A Look at Sustainable Lawns
Published in APLD Magazine — Design Online — June 2020
According to Google, lawns are the number one irrigate crop in America. Now I don’t typically use Google as a primary source, but when I drive from my house into the office every day, I pass mostly farmland, and to be honest grass still prevails. Most of it is non-irrigated grass, which makes me think it has to be the number one non-irrigated crop too. Granted this is a mid-west, rain abundant perspective. So, for the sake of conversation let’s just collectively agree we have a lot of grass here in the US. So what? We like grass. It keeps the wild at bay, giving us a clean buffer from our homes to the dangerous and scary woods. It gives us cool places to spread out, that’s better than the road. It gives us something to mow: tools, OCD, bar-b-ques, bettering the neighbors.
In History of Landscape Architecture class as we get to the Victorian Era, I like to point out this guy Edwin Budding. He invented the mower in about 1888, and it totally changed the landscape. Seemingly in very positive ways. However, in class I call him this jerk that stole Sundays from every man for the next hundred years, but I do so with a little jest. Remember, at that point in history lawns were being kept at bay with grazing critters held back by a ha-ha or a fence. At times they were cleaned up by hand around homes. However, this was only for the wealthy. Lawns were a status symbol, cool walks in the romance of the outside without the battle of the brambles. Picnics on an afternoon with green as far as the eye can see. Meanwhile the middle class and poor sat in stuffy old houses or battled the bugs in the damp woods. Everyone wanted the romance of a glade, an Oak-opening that had been written about for thousands of years. Budding was simply bringing this opportunity into the middle-class home. It wasn’t just the Vanderbilt’s who could have a lovely lawn overlooking a vista. But, because of the mower Garth could have one too!
So, much like every piece of technology, it begins as a fable with possibility, becomes doable, and then is turned into reality, but still at an untouchable scale/price. With time and advancement, it is compressed into something most of us can have or afford, eventually something we all need. The computer, the phone, the car. I have a strange philosophy about circles and cycles and this is a good example. Because once we all have to have it, we don’t want it anymore. Wouldn’t it be great if I could go back in time and punch Budding in the throat said the man with too much lawn and a penchant for weed free grass? Well it’s too late. We have phones that we can’t escape, computers that follow us home with work and cars that then take us away from our homes we love so much, which sit bordered with a lawn that needs to be mowed using carbon fuels. Then we irrigate that lawn with water, which is said to run out within this century, that then flushes nutrients into storm systems so that it can feed invasives within our rivers. For being the animal with reason, we sure aren’t putting it to very good use. At this pace we should all chop off our opposable thumbs and save the world.
Or, we can continue the game of learning and advancement, take the good that has been developed along with the bad and build on that good for a better future. The lawn can surely be one of those things, just look at our current alternative. They live on a linear spectrum. At one end is a golf course, the other end is sand or forest, depending on your current location. But before we get started on the alternatives to the ‘golf course lawn’ let’s list our goals with a traditional lawn space and the unsustainable complications the ‘golf course lawn’ implies. Some of the assumed goals: uniformity, more sustainable (economy, people, policy and ecology), open space, less wild, durable and human movement acceptable. The current problem: use of water we may want to drink someday, use of chemicals for perfection and lack of biodiversity, use of carbon fuels to maintain, while time and money to produce that is also putting pressure on our environment.
I try not to be a purist nor do I expect that one size fits all, this goes back to a struggle I have with absolutes. Every space and client are unique and they each have challenges and opinions. So, I think the spectrum approach could be effective within this discussion. For every notch we move a site away from unsustainable to more sustainable we are making positive change in our world. We don’t have to convince a wealthy purist to put in a meadow to only have them rip it out in two years and replace it with perfect grass (yes, I did that as a young designer). Therefore, I’ve built a table with 12 steps from perfect grass to perfect wild. This is something I pulled together for this article and I wonder what the association could add to this in order to make it better. Feel free to email me your thoughts.
Cell 2 – 4 are the least we can do to shift the sustainability pendulum. Many of us work in locations that we can use limited chemical treatments and no water because of rain fall and native soils. Or, you have worked at a site from the start and were able to amend soils as a way of helping water use. Some of you work in areas that are dry and will have limited chemical applications if you simply water well and keep the grass healthy enough to compete out possible issues. Good site prep, healthy grass and modest approaches are a great place to begin. Part of cell 2 – 4 is giving up perfection, being OK with weeds (which are a philosophical state of mind, not a pure reality) and acknowledging the return on simply being satisfied.
It is step four that begins our journey down the road of real alternatives. I did a tour of east coast boarding academies a few years back to assess their exterior sustainability. Each one was not treating nor watering their lawns but were mowing hundreds of acres. My university mows over 300 acres. I made recommendations for them to mow edges close to human activity in curving attractive ways allowing some of the lawn in the larger areas to grow. Mowing those only a few times a year simply to cut down on labor cost and carbon usage. I use this approach at my own house. I have seven acres in Michigan and grass grows easily. I don’t water or treat. I mow only the areas around human spaces and road edges to give it a clean look. Letting some grass to grow a month or more before a high mowing is applied. I actually like the look of these layers and shapes.
Cells five and six are non-organic approaches and each come with pros and cons. We have a few sites where we have used AstroTurf or similar turf substitutes. It’s obviously a petroleum-based product not making it sustainable at first glance. But, on sites that growing is almost impossible we can weigh that lack of water, chemicals and maintenance and quickly balance this as a more sustainable approach. If you live in a dry region with a more limited water supply this quickly becomes a very sustainable approach. I’ve even been pleasantly surprised about the feel barefooted. Gravel has a place, especially as a component of zero-scaping. California had incentive programs over the last few years, with the lack of snow fall, to encourage homeowners to remove grass and embrace a sand or gravel approach to lawns. I will note the house I pass in West Virginia on my way to my parents with different colored stones for lawn, isn’t a good setting. If you live in the woods just choose woods please?
Cells 8-11 have become increasingly more popular. Carex as a lawn that will see limited walking, but we want the vast green feeling is an excellent alternative. We use a native species, pensylvanica, in many situations including limited sun spaces. Carex will go in as a plug or one gallon like other typical groundcovers (Hedra helix, Vinca minor etc, all alternatives). We have also had great success with no mow grasses from Prairie Nursery out of Wisconsin. They also supply us seed for meadow options. This is a great resource for the mid-west and east coast. They have high meadow, low meadow, dry, clay, wet, shade, etc. For the beginner to native types of meadow and grass options they are a fantastic resource (https://www.prairienursery.com/).
I have joined Goshen College at their sustainable center for intensive weekends. They have extensive meadows on site. Most are in some sort of observation. Because of their location, meadow is native. During one visit I found them not seeding at all when restoring an abandoned agricultural site. They walked the site, regularly killing invasives and non-natives. They would burn annually. Over just a few years the meadow had naturally shifted back to native species. My own seven acres has a natural stand of Little Bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium). I am in the process of treating my land the same. I have both Chinese Elm and Sumac trying to take over, along with the random Black Locust. I go to war with these guys during the summer, mow the whole thing in the spring and it is slowly taking shape. Which leads me to the blended options that I think is a great lawn approach. Like the schools mowing hundreds of acres we all could cut back some of our lawn spaces, using other grasses or mowing regimes to help fill in the open spaces but still giving us some of the open space we desire. Never mind this can create amazing walks and separate rooms that add romance to a property, while still giving a client some limited traditional grass.
Last, and limited to only the most enlightened client, you can throw in the towel. Just let nature be nature. Pull out the grass, infill with natives. Learn from the local ecosystem and mimic what would happen in the native soils and microclimates of your site. Many of us have done this too. I find a frustrated HOA when it happens in small communities. This approach clearly has its challenges. But, like any of the other options here we must bring each with the education of our stakeholders. We must be willing to win a small battle to help move to winning the war. The biggest challenge won’t be a solution, it will be a solution that is acceptable by those with whom we work and those who write the checks. We, as a group, are slowly shifting norms; 100 years of programing, watching ‘Leave It to Beaver’, the American Dream. Just like every vote counts so does every client who becomes informed and embraces a small shift toward eco-friendly. And you my friends are the catalyst for this change. Be creative, be informative and be willing to celebrate the small wins.