GHENT—Lawns cover 50 million acres of the nation’s land. As such, they are the largest single irrigated crop the country grows.
“If you were an alien looking down, wouldn’t you wonder about the vastness of lawns,” says David Newman of Arthur’s Point Farm, a nursery in Ghent. Lawns lack biodiversity and provide little of use to insects or birds. Who do they provide good habitat for? Voles and groundhogs.
As botanist Claudia Knab-Vispo puts it: “‘Perfect’ manicured lawns are composed of one or a few species of non-native grasses, provide no flowers for pollinators, and little habitat for species other than non-native earthworms and American Robins.”
In the late 1800s, the neatly-trimmed, manicured monocultural lawn became a symbol of wealth. But, today, we recognize that “perfection” is achieved at a steep environmental cost.
Doug Tallamy, the Sharon, CT., proponent of the Homegrown National Park, says that lawns perform poorly measured against the ecological functions that all landscapes should perform: supporting a diverse and complex food web, managing local watersheds, moving carbon from the atmosphere to the soil and providing food and housing for as many species as possible.
Instead, lawns consume valuable resources. According to the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), up to 30% of water consumption on the East Coast goes to irrigate lawns (nationally, that is 3 trillion gallons of water every year); gas-powered mowers emit 5% of the nation’s air pollution; and mowers annually consume 200 million gallons of gasoline – a non-renewable resource. As the EPA frames it: “one gas-powered lawnmower emits 11 times the air pollution of a new car for each hour of operation.”
If pesticides or inorganic fertilizers are added to the mix, the picture only gets worse, as rainwater runoff will carry these pollutants into streams, rivers and lakes.
Enter “No Mow May,” a movement initially popularized in the United Kingdom, which calls for a pause in mowing during the month of May to allow flowers to bloom in the lawn to help early season pollinators.
“The ‘No Mow May’ is an easy start towards a more interesting and ecologically valuable yard,” says Dr. Knab-Vispo. “However, depending on how intensively the lawn has been managed in the past, it might not lead to instant results.” But over time “you will be surprised! Not only will it produce all sorts of flowers and become alive with flower-visiting insects, it might also develop patches of a variety of grasses, gently swaying in the wind. If the grasses are allowed to go to seed, birds will come to feed on them,” she says.
Even reducing mowing or diminishing the size of a lawn is good. Mr. Newman notes that mowing a lawn to 2” weekly is bad for the lawn’s health and leads to burnout. Mowing a dry lawn to 3 1/2” or 4” every two weeks is ideal. (Mowing during a rainfall is messy and can rip up the lawn.)
Less intense mowing also leads to fewer pests and less burnout and will benefit bees, butterflies, grasshoppers and others. Less intense mowing may allow wild strawberries, thyme, violets, ground ivy and clovers to appear.
While the science is not clear, it does not appear that allowing a lawn to grow will invite more ticks, as they are more inclined to densely wooded or shady areas and the transition areas between lawn and meadow or lawn and woods.
Fortunately, Columbia County is not an area where local ordinances or home owners associations are likely to dictate lawn maintenance requirements, a common obstacle to less intense maintenance. (In Toronto, an ecologist had to sue the city to invalidate a “long grass and weed” bylaw that would have outlawed her natural meadow.)
Better yet, says Mr. Newman, shrink the lawn area. Just letting a lawn grow is unlikely to lead to a flower-filled meadow quickly. Instead, make the lawn small and meaningful—perhaps, an
area for high traffic activities, to which grass stands up well; then reclaim the rest of the former lawn area by planting a cover crop, like oats, peas, rye or clover for the first season. Follow that with wildflowers or—for a lawn-like area that requires less mowing—slow-growing fescues or sedge grass.
Landscape architect Jamie Purinton of Ancram strives for a meadow that provides a tapestry of low native plants.
She says that increasingly, homeowners, and especially those just building a house, are choosing to eliminate lawns altogether in favor of bringing a meadow up to the home and marrying the house with nature. Fields accessed through mown paths, low areas seeded with thyme, mosses or low plantings, stone or pea stone patios and decks are all taking the place of lawn.
Alternative plantings worthy of thought include clover, which is soft underfoot, requires mowing only infrequently, does not need to be fertilized, fixes nitrogen in the soil and requires little water. Clover will also crowd out weeds and attract beneficial insects, is affordable, drought-resistant and, unlike grass, is not discolored by pet urine. Some call it a secret lawn superhero. Microclovers , a shorter-growing variety, have been popular in Europe for decades. The “Pirouette” and “Pipolina” varieties can be mowed to 3” for a tidy look.
Thyme is low-growing and has a wonderful scent. Pennsylvania sedge thrives in a variety of soil types and climates, is easily mowed (and does not require frequent mowing), and will be happy in the sun or shade.
Or, as Ms. Purinton says, just stop mowing and “watch to see who comes. Your soil is a seed bank. Allow it to show the way.” And if you have a lawn or field, be fanciful. “I sometimes come home from work to find my husband has mowed a pattern: a square, an island, even a heart.”
