Guest Post: A Turf Lawn Or Biodiversity?

Photo of Sallie and Russ in their biodiverse front yard 

This great op ed piece by my friend Russ Leinbach appeared in today's Daily News-Record, which I share with his permission:

Americans love their lawns. Having a well-kept lawn has become almost synonymous with being a “good citizen!” But a “perfect lawn” of just grass is a sterile wasteland for insects and birds.

“We have to move beyond lawns,” says Douglas Tallamy, a native plant advocate and professor of entomology and wildlife ecology at the University of Delaware. He is quoted in an article in the Washington Post Magazine of April 10, 2022, titled, “Sowing Change.” It's a story of one couple's fight with their homeowners association to allow them to plant a bio-diverse garden in part of their lawn.

Many folks are realizing that insects and birds need more biodiversity than turf grass. They are replacing parts of their lawns with gardens of native plants, friendly to pollinators.

Plants and animals evolved over millions of years to survive in cooperation with one another. Replacing a turf grass lawn with a bio-diverse lawn, or a garden, can help bring nature back into more of an ecological balance. Insects are important pollinators for our food supply, as well as being an important food for birds. And both bird and insect populations are in sharp decline. A lot of the decline has to do with loss of biodiversity. Just in the last 10 years or so we ourselves have noticed a big decline in the number of lightning bugs and butterflies. Chemicals sprayed on lawns kill the larvae of a variety of insects.

My wife and I planted the bank in front of our house with native plants and flowers. We love seeing the variety of pollinators hovering around the plants; bees, butterflies, humming birds and wasps. The lavender plants have bees hovering around them for weeks. One plant, shale barren buckwheat, flowers in the fall and attracts small wasps. Really cool! We view this as enjoyable and healthy, not frightening. Our neighbors and people walking by also often comment on how enjoyable it is to see the variety of flowers, birds plants and pollinators.

Grass, while pleasing to the eye, and inviting for a picnic or a ballgame, gives a misleading picture. Lawns do not support biodiversity. Turf lawns require a lot of maintenance; mowing, watering, fertilizing and applying chemicals. Lawns are voracious drinkers. People don't realize that their acres of lawn wreak havoc with the watershed, kill pollinators, do not sequester enough carbon and are destroying the food web. And the constant recurring mowing contributes to air pollution.

Tallamy, in the article quoted above, says that replacing lawns with native plants “is the low hanging fruit because it's the easiest to fix.” At a time of anxiety over the effects of climate change and the mass extinction of wildlife, ecologists say that planting native plants provides an opportunity to make a difference

As cultural awareness of the benefits of native plants grows, government initiatives have followed. Pennsylvania is reimbursing residents for the cost of converting turf to native plants. In drought-plagued California there are Cash for Grass programs that reimburse families for replacing turf with drought resistant landscaping. These bio-diverse areas provide benefits to caterpillars and spiders, salamanders, hummingbirds and other pollinators. The key is to choose plants that are indigenous.

Another way to make your lawn more bio-diverse, if you aren't stuck on a perfect lawn, is to stop applying fertilizer and weed killer and allow clover, dandelions and other “weeds” (wildflowers) to grow. Or, you can even sow clover and wildflowers into your grass lawn. And if you stop mowing part of your lawn for a month, or a season, you quickly create a busy wildlife habitat. Or replace your turf lawn for a wildflower lawn. Just, let it grow. Don't mow! Beautiful.

Crocuses grow well in lawns and around trees and their flowers are an import source of nectar in spring. Some wildflower seed mixes grow well under shade of trees, those labeled as “woodland” or “hedge-grow” mixes. You can search for websites about “creating biodiversity in your lawn,” or “how to turn your yard into an ecological oasis.”

Tallamy has launched an effort to encourage homeowners to turn turf into wildlife habitat by planting native plants. Based on the model of our National Park System, he translated that into what individuals can do, and he calls it “Homegrown National Park.” His website says, “We can do this! One person at a time. Regenerate Biodiversity.” He says, “In the past, we asked one thing of our gardens. To be pretty. Now we ask them to support life, sequester carbon, feed pollinators and manage water.” Wow! Quite a job list for a garden!

And if you really want to support wildlife, put up a bat house. Or a bee house. Yes. They do exist. Pretty neat, too!