Historically, what we now call lawns started in the 17th century in England when a middle class of people started to develop. Before that only royals and landed gentry could afford the luxury of not using every inch of land they owned to grow food. Having a lawn in front of your castle/ home became a sign of wealth and prestige. The English middle class utilized lawns to advertise they had reached significant wealth and that they too could afford to have an idle piece of land. Lawns soon became an English cultural habit. When the early colonists came to America, they brought this habit with them. Lawns soon spread throughout the colonies and, indeed, everywhere else the colonists moved to. The problem is that we still value our lawns today without really having a clue why they even exist! It is now our cultural habit that feels like a mandatory imperative. We have been blindly following this habit since the earliest English settlers arrived. A lawn is a monoculture that unfortunately from an environmental view, offers a very simplified, indeed impoverished, approach to landscaping. Being a monoculture, (only one plant), the lawn is extreme in its lack of diversity so offers little if any support to native wild life. It is a sterile garden and cannot function as a dynamic community of interacting organisms either in the ground or above it. Lawns can be as sterile as an asphalt parking lot when it comes to supporting nature. Question: In the United States we now have over 40 million acres of lawns. Can we reduce that number, even cut it in half? Considering that the average homeowner’s lawn comprises, on average, about 80% of their landscape, you can see that we have created a huge problem hiding in plain sight, one that very few people even know exists! The lawn environment does not offer any sustainability by way of food, shelter or habitat to any native animals, birds or insects. Other reasons why lawns are a detriment: When you have lawns you use lawnmowers, weed wackers and leaf blowers to maintain them. Each week about 54 million Americans mow their lawns using about 800 million gallons of fuel. This practice alone contributes about 5% of the total greenhouse gases in the U. S.. Then there is the noise pollution. Some communities have recently prohibited these extremely noisy machines from being used from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.. If lawns are fed synthetic fertilizers to grow, and synthetic herbicides to get rid of weeds, we then wipe out all the healthy microorganisms that live in the soil. This leads to the sterilization of soil completely stripping it of the natural life forms that would be beneficial for a naturally healthy lawn. We have made our lawns chemically dependent! Water issues: The synthetic, (man -made), chemicals and fertilizers further harm our environment by leaching out through the soil into our well water supply, aquifers (underground reservoirs), natural watersheds, ponds, streams, rivers and eventually in our oceans. According to a study at Columbia University, 30 to 60% of urban drinking water goes into the watering of our urban lawns. My home town of Ipswich, MA this year, in the first week of April, in an unprecedented move, declared a voluntary ban on the use of watering for outdoor purposes. This voluntary ban was declared because Massachusetts, due to a lack of snow and rain this past winter/spring, already has a deficit of 3 to 5 inches below its normal rain amount. Some Solutions:
AND/OR 2. Choose to exchange little by little, lawn area for gardens. Gradually reduce the lawn area you have by putting in pollinator, butterfly, hummingbird or bird gardens. A trick I use is to carve out a new area in my lawn by using an old hose to create different ‘island’ configurations until I have a design that I really like. Lawns are great for walking. Use them for paths around your many gardens. Remember, to attract native insects, pollinators, birds and animals, use many different native plants. This will bring biodiversity to your property. Now your gardens will be able to support a complex food web. In other words, your landscape will now be able to support a diverse community of native pollinators, butterflies, birds and other animals. Mother Nature will thank you. You have now become part of the solution to a global problem where native wildlife is decreasing everywhere. NOTE: Lawns devoid of dandelion, clover and violets are a Mono Culture. Mono cultures do not support bio-diversity. One of the reasons we all have too many pests on our property is because a large percentage of our home environment is lawn space that does not provide the natural complex environment needed to have a healthy, balanced ecosystem that attracts a diversity of insects, birds and animals that can then provide checks and balances on the number of pest insects. Next Blog: All about hummingbirds – what to do to attract them to your property.
1 Comment
Paula Jones
4/28/2021 05:53:52 am
Terrific article... I am starting to enjoy the little yellow dandelion stars in my lawn, the blue violets and the clover. Catherine, thanks for this article.
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AuthorConsultant, designer and educator transforming commercial and residential landscapes sustainably Archives
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