We Need to Talk about That Lawn
I won't make you talk about Bruno (I gather that's a hard no, no, no...?). But we do have to face up to the lawn.
Turfgrass has its uses in our yards. It's great for croquet, wiffle ball, picnics, doggie business and foot traffic. But it has become a default planting choice. Every inch we’re not mulchscaping, we’re turfscaping. That’s a serious problem. Here’s why.
Lawns Provide Almost No Ecosystem Services
Grass lawns are everywhere. An inventory of plantings in suburban developments in Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland by University of Delaware entomologist Doug Tallamy found that, of the area that could be landscaped, 92 percent was planted in turfgrass. Across the U.S., grass lawns cover 40 to 50 million acres. That’s the size of New England, and almost as big as all of the national parks combined. We’re adding hundreds of thousands more acres to that total each year.
And every one of those lawns is a sterile, ecological wasteland. Turfgrass lawns are terrible at providing ecosystem services. Compared to a healthy forest, shrubland or meadow, they provide only a small fraction of the oxygen, water filtration, carbon sequestration, topsoil, wildlife habitat, pollination and pest control we humans need to survive.
Lawns are so ubiquitous they seem quintessentially American. But they most certainly are not. Nostalgic for the rolling pastures of their homelands, European settlers imported seeds to emulate those vistas, and the practice has continued. Kentucky bluegrass? It’s native to Europe, northern Asia and the mountains of Algeria and Morocco. Bermuda grass? Native to Africa. Zoysia grass, which is promoted in my neck of the woods as a low-maintenance option? Native to southeastern Asia and New Zealand. These are decidedly non-native plants, which explains why they stink at supporting our local ecosystems.
At some point in the middle of the last century, pristine turfgrass lawns became a centerpiece of suburban American culture — so much so that we now we accept them as immutable fixtures. Turns out, though, they’re a) a relatively new phenomenon and b) entirely optional. Culture can change. We can change it.
Lawns Are Resource Hogs
Since they’re from away, turfgrass lawns struggle to survive here. Maintaining those emerald carpets consumes nearly three trillion gallons of water, three billion gallons of gasoline and 59 million pounds of pesticides a year.
Those are big numbers, so here’s some context. Grass lawns are by far the most irrigated crop in the country – more so than corn, soy, or wheat, which at least we can eat! Lawn watering accounts for 30 percent of all water used during the summer in the East and up to 60 percent in the West. We’re talking 32 gallons of water every day for every person in the country – in service to a plant that’s basically just decoration. In most areas, this is more water than is replaced by rainfall, meaning the practice is simply unsustainable.
The gasoline we use annually to power lawn mowers and other landscape equipment would run six million passenger cars for a year. We should all be driving our cars less, for sure; but at least cars take us somewhere.
The pesticides and herbicides we apply to lawns are toxic. Forty percent of the chemicals used by the U.S. lawn care industry are banned in other countries because they’re carcinogenic. Children and pets are most vulnerable. Forty to 50 percent of the fertilizer applied to lawns ends up in surface and groundwater, where it kills aquatic organisms and contaminates drinking water.
The other resources lawns soak up are money and time. U.S. households spend almost $10 billion annually on lawn care equipment and chemicals. We spend more than three billion collective hours per year on lawn maintenance.
I wrote here about how the lumber industry, with cheerleading from the USDA, solved its vexing problem of byproduct disposal by convincing us all we needed to mulch the hell out of our gardens. Similarly, the chemical industry, in an effort to rescue declining profit margins, has convinced us all we need to spray the hell out of our turfgrass lawns. With a saturated agricultural market and slim profits from sales in the developing world, the agrochemical industry has, over the past 40 years or so, targeted North American yards for increased pesticide, herbicide and fertilizer application. Since the 1980s, we’ve been subjected to ever more aggressive marketing on the “need” for these products. This push has apparently had the desired effect: at this point, it’s considered almost unpatriotic if your yard doesn’t look like a Pebble Beach fairway.
What Can I Do?
Every square foot that we dedicate to a nonnative, ecologically unproductive, resource-intensive and toxic monoculture is a lost opportunity to restore a bit of biodiversity to our world. Our choices matter.
I’m not suggesting you have to rip up your whole lawn. But I would urge you to stop and really think about how you use your yard, and how many of those uses actually require grass underfoot. Could you scale back some? Here are a few approaches to consider.
Wherever you do have turfgrass lawn, ease up on the watering and chemicals. Maybe a little summer browning and a few weeds are tolerable? Also, raise your mower blade height to 3 - 4” and allow cut grass and leaves to serve as natural mulch.
Convert some of your lawn to native plants by creating new garden beds or expanding existing ones. Mark off the lawn you want to convert and either remove the grass immediately with a sod cutter or try the lasagna method: put down flattened cardboard boxes followed by a 3-4” layer of mulch and let that sit. After a few months, the grass will have died back and the soil underneath will be ready for new planting.
If you have areas where you don’t anticipate foot traffic but you’d like to maintain some green and graceful vistas, replace your turfgrass with native sedges or grasses. I’m a big fan of Appalachian sedge (once described to me thusly: “looks like Cousin It, but in the best possible way”) and purple lovegrass (I mean, with a name like “purple lovegrass,” it had me at hello).
Replace some or all of your turfgrass with lawn alternatives. Two that I keep hearing about – and that are native in my area – are wild strawberry and heal all. From what I understand, wild strawberry is vigorous and sports attractive fall foliage. It hosts multiple moths and butterflies. You can walk and play games on it. You can mow it. Also, so long as you step carefully, it grows sweet berries you can eat!
One Last Thing (Just In Case You Need Another Nudge)
You know that smell of freshly cut grass that we all wax poetic about in the summer? It’s actually the grass sending out distress signals. Distress. How’s that gonna make you feel next time you rev up the Toro?!
Resources
Douglas W. Tallamy, Nature’s Best Hope, Timber Press, Portland, OR, 2019.
Paul Robbins and Julie Sharp, “The Lawn-Chemical Economy and Its Discontents,” Antipode, Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, UK and Malden, MA, 2003.
“10 Steps You Can Take to Lower Your Carbon Footprint,” Washington Post, February 22, 2022.
Rebecca Lindsey, “Looking for Lawns,” NASA Earth Observatory, November 8, 2005.
Christopher Ingraham, “Lawns Are a Soul-Crushing Time Suck and Most of Us Would Be Better off Without Them,” Washington Post, August 4, 2015.
Rebecca Harrington, “America’s Biggest Crop Is Grass,” Business Insider, February 19, 2016.
Sean Kane, “The Perfect American Lawn Has a Complicated Origin Story,” Business Insider, May 13, 2016.
“That ‘Fresh-Mown Lawn Smell’ Is Actually a Distress Call to Insects,” Research @ Texas A&M University, September 23, 2014.
Thank you for this great post! Sprawling lawns, which are still seen as desirable in many communities, are a bigger problem for environmental health than most folks realize. I hope as a society we are beginning to rethink old ideas of what a yard should look like.
There is one circumstance in which natural grass turf serves well-- that's athletic fields. My county is considering replacing several grass fields at a public park with artificial turf. Based on my research, a cool, soft, living, carbon-dioxide-converting, oxygen-giving carpet of grass is far preferable to a hot, hard, stinky, chemical-laden off-gassing carpet of plastic! In the case of public playing field options, natural turf is a clear winner.
There's still the issue of watering, fertilizing and possible use of pesticides to maintain turf fields, but progress is being made to water and fertilize efficiently and use pesticides only if necessary.
While we follow most of these tips, I appreciate the reminder that we should rethink some of the bare patches of burnt out grass.