Lawns have been called beautiful, green, and a (status) symbol of the American Dream. Back in the middle ages, lawns were found throughout Europe, where they were probably communal public spaces that residents were allowed to use to graze their horses, cows, etc. Grazing resulted in a shortened meadow-like space, which led to the Celtic word laune in the 1500s (from Middle English launde, meaning a grassy, leveled plain or pasture, or a space within a forest cleared of trees and shrubs). In addition, people much further up the social ladder implemented similar green spaces around their mansions, also maintained by herbivore livestock. While there are reportedly some religious connotations to lawn, those that surrounded palaces and such probably served mainly as a way to see the enemy approaching.
As aristocrats began adoring the green — yet unnatural — spaces, others followed, but they had to have money. Fashionable landscape designers created highly structured and extravagant (and I might add, ostentatious) gardens that no longer needed grazers; instead, owners just needed a lot of cash to maintain them, in the form of hired laborers with shears and sickles who kept a lawn short and somewhat free of what were considered weeds.
Here in the U.S., the obsession with orderly lawns began later. In 1870, a landscape architect by the name of Frank J. Scott wrote an influential book called ”The Art of Beautifying Suburban Home Grounds of Small Extent,” to try to convince homeowners that a turf-less life was not worth living (okay, I’m exaggerating a little bit). At the time, somewhat wealthy middle-class families had begun moving to the rural fringes of cities, and Scott saw these outskirts as private properties, but united by flawless lawn (although they were somewhat less manicured than some lawns today). While some trees and shrubs were recommended, landscape elements other than lawn were mostly considered subordinate; for example, perennial flowers were allowed, but only on the periphery of lawn, an idea that’s persisted (Scott quipped: ”Smooth, closely shaven surface of grass is by far the most essential element of beauty on the grounds of a suburban home. Dwellings, all the rooms of which may be filled with elegant furniture, but with rough uncarpeted floors, are no more incongruous, or in ruder taste, than the shrub and tree and flower-sprinkled yards of most home-grounds, where shrubs and flowers mingle in confusion with tall grass, or ill-defined borders of cultivated ground. Neatness and order are as essential to the pleasing effect of ground furniture as of house furniture. No matter how elegant or appropriate the latter may be, it will never look well in the home of a slattern. … Let your lawn be your home’s velvet robe, and your flowers its not too promiscuous decoration.”). Unconventional gardening that strayed from rigid rules was not tolerated.
The problem with lawns
Turf-grass lawns are basically barren when it comes to biodiversity. Today they carpet nearly 45 million acres across the U.S. (about the size of the entire state of Washington) and create homogenized landscapes that dramatically limit habitat. Sometimes called “ecological dead zones,” lawns lack the complex structure that creates the capacity for ecological relationships among the plants, animals, fungi and bacteria that tie an ecosystem together and take up carbon. They offer no wildlife shelter, no nesting habitat, and almost no food for wild ones.
Around 60 percent of the average yard in U.S. is lawn and caring for it is usually not environmentally sound. Everyone who has a lawn (or is required to have one, thanks to HOAs) must own a mower, and possibly also an edger, whacker, and blower, often gas-powered, which create noise and air pollution that contribute to climate chaos. Or, people with lawns hire landscape crews who visit weekly in polluting trucks, often when the lawn doesn’t really need mowing or anything else. Their inefficient two-stroke lawn equipment (that burns a mixture of gasoline and oil) releases high levels of carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides. Gas-powered commercial leaf blowers emit, in one hour of operation, “smog-forming pollution comparable to driving a new light-duty passenger car about 1100 miles – about the distance from Los Angeles to Denver, over 15 hours of driving.” Electric-powered blowers don’t pollute as much, but they can do damage by harming overwintering insects, blowing fine particulates around, and creating high-decibel noise pollution. (Brooms and rakes are the answer!) Also essential are hoses, sprinklers, and possibly harmful chemicals and equipment to aerate and/or dethatch. Lawns receive, on average, more pesticides per acre than just about any crop grown in the U.S. They also use massive amounts of water, as well as synthetic fertilizers that kill soil life and get into ground water and eventually pollute waterways. Even untended, weedy lawns are really a wasteland where native plants and/or edibles could be growing.
Replace lawn with local native plant communities
When they thrive in your site conditions, local native plant communities typically won’t need constant watering, or pesticide or fertilizer application because they are matched to the site conditions and one another (and some native plants can even respond negatively to fertilizer). While lawns decrease the ability of land to reduce stormwater runoff, leading to deteriorated watersheds, naturalistic landscapes reduce stormwater runoff and urban flooding, can recharge groundwater during droughts, and clean and cool the air. In addition, plants aerate, protect, rebuild, and amend the soil over time (when we leave the leaves, downed woody debris, etc). With minimal care, they do this for free, for many years after installation.
If you replace your lawn (or some of it) you will need to work in the garden, of course, but it’s a beneficial, enjoyable kind of work. In a nutshell: First, take some time to evaluate your current situation to figure out what might be possible (I go into quite a bit of detail on this step in my book). Second, make a plan (the book includes examples) and choose plants. Then kill the grass (see below) and create pathways to get around your yard. Finally, install plants (preferably in autumn as the rains start), and keep them watered until they’re established (typically 2 to 5 years, depending on the species). Watch out for weeds that can become invasive and harm ecosystem function. Lawn replacement will take some time and effort, but within a relatively short period you will spend much less time working in your garden than you would mowing, edging, trimming, and manicuring lawn. You will get to choose how you spend your time — lazily watching plants grow, birds visit and bees pollinate — rather than habitually maintaining a lawn that steals your time (and money). You’ll also have time to contemplate how native trees, shrubs, and even smaller plants sequester much more carbon than lawn. Many long-lived Pacific Northwest native trees — including keystone species like oak, pine, Douglas-fir, and maples — are especially effective at carbon storage.
I’m not saying that there’s no place for lawn and you don’t need to remove all of your lawn to introduce more diversity into your yard. (We have a small amount of mossy lawn in our somewhat shady backyard, which we use as space for a birdbath, bench, and hammock; we trim the grass only three or four times a year with a quiet, manual push-mower.) Lawns can be good as pathways or play or work spaces, BUT if you’re not actually using lawn for something, it’s best to at least replace some of it with other plantings that would have a much more positive effect. Replacing half the area that’s now in barren lawn with native plants would create around 22 million acres of wildlife habitat in this country and that’s a huge conservation opportunity!
If you’re just starting out, you might consider removing just a part of your lawn so it doesn’t feel overwhelming. You can experiment with which areas you might want to convert by laying out a garden hose in gentle curves and then bring out your mower and test to make sure that whatever’s left will be easy to trim. I recommend making beds as large as possible so there will be ample room for natives.
If there are any slopes or elevation changes on your property, think about possibly adding beds to slow down stormwater that runs down a slope or off a driveway, or add a rain garden or swale in other low places that collect water (especially if you disconnect downspouts). Speaking of water, if you have an in-ground sprinkler system, plug heads you don’t need or convert them to a drip irrigation system if it’s needed in new beds. Another great place for beds is wherever you want to create some privacy—usually this is near the border of yards; keep in mind that hedgerows are much more friendly to wildlife than solid fencing, which blocks connections within wildlife corridors (a.k.a. “green corridors“). And don’t forget about front yards since most people don’t really use their front lawn.
The easiest/laziest way to get rid of lawn (and the least damaging to the soil) is to cut it short and then deprive it of light while allowing rain to reach the soil so that soil life doesn’t die. You can cover lawn with layers of overlapping biodegradable material like paper (around a half dozen sheets thick) or cardboard (don’t use plastic!) and then wet it down, poke a few holes in it, and top it with several inches of mulch. I like to use a low-nitrogen compost like leaf compost for native plants. And then you can top that with a layer of fallen leaves if you have some. Some people recommend wood chips, and that’s okay if you’re only going to be growing trees and shrubs, but smaller plants like perennials and ground cover that spreads won’t do well in thick layers of coarse wood chips. And thick layers of bark mulch isn’t a good idea since it tends to compact and can prevent water from penetrating into the soil.
You can cover lawn any time of year; I like to do it in the springtime because by autumn it will be decomposed enough to plant. If you end up covering it in autumn instead, you can plant large plants such as trees and shrubs through the cover: Simply dig out circular areas of lawn, loosen the soil, plant the tree or shrub, firm the soil, water, and then add mulch, keeping it a couple of inches away from the trunk.
If you’re in a hurry, you could also use a sod-cutter, but keep in mind that those machines can damage the shallow roots of trees and shrubs growing nearby. And they also remove topsoil that’s best left in place.
Very small areas or places that are going to be patios or pathways or veggie beds can be dug out by hand, using a flat spade: Slice through the turf horizontally, no more than about two inches deep. Then flip the sheets of lawn that you remove upside down or compost it by itself in a pile (not in your compost bins!). Once the lawn is removed or turned upside down, you can fill in the space with compost or step stones or whatever is appropriate.
A few options to replace lawn
If you want to maintain some open space and there’s a lot of sun, native wildflower meadows or prairie-style gardens are great for pollinators that are out at different times of the year and need a wide variety of flower shapes, fragrances and colors, and they’re also a great way to attract birds, especially seed-eaters in fall and winter. Meadow gardens can be quite drought tolerant (depending on plant species chosen) and can be laid out as large borders or as more of a central focal point—wherever you have the most sun. It’s best to make these as large as possible since native plants like goldenrod, yarrow, and asters tend to spread quite a bit. It’s best to grow at least three different species per season of bloom to provide a good variety for pollinators.
Another option to lawn is adding locally native trees that can be underplanted with plants that naturally would grow with them. A landscape element that adds this type of structure is called a transition zone—in nature it’s where forest gradually meets grassland; in gardens, it extends from tall tree canopy to understory shrubs, to lower shrubs, to ground cover, creating a layered effect (rather than, for example, a single tree in the middle of lawn with no connections to other plants). A lot of wildlife activity happens in these areas, and it’s often where we see the most birds. It’s wonderful on very large properties, but even small lots can have this to some extent, and it sometimes gives the illusion of more space.
Finally, consider moss. It can be lushly beautiful and it grows where grass won’t: In heavy shade and in compacted soil that’s acidic or not very fertile. Moss will show up on its own if the conditions are right, is walkable if there isn’t a lot of foot traffic, and its ecological benefits are immense. Moss provides habitat for insects that supply food for other wildlife, minimizes erosion, sequesters incredible amounts of carbon, and provides nesting material for many birds such as chickadees, hummingbirds and bushtits.
Coming soon! “Tips on choosing local native plant communities”