Abolish your grass lawns
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Abolish your grass lawns! Get creative while helping the environment thrive. We need more native lawns to protect our environment and local animal life.
When thinking of the stereotypical suburban American community, four things come to mind: white picket fences, windy-curved streets, cookie-cutter-style homes, and grass lawns. I think of the countless older men mowing to keep lawns exactly five inches tall to comply with homeowner association (HOA) or municipality codes in the summer, maintaining them artificially lush using pesticides. I think of the countless hours my parents made me spend raking up leaves so that the “grass wouldn’t die,” even as it would a few weeks later when it snowed. It has always been odd that Americans care so much about these sprawling grass plots, especially considering it has no economic or sustainable value.
About 10 years ago, my neighbors replaced one of their side lawns from a monoculture grass field to a native plant garden. I remember being in awe of the number of butterflies, bumblebees, and birds traveling between my neighbor’s house and mine. Before the addition of the garden, I remember wondering where the butterflies and bumblebees went, considering I saw less and less every spring and summer. As said in an article by Environment America, “In the past two decades, American bumblebee populations have dropped by 90%;” with a similar striking statistic, the Center for Biological Diversity shared that monarch butterflies have seen a decrease in population and acre coverage.
So, how do we fix this? If we let pollinators die out, it will have catastrophic impacts on our food supply and the health of this planet. Like any major environmental issue, solutions must be both radical and pragmatic, costly and inexpensive. Solutions must be multi-tiered, as nearly nothing in the world is a closed system. To fix biodiversity loss, we must also combat climate change. To combat climate change, we must also drastically change several familiar aspects of our lives—notably, how we categorize land use.
Suburban and sprawl development are often used interchangeably. While there are acceptable instances, there is one significant difference. Street-car suburbs are relatively more walkable, current or former transit-oriented communities that either broke off from or were not consolidated into city boundaries. Suburban towns such as Irondequoit and Brighton near Rochester, New York, are examples of street-car suburbs. While the trollies are long gone, land use in these towns was designed to follow transit lines.
Sprawl development is what most people think of when they hear the words “suburb” or “suburban.” Non-walkable streets, four-lane highways, and yet another chain restaurant with a drive-thru all come to mind. Unlike street-car suburbs, mixed-use development in sprawl development is hard to come by unless a historic development district wasn’t demolished during urban renewal. It is here where the infamous green, monoculture lawns come into play.
Many suburbanites have a false sense of what is actually good and bad for the environment. Due to the lush grasses they meticulously care for, green space makes it seem they are helping the environment. Grass alone, however, does not help biodiversity, nor does it help the planet. Not only is grass not native, but it sometimes suffocates important plants that help supply essential nutrients to other plants and animals alike.
Animals, furthermore, cannot seek shelter or refuge in the grass, especially if municipalities do not allow grass to be above a certain height. The idea of protecting the visibility of the right-of-way for vehicles over protecting wildlife is a factor fueling the loss of biodiversity and aiding the ever-worsening climate crisis. Grass is also not very flood-resistant. Too much water and grass is meaningless in terms of mitigation. As more sprawl development drains more wetlands, and as sea levels rise, communities built on floodplains will see an increase in flooding.
Planting natives is the answer, not grass lawns. Some municipalities and HOAs have strict policies on what can and cannot be planted. Luckily, some regulations have been introduced supporting natives. In California, “homeowners in common interest developments (like HOAs) can plant ‘climate appropriate landscaping’ without fear of being fined.”
To protect our planet, our homes, and the pollinators, we must rethink what it means to have an appealing lawn. A garden full of natives will help rebound biodiversity. Native lawns will bring fresher air, improving not just animal but human health as well. With more wildlife, perhaps the conversation of car-centric infrastructure can put walkers, bikers, and pedestrians in general first. One simple decision won’t fix everything, but it will help create a domino effect that can create much-needed positive change. For the sake of the Earth, simultaneously for humanity, abolish your grass lawns!