, we are ultimately killing ourselves.
This year, I'm starting the process of letting my backyard go back to nature altogether, with more native trees, shrubs, flowers and even weeds. Kind of like a combo woodland/meadow.
Enough with the "lawn," even if it's a weedy one like mine.
9
Rankl nailed it in her description of lush, natural south east lawns. I live in Virginia half of the year and spring here is glorious.
But my neighbors, obsessed with weeds and fleas use Roundup like water (still) and Diatomaceous Earth for fleas.
Please don’t use Diatomaceous Earth. It kills BEES, hurts everything; including your dog’s skin. It’s not just birds disappearing but Bees are really in trouble. Thanks for a great opinion piece.
22
We live in an area where the HOA has very high standards regarding appearance. We do the absolute minimum when it comes to weed control, and nothing to harm insects.
But our neighbors all spray vigorously. Both our cat and dog got cancer, and we have friends whose pets were similarly afflicted. I don't think it's a coincidence.
19
Yes to all of this and I practiced it for years using native species and xeriscape principles. What does one do in a newer neighborhood where an HOA rules and manicured lawns are required? Fortunately I’ve been able to create xeric flower beds, but am not allowed to do away with the bluegrass.
2
I am very sympathetic to those opinions, but it would take a hero to oppose my neighbors public opinion, there even are probably ordinances about mowing one's lawn. Once, in a more rural area, in order to encourage toads to visit my lawn and eat the gypsy moth larva, I let my grass grow, but my kids complained that the tall grass interfered with their legs when they played badminton. Oh well.
That was one of the most beautiful and compelling articles I have read in a LONG time about nature. Maybe not since "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson . . . how I wish EVERYONE would get on board with your idea. Americans have been enamored by the idea of a lush, green lawn for SO long, that we have forgotten the "poison" that is lurking there just beneath the surface, or on top of it, where our children and grandchildren are running and playing, and our beloved pets are romping and rolling. We need to train our eyes to see nature's beauty and appreciate it and the wildlife it sustains before it's eternally too late.
16
'American lawns, a field of poison' sounds about right, a sad picture indeed, an addiction to have the illusion of control by a manicured grass empty of nature otherwise. I would surmise that most folks around here have never been exposed to the beauty of wild forests; so how could they wish for somerhing they ignore? Please, 'send in the wildflowers'.
6
Thanks for this important perspective. YES to the habitat that birds and insects need, that in turn sustains other parts of the ecosystem. But we need models that also resonate with and touch our human need for beauty, and possibly things like symmetry and order. I lived for a while in Southern California where there are LOTS of examples of people landscaping, and xeriscaping, using native species, and also making it, or trying to make it, beautiful. Now in Northern Indiana, I'm looking forward to buying a house and seeing how I can create a yard that embodies both beauty (as my human sensibilities will perceive it) and treats nature more generously. It will surely be a learning experience.
4
Bravo! The more people who do this, the sooner they will be the majority and everyone left with chemical dependent lawns will look scary. Soon the neighborhood laws will change. Remember when we never thought smoking could possibly be banished from restaurants? It is all a matter of perception, and the health of people, their pets, and the planet.
Edwina von Gal
PRFCT Earth Project
49
Beautifully written and argued. Margaret Renkl has become my favorite Time columnist, by far.
But ... this essay is on a futile mission. Something like it has been written somewhere by someone every Spring since Rachel Carson published "Silent Spring" nearly 60 years ago. These essays stir and already converted but are powerless against the vast majority of people who hate insects and couldn't care less about native plants, who put out red-dyed sugar-water for the humming birds while killing every other living thing beneath their feet.
Bless you, Margaret, for trying. But those stacks of poison at Home Depot keep growing, and will continue to do so, because there's money to be made, and money drives out every other virtue—it always has and always will. Beauty won't save the pitcher's stitchwort or the spring peeper—they are doomed to be trampled under the foot of Mr. Suburb and his gas powered leaf blower. What may save them, possibly, is Mr. Tort Lawyer and his glyphosate class action suits—the "call 800" ads have already started streaming onto daytime cable reality television.
32
Perhaps not futile. Although I enjoy the reading the Times while sitting in front of a large bay window simultaneously admiring my beautiful fescue lawn, this article really gets me thinking that I can and should challenge myself to create a view that is more environmentally friendly. I gave up the lawn irrigation system years ago and last year decided against spraying for mosquitoes. Baby steps.
11
@Paul
We enjoy watching the "natural" mosquito controllers in our area - bats and swallows - busy in the early morning and early evening hours. So much better than poisons that don't discriminate between the "bad" mosquitos and the good butterflies and bees. Also taking care not to leave places where standing, stagnant water can puddle making a nursery for mosquitos.
4
@Beth when we moved to Michigan my parents bought a house that came with an outdoor above ground pool. The snow that had collected in the tarp melted and my parents weren't ready to open the pool and get rid of the tarp, but they knew the water in the tarp could breed mosquito larvae. My mom's solution was to go to a pet store and buy koi/goldfish. They got quite big eating the mosquito larvae when the tarp needed to come off, we found that an outlet mall and Dutch theme park that had a pond and canal system was willing to take the goldfish. (On one shopping trip to that outlet mall I did see a Great Blue Heron, so I wonder if the gold fish lasted.)
Seems like our lawns are not the "land of the free and home of the brave." We're too afraid our neighbours will disapprove if we don't conform to their standards!
13
@617to416 At least here in California, there are more and more yards planted in native plants. Given our drought situation, there were lawsuits against HOAs who insisted on lawns - as the water needs of lawns conflict with the water usage laws propagated by municipalities. And once people see well maintained "native" gardens, they love them...
2
I'm all for birds and bees and bugs and nature, don't get me wrong.
However, there are some powerful reasons that neglecting your lawn or turning it into a weed patch may not be practical.
If you live in a zoned community you may not be allowed to convert your lawn into a field of weeds and wildflowers.
If you want to sell your house, and it is the only one on the block with a "natural" (i.e., "weed") yard, good luck; the offers will be sparse and the bidding prices, if any, will be lower than for comparable houses in your neighborhood.
Many communities in Florida and elsewhere require that specific types of grass or sod be used; and many communities in the arid Southwest require xerescaping.
If your neighbors have lawns, accept the fact that you will be shunned (or targeted on social media and ratted out to the local authorities) if you go over to the weedy side.
Ticks that carry Lyme disease and other diseases affecting humans seem to thrive in tall grasses.
In short, there are often limits to what we can do to keep from impacting our local flora and fauna.
6
But there is a LOT you can do and still keep the HOA police at bay and also have a beautiful, healthy landscape. Don't use herbicides & pesticides, but keep grass cut; Increase the size, number of planting beds with native flowing plants & beneficial trees.
I'm in the process of doing that now and can't wait to see the future profusion of year long color and wildlife. Already getting positive feedback from neighbors.
17
@Mon Ray
These are very poor reasons to create and maintain lawns. Very weak, not powerful at all. Lame excuses. "...don't get me wrong," the writer says. Don't worry, you have made yourself clear.
The writer "is all for the birds and bees and bugs and nature," but not "all for them" enough to withstand criticism on social media, or to object to unsound zoning laws, or to risk eventually obtaining maximal real estate resale value. "The weedy side," indeed.
By accepting these limits, a homeowner acknowledges that he or she is part of the problem, not part of the solution, a powerless pawn of social preferences. The same arguments are happily embraced to justify climate-controlled McMansions, single-occupant SUV driving, long-haul air-travel vacations, and fossil-fuel powered recreation. After all, it's on TV and in your facebook feed, so it must be desirable.
9
@Mon Ray I’ve got my rose-colored glasses on. I see a day coming when my house with its native landscape will be the most desirable one on the block for sale because I’ve had the foresight to convert, to beckon the bees and butterflies rather than banish them! One man’s weeds are another woman’s treasures!
7
Thank you for highlighting this problem of unnaturally and chemically induced green lawns. I live in Denver which is semi-arid desert yet all around me all summer long I see green lawns. The amount of water wasted to produce these green lawns is staggering. In a desert. And all around me I also see those signs placed by chemical-lawn companies saying the yard has been poisoned so children should not play there.
I've ripped out my lawn and have replaced it with mulch and drought-tolerant native plants. I refuse to be part of the insanity of green and chemical (poison) lawns.
69
Even landscapers willing transform your yard will want to apply poison (Glyphosate) to kill all existing grass. However, one doesn't need chemicals to transform a "golf course" yard treated with chemicals and mowed every week into a native wild prairie or a "no mow" yard. In the Spring or Summer, forgo chemicals and instead place cardboard on an existing yard and cover that with leaf mulch. Early Fall seed with your native grasses and flowers and next Spring behold your creation.
5
@Doug
There is scientific evidence that putting cardboard and paper down is harmful to the health of the bacteria and organisms living in the soil. Scientifically it is much better to just put down a really thick layer of mulch (8 inches), especially arborist woodchips, which can be obtained for free via programs such as Chipdrop. This will preserve the good things in the soil, kill off the grass and create a suitable environment for planting. That's science.
12
@Sandy
For whatever reason, my "cardboard/mulch" yard is thriving with native grasses and wildflowers. Thank you though for making us aware of the "cardboard controversy." Wood chips seem to be a better option.
3
@Sandy
Well then, there are always sheep, who are multi purpose mowers, fertilizers, aerators and of course 100% organic. The neighbors might have a thing or two to say about this...just my two cents.
I appreciate your article because I live in a High desert area where there should be xeriscaped front yards and yet people here insist on wasting gallons of water daily for the “perfect lawn.” I am in on this as well, as my landlord insists on the property having grass. I wish more people here would think about the ecological impact of all that wasted water and cutting down native pollinator plants. One caveat: while I agree with your recommendation to avoid dangerous pesticides, please be careful with the generalization that the word “chemical” is synonymous with the word “poison.” Yes, I agree, that most of the lawn and garden solutions available at the hardware store are poisons. That being said: We are made of chemicals. The earth is made of chemicals. The chlorophyll in plants is a chemical, for example. Equating the word chemicals with poisons is a misrepresentation of the science and chemistry at work in the natural world, and perpetuates the cultural fallacy that all “chemicals” are bad.
9
Thank you for such a lovely essay. May more of us become grateful for all the species who share this beautiful planet so we can all thrive.
14
Born in NYC I came to live in Austria and have been here for 30 years. I live under a mountain and the forest behind our home has 50 springs. The water we get is from those springs and mountain as well.
In addition to our garden and old fruit trees we have never used any poison or chemicals on our property-EVER! We have a big property and its wild; a huge meadow with all sorts of delicate blooms as far as the eye can see. In summer we forage in the forest and also eat what is in those meadows which are lush and healthy. We have bird "nesting" homes on every tree and our home is famous with both birds and bees coming here and calling our home theirs. Dandelion is in our salads with flowers, I make honey from the flower. I also make a syrup from my lavendar patches and lilac blooms--both great on pancakes and in drinks of all kinds. If you nurture nature it will nurture your life and make it RICH.
We don't own a lawn mower. We use a sickle for foot paths. We try to be respectful of the life living in tune with with us. We hardly ever use a supermarket for anything except household items. Yes, this is a labor of love and its worth it for our family. We have neighbors who "groom" weekly and make noise--they gas their green. I respect their right to live as they choose. I want heaven on earth and to feel the sun bathe me in a bed of meadow flowers. I might add that I'm over 60 now and haven't been sick since I came. I feed the earth and the earth feeds me!
100
In Nashville mowing season has already begun, with most of my neighbors hiring it out to huge noise machines (I use a reel mower). This year, for the first time, I decided not to reseed my front yard with grass. With lots of shade and native shrubs (now in bloom) and now moss, I don't have much remaining ground for grass anyway. So my yard is splattered with varieties of shade plants, and somewhat scraggly by contemporary standards, but without resort to chemicals (ever). So-called weeds? I pluck the ones I don't like. Ms. Renkl's columns are a gentle inspiration to how we might live our lives.
20
To all who say this can't be done without round-up and ticks. It can be done, it is just time consuming and requires a shift in what is considered beautiful.
Ticks can be controlled with cedar oil. We have 4 acres is woods and grass and so long as we spray regularly our dogs have NO ticks. Weeds only require chemicals if you want instant results or acres of lawn. Weeds can be smothered in beds that are then planted, or hand pulled in small lawns. I just spent a lovely Sunday sitting in the grass pulling weeds. As a child in 60's suburbia we all spent hours on the weekends earning 5 cents a dandelion, but only if the tap root was intact.
If you don't want to put the time into a natural lawn then don't buy a house with a lawn. We all survived life pre-round-up, just as we all survived life pre-plastic. Everyone who says its just too much time and effort really means I love my conveniences and don't want to give them up. Since the costs are not clear and instantaneous we pretend they don't exist. The truth is you pay now or your children pay later.
74
Do what you can regardless of where you live. We do have grass that we mow surrounded by our 50 acres of woods but in our case, it serves three purposes. We live in fire country where forest fires are a real possibility, a 200 foot pine falling on your house is not a good thing and lastly to keep the deer tick population at bay. Anaplasmosis is not fun and neither is lyme disease.
7
A good way to get rid of grass is to plant native trees in your yard. We have a tall Eastern Hemlock in our front yard and near it are native azaleas, laurels, rhododendrons, and small ephemeral flowers. They love the acidity in the soil, so it works well.
Our hemlock is treated with a systemic poison to kill an invasive beetle, the wooly adelgid, which threatens the hemlock population in the southeast. We treat it every 5 years. This is the only poison we use. Hemlocks pollinate by the wind, so they aren't harming the bees and butterflies. These trees are vital to the ecosystem, they provide deep shade for plants and cool the streams.
If you don't have room for a large tree in your yard, there are all kinds of shrubs and small trees which provide food and shade protection for the birds. Turn your yard into your own sanctuary full of life and beauty. It is much better than the sterile, boring mowed grass of your neighbors.
If you have sun, plant a pollinator garden. Beebalm, coneflowers, phlox, milkweed, daisies, columbine, cardinal flowers are loved by hummingbirds, butterflies and bees. Lots going on with them, it is never dull.
If you need help with what plants to chose, call your local Master Gardener's Program through the county extension and/ or there are several good organizations. like Wild Ones, to help you with it.
23
@Sandy L. And Black-eyed Susans.
2
@arztin Absolutely! I'm ashamed I forgot my favorite yellow flowers: Black-eyed Susans, Coreopsis and Goldenrod. They sure do bring enjoyment for nature and me.
I found if I put off the first mowing in the spring for a month, the San Augustine grass gets a little shaggy but Lyre Leaf Sage, Fleabane and Sorel all bloom and set seed and remind me what spring is about.
7
Neglect is not really the answer. Weeds and invasives will likely take over. Meadows are quite difficult to create. They require careful attention and cultivation.
14
Also: if you do not make sure to have some perennial ground cover your lawn and yard will be leaching it’s #1 contaminant into local waterways...silt and soil. Here inDC and it’s suburbs we have an out of control deer population, eating all native ground over plants in the forest (and in peoples yards). This leaves the Potomac and Chesapeake bays a phosphorus-rich opaque mess every time it rains. This, (and huge flocks of non-migratory geese who deposit a kilo of manure daily here rather than their native spring and summertime homes in Canada) is the #1 threat to our local waters. Killing weeds does limit foraging opportunities for bees but allowing your lawn to become populated by annual weeds such as crabgrass is not environmentally sound choice.
2
Interesting that the pop up ad I get for this article is for synthetic grass. I promise I haven't been searching for it.
I'm a CT person who lives in CT because I love woods and nature, don't water and have natural grounds. What drives me nuts (short drive) is that 40 years ago when I moved into my home on 1.5 acres in the woods I was surrounded by other similar homes in the woods. As each house has sold the new owners have cleared their woods and planted lawns. Makes me wonder why they moved here in the first place...
119
@Paul Lief, The ad I got was for a lawn care service, showing a pristine monoculture of lush grass!
6
A neglected city garden turns quickly to weeds and becomes a nuisance or a menace. When our lawn was destroyed by Chafer beetles (and the racoons and crows who feed on them), we installed a patio with a few trees, a yew and box hedge, and assorted vegetable and flower beds. Pesticide-free, of course.
Strewing a few seeds sounds lovely, but it's real work to build an urban garden.
13
I count the number of natural plant varieties in my smallish yard. It's over 20 and sometimes new things come by, and insects. I try to keep it neat, but not too neat. leave some leaves. This is all under the glare of my senior neighbors, who yell over their fences, 'They're all weeds!' as they meticulously pick up any stray grass strand from their yard.
17
@No fear
We have a lot of leaves in our back garden - oops, yard - and never back them all. As to the front, there are only two fairly small areas with grass which we do keep short. while the largest part has blooming bushes, evergreens and nock-out roses en masse.
The problem in the burbs of D.C. is that there is a fierce competition between those who who constantly have their yard manicured and are upset when even a few leaves are on their precious lawns, versus those who let nature take over just a bit.
3
One of the biggest impediments to nurturing nature in the suburbs is the HOA. I lived in my last covenant-controlled neighborhood 15 years ago, and hope it will be my last.
I now live in rural east Texas and revel in the wildflowers and wildlife. Once I took the time to watch, I found that, in addition to being essential, insects and spiders are fascinating. We’ve allowed our 40 acres to return to mostly woods. I only wish I could bring back the native long leaf pine, but if your neighbors and your neighbor’s neighbors, etc., don’t, the loblolly takes right over.
The state of our “yard” would send an architectural control committee into fits.
75
Thank you for this article. I've been working on doing just this to my own yard. It's a wonderful learning experience and rewarding when you see how busy the front yard, I mean ecosystem, can be with pollinators. There are many choices for plants.... my recommendations to name a few are false sunflower & prairie dropseed. Lots more....
14
It's a romantic idea, the beauty of "weeds" and letting your yard revert to "nature." As several have pointed out, it's important to understand the realities. An unattended open space in this area is likely to revert to a field of the dreaded callery (aka Bradford) pear, autumn olive, and honeysuckle-- all introduced species that disrupt the ecosystem. Glyphosate is the go-to chemical used to kill everything in sight prior to introduction of native plants-- then mowing, chemicals and fire are used to maintain this "natural" environment. My own yard is lawn-free and 90% planted natives, but it's important to understand the realities and limits of human impact on the world today-- a return to a pristine pre-historic environmental past isn't going to happen. Stay idealistic, but educate yourself and set realistic goals based on your time, environmental and esthetic standards and budget before embarking on this path.
54
@Ellen
I would argue a forest of Bradford pear and a carpet of English ivy is still preferable to hundreds of pounds of toxic chemicals. We will never turn back the hands of time, but the answer in the face of that reality is not Glyphosate. The wild area in my house in Maryland is full of invasives yes, I'm slowly pulling out the ivy and day lilies to give the native plants a chance. Ten years on, not much progress, but also no chemicals draining into the Chesapeake bay.
24
@Ellen, many places have a rent a goat program, they love privet, poison Ivy and a gazillion other noxious plants....poison ivy doesn’t hurt them the least bit....
1
Our National Historic Registry property financed by Al Capone features many deluxe aspects. Including an extensive sprinkler system. But it's not a golf green so I had the sprinklers disconnected immediately. Next door the former mayor of this faded Indiana industrial city resides in similar splendor but he spends every waking hour at home with lawnmower while his plastic-surgeried trophy wife plays the chatelaine with a garden trowel in hand. Not one weed can live in their toxic green verdure. Not a lot of other life either, if it's not grass. SInce I had to endure stage 3 cancer and its aftermath, we eschew the use of lawn chemicals in our gardening and reap the rewards of large trees abounding with birds and lawns bedecked with clover busy with bees...
18
A feel-good article that overlooks the dark side of long grass: ticks. If you let your grass go sauvage, the ticks will come. Up in Minnesota we have a serious problem with deer ticks and Lyme disease. That's why most nature lovers have (chemical-free) mown lawns as well as pollinator flower beds.
16
@Will Get guinea hens. Wonderful for tick removal and as a roaming alarm system. And the polka dot feathers!
13
@Becksnyc2wv Yes! We had guinea fowl for several years. They were wonderful birds; better parents than chickens (which we also had), and the guineas didn't scratch and destroy ground-cover like the chickens did. One day we saw the adult birds on the barn roof, teaching the little keets how to fly. We live in a semi-rural area; we (and our neighbors) loved that the birds ate ticks. Alas, the birds gradually left or were attacked by night-raiding raccoons when we were away. We'll get more once we stop traveling.
8
Thank you for this poetic essay, Ms. Renkl.
My first home in Worcester, MA had a lawn which in the spring was full of purple wild violets and yellow dandelions - not the aggressive big weeds but the dainty small ones. It was a perfect color combination for my eyes, and together they readied the soil for greener grass in the summer.
One afternoon a Scott representative knocked on my door, telling me he could help with all the "problems" in my lawn ....
88
A different perspective. One of the worst things that happened in major Russian cities under Putin was the realization by each respective ruling administration of the possibility of enrichment on mowing wild grasses INTO lawns (we have a lot of untouched forests and even meadows in the cities). Migrant workers are instructed to mow over the tall natural grasses using polluting gasoline hand mowers or to recklessly replace whole city parks with turf of the cheapest kind. They do nothing else apart from this to look after the grass and the officials call the resulting disaster of a grass 'a lawn'. It seems that our ruling mafia takes the worst from the West - the simulacrum of a 'lawn culture' in this case.
9
What great timing! I have just begun the process of converting my lawn to a prairie. I greatly look forward to seeing the purple cone flowers and the milkweed and the big blue stem along with the monarchs and bees and the songbirds. Nature's diversity is both healthy for man and beast and a joy for the soul. Better still, the conversion to native species can be an active process (kill the grass) or a passive one (let the natives invade). The most abundant crop in America is grass--not corn or soybeans. Think about that. Maybe its time for mother nature to reclaim her role.
19
All nurses and healthcare providers need to say no to Monsanto and just learn to accept the beauty of “weeds” and their like. I don’t care what my neighbors think - my garden is full of beautiful flowers and if my grass isn’t up to their idea of acceptance- so what. No chemicals! Instead of criticizing, maybe they could just follow suit and keep the neighborhood safer for future generations. Let us healthcare workers be the example - we should know better! Are lawns are just fine and healthy without those nasty chemicals.
76
Basically I agree with you. I have native shade plants and prairie plants in my yard.
I tried going weed free and fertilizer free on my lawn and all I had was dandelions and other awful weeds. I could turn the lawn into all native flowers, but it would be expensive and time consuming and I would still have dandelions, and other undesirables. And we have city regulations that would not allow me to do that. So, I do the best I can and have gone back to some fertilizer and weed prevention.
5
@esp dandelions are a great food for bees early in the spring. They are also beautiful - both the flower and the seed head. When on earth did they get such a bad rep - and why?
141
@esp Dandelion is a medicinal herb. The greens, eaten in early spring, invigorate the body after a long winter. High in vitamins, minerals and fiber, they also support the liver. Which one needs to help process the pesticides we use to destroy "weeds."
12
@esp Dandelions are beautiful and very tasty. The Greeks eat them steamed and then a drizzle of lemon, salt and olive oil.
8
Our desire for the perfect lawn and our use of chemicals to achieve it and which ultimately degrade the environment is just another example of marketing run amok. Capitalism drives our lives but wise consumers should resist the ruse that no amount of convenience and perfection is excessive.
65
Great message. We live by a Lake and all our runoff ends up there so we converted our lawn into a perennial garden using mostly native species with minimal use of chemicals. I think our neighbors thought we were crazy but now they all enjoy the beauty of our garden and we have more birds. We may not solve the world's problem with chemicals but if we each do just a small part, it all adds up to a big impact. It's also good therapy for our souls!
119
@Steve Burton. And I hope that your neighbors, instead of mere enjoying, have also converted to the same kind of garden you have.
2
What about lush green golf courses in the middle of the Arizona desert? If that isn't insanity what is, and how much longer can it last? The Colorado River, used by several states, is rapidly dwindling and the trend shows no signs of abating. But, that just goes right along with using that same limited water for hydropower so that air conditioned anomalies like Las Vegas and Phoenix can exist in the baking heat. Even if they built their own nuclear power stations, it would still not solve the looming water issue.
182
How about the massive dairy farms Southwest of Phoenix? Growing 1000s of acres of alfalfa in the middle of the desert.
10
@stan continople -- Preach! And my personal Phoenix favorite: all the grass in front of mid-rise business parks, or front lawns nobody every uses.
9
@stan continople,
"The Colorado River, used by several states, is rapidly dwindling..."
Amen to that. Thievery of natural resources goes hand-in-hand with their destruction. Mexico lost its share of the Colorado River long ago. Americans stole it and traded the proceeds for golf courses, lawns, car washes, hydroponic produce ... ad nauseam. The Mexican portion of the Colorado is now a trickle of chemical contamination.
The Colorado River once supported a large portion of one of Earth's natural wonders: the Gulf of California (a.k.a. the "Sea of Cortez"). No more. And the perpetrators knew *exactly* what they were doing.
12
Grass is the automobile of plants: dependent on fossil fuels and chemicals. But if you want to become a pariah in the neighborhood, nurture a meadow or create a cottage garden.
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@Carol
That’s me! Only mow a small portion of my acreage and have cultivated wildflowers and grasses to the dismay of my neighbors. However, my reward is bluebirds, rabbits, etc. and natural beauty.
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@Carol And be prepared to have city officials show up at your house with neighbor's complaints about your unkept lawn. The areas that we let go naturally have to be kept below 12 inches or we face fines. Our back and side yards are all natural and filled with birds, butterflies, insects of all sorts, but there are still complaints.
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@Carol Even more alarming: out of the blue, we received a notice that our home insurance was not renewed, because the property looked "neglected."
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While I, too, love wild flowers and have a whole prairie on our farm, I'm no fan of Lyme disease bearing ticks.
And the number one piece of advice experts give on how to avoid ticks in your front yard where presumably kids and animals want to play, is to avoid tall grasses.
My advice is to be satisfied with less pristine lawns. Brown is the new green.
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Thank you Margaret for this article. My lawn in NJ was always a colorful patchwork of “weeds” filled with singing birds and insects.
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Usually non-profits that attempt to re-establish native prairies use Round-up to wipe out non-native invasive species before seeding with native seeds.
When one stops mowing their lawn, the most common result is an untamed combination of ugly weeds- ragweed is a common intruder in the northeast that I've seen take over many meadow projects on the estates where I make my living.
This article is extremely misleading. Do your research before you try to transform your lawn to a natural meadow. It takes planning and a lot of work on most sites to establish a beautiful meadow. Only after the transformation does it save on maintenance.
It is worth the investment, and the presence of all kinds of pollinators tending your combination of grasses and flowering herbaceous perennials can bring great joy.
If it requires a series of herbicide treatments to get it started, it is well worth it. The alternative is having a mud patch for a very long time as you till the weeds to submission, or covering the ground for a couple years with plastic.
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@alan haigh
There have been some urban meadow projects in my neighbourhood. Small plots (under 1/4-1 acre) consistently turned to weed.
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As opposed to plastic we use several layers of cardboard covered with mulch from a local sawmill. We are fortunate to live close to the mill so can get dump truck loads instead of bags. The cardboard serves as a barrier and then decomposes. The local appliance store has ample large pieces of cardboard as long as you don’t mind dumpster diving.
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@Gardening In WI I have a bearing age fruit tree nursery, very large personal orchard and veg garden and use my surplus cardboard the same way. I never use glyphosphate on my property or in the 100 orchards I've installed and manage, but I understand why major prairie restoration projects use it, as well as farmers. Some wheat farms can't grow crop without it because of bind weed.
I am weary of writers that embrace this idea that all synthetics in agriculture are bad. We have a future of probable global crop failure due to drought and pestilence from climate change.
We can't allow a superstitious aversion to all synthetic chemicals create regulation that seriously reduces crop production any more than we can rely on the ag chemical industry to adequately police and test their own products. Some synthetics can be used sustainably, others can't.
Media like the NY Times tend to lump them all into the same category and this attitude can be very bad for humanity and the environment.
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Margaret, I'm with you. Give me prolificacy and overwhelming myriads of bio-jewels. It's just more interesting.
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With an enormous amount of effort over the past five years, we have cleared our small yard of non-natives and have planted all native plants (no cultivars, mostly local ecotypes). We are now clearing about 1/4 acre of land in the woods beyond our yard of vinca and ivy and will plant native wildflowers. Be aware, Margaret, that there is no way to get rid of lesser celandine other than glyphosate. If you have a tiny amount of it, you can *try* to dig it out - but you won't succeed. And if you don't get rid of it, you won't have any wildflowers because it forms dense mats that crowd out everything else. In areas that we have cleared of the non-natives, we have all kinds of native plants coming up that we didn't plant. And FYI - every prairie restoration begins with repeated applications of glyphosate.
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I was born and raised in the South. I disagree with Ms. Renkl saying it is the most beautiful part of our country. Midwestern prairie- full of grasses, sedges and forbs- beats the South hands down. Otherwise, I agree with her points.
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Indeed, this reminds me of landscape architect Louis Guillaume LeRoy in my native Holland, who was doing many projects in this spirit, focusing on returning land to nature and learning to cultivate what wants to grow instead of wasting resources fighting nature and polluting the land. Lawn maintenance is one of the biggest pollution problems we have and it is unnecessary and ugly.
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In an episode of Adam Ruins Everything, the myth of home ownership and beautiful green lawns is busted...
In suburbia as well as in the city, we need to act local and work with Mother Nature.
Happy Earth Day!
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I live in an area of Florida with a rare ecosystem, the "Sandhills". The soil is almost all sand, high in phosphorous, not clay. Organic matter rots and disappears quickly in the heat and humidity. The soil is too poor for any kind of agriculture, even a home garden. Yet, where the land has not been cleared the forest is thick with oaks, pine, and rare plants that grow no where else. Thousands of birds in a chorus every morning. Among the wild animals is the gopher tortoise, an endangered species. But anyone who moves here and has the money to clear the land shaves it and removes everything. They can't think of anything else. They try to put in a lawn and maybe a few ornamentals from Lowes or Home Dept, and everything dies within a week. They are convinced that it must be the ants, so they pour dishwater on the roots, or decide that lime will solve the problem, or fertilizer containing the same phosphorous that is killing their store-bought trees. With bare land, during a hurricane their house is more liable to damage from flying debris, because there is no barrier to the wind. Land that was cleared, even if left alone, will still be bare in 20 years, while the other wild side of the street is lush. And finally, after destroying virtually all, they never venture out, but stay in the house with the air conditioning.
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@sandhillgarden
Just read a book by Reed Noss on that ecosystem and it’s fire characteristics.
Sounds a lot like your description.
Keep up the good work.
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@sandhillgarden
So true. Thank God that builders have to leave green spaces and dig ponds. Otherwise we surely would be lost.
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What a radical concept—cultivate what grows naturally in your area without the need for unnecessary chemicals! Bad for Monsanto and DuPont, but great for the earth and the rest of us.
The same concept should be applied to food as well. When food is grown where the soil and water conditions are not conducive to it, a huge amount of chemicals, energy and irrigated water is needed to make that happen. Not to mention that the food has to be transported to market from a place it was not meant to be grown—using fossil fuels for the supply chain.
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Another fashionable article about the dangers of chemicals in our soil. Funny how we focus so much on the chemicals we use to produce food and mostly ignore the industrial ones we take into our home and use to make and drive our cars- many unexposed to sun and soil that usually helps break down these poisons.
So many of the poorly made gadgets we buy break quickly and end up in landfills polluting for decades, but very little is done to at least assure that consumer products are built to last.
Unlike these gadgets, food is an existential necessity and when you consider chemicals in agriculture, you have to weigh in the relative productivity of the land and the expense of production.
When the price of corn goes up globally, people will go hungry in other parts of the world. When it takes more land to grow food, more wilderness is lost.
Glyphosphate allows farmers to grow corn with a minimum of tilling and turning of the soil, which greatly reduces erosion of top-soil and the need to burn diesel fuel to work tons of soil.
Managing weeds mechanically also sends more diesel exhaust into the atmosphere.
If the media is going to extol the virtues of organic production, it's important to tell a more complete story. Where and how we get our food is of existential importance and there are trade-offs.
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@alan haigh You too are only thinking things halfway through. I long ago adopted a policy of using fertilizer and chemicals only on the plants I eat, not on the ornamentals, the grass, and so on. This, it seems to me, would be a reasonable way for the world to go. It's a question of cost/benefit analysis. Glyphosate for professional farmers only, NOT in Home Depot.
As for planned obsolescence, here in France it is a law that all products must be covered by a minimum 2 year 100% money back warranty, which is likely soon to become 3.
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The recent hysteria and jury awards against glyphosate also reflect “thinking not all the way through”. Those who use it routinely are regularly exposed to a raft of other chemicals, some of which are actual known carcinogens (and not merely “suspected” ones). Exhaust fumes from small engines, which far exceed emission levels of cars, are rich in benzene, as just one example. And yet somehow juries pin the blame solely on one of the most studied chemicals over the last 25 years. When in fact, cancer causes are no doubt a mix of variables.
Additionally, there seems to be little thought to what possible harmful effects will result from whatever replaces glyphosate. There is no fashion in that idea!
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@alan haigh. The toxins and carcinogens used by industrial agriculture, despite being “exposed to sun and soil”, are poisoning out air and water, leading to rapid species extinction as well as human illness.
Industrial farming of corn is one of the greatest offenders. Much of the corn is used to feed cattle in order to feed our desire to feast on other animals.
We can walk and chew gum at the same time. We must be able to address the horrors resulting from our desire for weedless lawns, the costs underlying our craving for beef while much of the world starves and still be able to confront the pollution created by other industries.
The forces opposing the reforms needed to save our own species are strong. We must be stronger. Go vegan but also shop, consume and invest as socially responsible creatures. Our future depends on it.
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Thank you Margaret. I long abandoned herbiides & pesticides in my yard, leaving a multicultural lawn that I slowly adapt to the flower beds that occupy evermore of it. Native plants continue to be added each year. Meanwhile around me, neighbors use their lawn services and worse (in my view) some think the Mosiquito Control services somehow contain themselves to their own yards. I can only hope the poisoned bugs also stay in their yards.
Nature is a slow process that can’t and shouldn’t be rushed. The best time to plant a tree was yesterday and the next best is today. Same is true for all native plants in your respective area. Let nature discipline itself and use a gentle hand to guide the flora and fauna in your own yard.
Let’s stop using golf courses and office business parks as the models for a perfect home landscape.
Thank you Maragret. Keep preaching.
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We've noticed the lack of insects for some time now... bees, fireflies, crickets. But now even the moths around the outdoor lights are in large part gone.
As one writer said: "It's not a lawn; it's a diverse ecosystem!"
I disagree with one part of the article: You may not need lots of water and chemicals for a green lawn - just mow weekly at the highest setting, and leave the clippings. Works for me here in NW Connecticut.
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@Al Schultz You want invertebrates? Leave the leaves. Convince your neighbors to leave the leaves. The dead leaves are insect incubators.
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Great article! We also live in the South and our acre of earth is filled with life. There are trees and shrubs and some grass that is a combination of various grasses and "weeds." We have birds and bees and, yes, chiggers in the summer. Fortunately, our neighbors are likewise chemical free so life extends beyond our "borders." We have snakes and rodents and too many deer, but we all survive together. And yesterday at dusk, a bat flew over my head on it's nightly bug hunt. Marvelous!
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