Why You Should Kill Your Lawn and Switch to Native Landscaping – Men’s Journal

GENTLEMEN, lay down your lawnmowers. Theres a new school of thought taking rootan idea that would scrap the Saturday afternoon-killing mow and end the merry-go-round of chemical applications. How? Tear out the grass and replant all or part of your yard with native flora, which requires less water and less maintenance in the long run, and can foster a more functional ecosystem, to boot.

Residential lawnswhich we have 40 million acres ofare thirstier than any agricultural crop. Nationwide, we use 9 billion gallons of water for landscape irrigation each day (and as much as half of that amount is lost to inefficiencies). Many homeowners also spray with broad-spectrum insecticides, which, in addition to their health risks, can kill off the insects responsible for pollinating 90 percent of all flowering plants.

Beyond all that, the cultural relevance of the all-American lawn is an artifact anyway. As pop-historian Yuval Noah Harari has pointed out, sprawling, labor-intensive lawns were essentially a flex by Middle Age aristocrats, who used them as function-free status symbols.

New lawns require new thinking. Douglas Tallamy champions the concept well in Natures Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard (Timber Press). Tallamy, a professor of entomology at the University of Delaware, argues that beyond protected public lands, weve overlooked the importance of our own private lands, where residential yards play a key role in supporting a functioning ecosystem.

Our human footprint is so gigantic, Tallamy explains, that we cant say, Well, were going to have a functional ecosystem someplace elsethere is no someplace else.

That doesnt mean ripping out the entire lawn. Tallamy just suggests you avoid planting invasive species that do little to support insect life, the birds that eat those insects, and your local ecosystem.

It may seem cheaper to plant a patch of thirsty sod and to stock your yard with popular plants from the local box store, but, in the long run, a native landscape can actually be less expensive than a highly maintained and traditional lawn. Jack Pizzo, a Chicago landscape architect renowned for planting wildflower meadows in both corporate and residential settings, says that, During the first two, three, four years, its roughly the same cost. After that, your desired plants tend to reproduce, crowding the weeds outit looks good and doesnt require the labor.

To reduce water consumption, municipalities nationwide have rolled out cash for grass programs; the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California recently increased its rebate to $2 per square foot of grass removed. Las Vegas turf rebate has been credited for annually saving 10 billion gallons of water, playing a part in the unlikely rise of Lake Mead, the Wests largest reservoir. Online seminars offering to Convert Your Lawn to Prairie are selling out. Rewilding has become a buzzword in landscaping circles.

Where to start? Look to state and local chapters of Master Naturalists and Native Plant Societies for help and local intel. Check to see if your municipality has incentivized renovations to promote water conservation. And start shopping from sustainable-minded retailers like Native American Seed, a Texas outfit that ships alternatives like buffalo grass and wildflower-and-grass seed mixes.

Were still in the earlier stages of a mass shift, but weve gone beyond the early adopters, says Native American Seeds Bill Neiman about the growth of native and wildlife-centric landscaping. People are awakening to something that weve gone numb on, which is our total interconnectedness to all things.

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Why You Should Kill Your Lawn and Switch to Native Landscaping - Men's Journal