Contributed by Martha Rounds
How Do Lawns Affect the Natural Environment?
The traditional American lawn is a monoculture that requires consistent mowing, fertilizing, watering, and pesticides. Lawns in the U.S. are estimated by NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) to cover three times more area than any food crop (e.g., corn or soybeans). More than 20% of Massachusetts is covered in turf grass! This turf is costly in many ways:
• Water: According to the EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency), nationwide, landscape irrigation is estimated to account for almost one-third of all residential water use, totaling nearly 9 billion gallons per day. Acton, like the rest of eastern Massachusetts, currently finds itself in a Category 3 drought, which has not occurred since 2016–2017. The climate change forecast for the northeast U.S. anticipates that precipitation will become more volatile, with more-frequent droughts as well as episodic torrential downpours. Lawn watering may not even be a reliable option in the future as drought conditions become more common. Acton homeowners and others who manage turf need to begin adjusting to drier conditions for their properties.
• Pesticides: American homeowners collectively use about 70 million pounds of pesticides on their lawns annually. Countless homeowners use harmful lawn chemicals even though children and pets are exposed to them, and they contaminate soils, vegetation, and groundwater – the last of which helps feed Acton’s groundwater. A beautiful yard does not require the use of synthetic chemicals.
• Fossil fuels: Synthetic pesticides are derived from fossil fuels, with an energy-intensive supply chain from oil well to lawn. Also, unless a manual push mower is used, mowing typically requires the use of fossil-fuel-driven lawn mowers, leaf blowers, and spreaders.
Many homeowners and landowners are demanding a more environmentally sensitive approach to their lawns. Acton residents and property managers have the opportunity to participate in a nationwide effort to make yards more ecologically friendly and hospitable to beneficial birds, insects, and mammals, as well as the ecosystems that support them.
This doesn’t mean that homeowners have to let their lawns and gardens run wild and become overrun with weeds and ticks. Pride of place doesn’t have to give way to unsightly sloppiness. A more-ecological approach encourages homeowners to use their outdoor spaces without chemical inputs, keeping their families safe and comfortable while supporting pollinators, and birds, and the insects on which they prey — creating more shade and comfort, and lessening the need for mowing.
A strategy for creating a more ecologically friendly yard involves two basic tactics; those who manage lawns or other turf parcels can decide how to incorporate the changes:
• rethinking lawn care by eliminating (or significantly reducing) harmful inputs, such as synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, and reducing excessive mowing and watering
• reducing lawn area by, instead, planting native plants and/or creating areas of hardscape (paths, patios, walkways, rock walls, et al.)
Here, we focus on reducing the size of your lawn and creating plantings that encourage and support wildlife.
How Do We Begin?
Homeowners can take several steps toward creating ecologically vibrant yards. With patience and planning, it’s possible to change an environmentally unfriendly lawn into a living space that’s hospitable to humans, plants, and animals alike.
Work on Changing Your Perspective
• “Rethink pretty,” says naturalist Benjamin Vogt. “A beautiful garden welcomes us, consoles us, heals us, teaches us; and a beautiful garden does this through providing . . . for birds, bees, moths, beetles, wasps, soil microbes, and more.
• Take note of the negative impacts of traditional lawns: they require fossil fuels for synthetic pesticides and mowing, waste water, and discourage wildlife necessary for ecological balance — particularly in the face of the biodiversity and climate crises.
• Be a bit of an historian and anthropologist. The idea of a closely cropped green lawn became popular as a status symbol in the U.S. after WWII GIs returned from Europe and the suburban baby boom started. But your lawn will never match the one at Versailles, and we live in a different time, culture, and environmental circumstance now.
Shrink Your Lawn
• If you want some of your yard to look like lawn, substitute plants like wild strawberries, mini-clover, or native grasses that can be mown.
• Extend your foundation beds to 10 feet wide, and/or create a 10-foot-wide border around your property line and slowly diminish your lawn as you are able.
• Edge borders, walkways, and/or your driveway with native pollinator-friendly plants and grasses.
• Identify lightly used areas in your yard that are good candidates for a “pool” of native plants or grasses.
• Add permeable hardscape to your property. This can be as simple as paths or walkways (using blue stone, pea stone, gravel, or brick), or increasingly ambitious, such as patios, stone walls, fire pit areas, pergolas, arbors, gazebos, and more.
If you want to have the greatest impact on bees, birds, bats, and bugs, keep going! Here are some ways to modify your yard to support wildlife.
Replace Your Lawn . . . or Parts of It
• Be patient — changing to an ecological yard takes time. It could take a couple of years for your plantings to thrive in their new environment.
• Create a “structure” for your ecological yard: make sure it looks planned and intentional. Avoid random acts of seed dispersal or inappropriate plantings that won’t thrive.
• Be prepared to weed your new areas. You won’t be applying fertilizers and pesticides, or mowing, but you will need to remove weeds that impede growth of your plantings or make beds unsightly. Dense planting helps keep weeds to a minimum.
• Use native perennial plants whenever possible; they are adapted to the environment and most likely to support native insect and bird species.
• Make sure to keep grassy mown paths and open areas for walking and recreation. However, mow only the areas that you need for these purposes; most people don’t use all the lawn they have.
• Use narrow mown or stone paths or other attractive features through your native plantings to signal that you are showing thought and care for your yard.
• If your yard faces the street, consider adding a sign or placard that explains to passersby that this is a pollinator- and wildlife-friendly yard. This will help neighbors understand why your yard looks “different” and perhaps inspire them to do the same.
In Conclusion: Rethinking Your Yard
Transitioning to an ecologically healthy yard invites us and those who pass by our houses to think about yards in a new way. It invites homeowners and others to collectively influence and improve the health and well-being of the countless insects and animals around us. It enables homeowners and pedestrians to enjoy the sight and sound of creatures in our yards: not just wild birds, for which many people have an affinity, but the insects and plants that naturally support those wild birds.
An ecologically healthy lawn may, at first glance, look a tad “messy.” You or those who see your yard may long for the days of order and predictability when a lawn service came regularly to apply chemicals and mow a pleasant green carpet. But that lawn has become too costly: toxic lawn care is expensive and unnecessarily resource intensive.
Landowners can now take “a critically important position in the future of conservation,” says Doug Tallamy. And, he notes, “small efforts by many people” will make a difference. “Every human being on this planet needs diverse highly productive ecosystems to survive,” says Tallamy. Rethinking the lawn is an excellent, and beautiful, place to begin.
Resources
We are fortunate in Massachusetts to have so many resources to support ecological landscaping. Some local organizations that you can visit in person or online:
• Garden in the Woods
• New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill
• Norcross Wildlife Sanctuary
• Mass. Department of Agriculture
• Grow Native Mass
• Growing Wild MA
There are also countless online resources. Some good places to start:
• Native Plant Finder
• More Than Just a Yard, a publication of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Affairs
• Homegrown National Park
• Monarch Gardens