Lawn Evolution
Rebel gardeners increasingly revel in the wild possibilities of their yards, even amid uniform grass lawns.
Could grass lawns be outgrown? Municipal officials and residents in the tri-state area are increasingly finding more purposeful uses for land after two centuries of grass domination. In addition to trees and vegetable gardens, they sow “pollinator-friendly” plants that attract and nourish the shrinking population of insects and birds needed to pollinate food crops. Efforts to spread this practice are afoot, as insect populations have declined 75% in protected areas, and Monarch Butterflies have declined 90% in North America, though numbers are in flux, according to Anne Wibiralske, science adviser to Orange Environment Pollinator Project.
“My whole yard is native flowers and trees, raspberries, nuts, tomatoes, melons, kale and spinach from organic seeds,” said Betsy Bowes, a member of Warwick Valley Gardeners. “It’s free and informal. I put in the seeds and see what happens. I planted 30-year-old seeds from my father’s best tomatoes and they came up.”
In the Village of Warwick, Mayor Michael Newhard noted that the Comprehensive Master Plan for Memorial Park includes areas with specific native flowers. And about two acres between fenced areas by Wickham Lake will be an arboretum with a meadow of wildflowers appealing to pollinators.
Jim Blanton, Port Jervis Shade Tree Commission founder, also has a swath of pollinator attractive plants planned.
“Let’s stop paying for big machines and mowing. Nature knows what needs to go where. We’ll have a discussion with City Council about green spaces and re-wilding. It’ll save money,” he said.
Meanwhile, across the border in Pennsylvania, No Mow May was begun by Milford Borough Mayor Sean Strub last year. The event will return this year, he said, allowing plants to have their way for a while, as many insects complete their larval and pupae stages, so they can fly blithely into June.
Jody Susler, vice president of Orange County Audubon Society, who has encouraged native plants to take over her yard, says, “Yes, there is a growing trend away from grass or in addition to grass. Look at the numbers of people signing their yards onto the pollinator pathway maps in the Warwick and Woodstock areas and on Homegrownnationalpark.org, that advocates for turning lawns into native plant pollinator meadows or food gardens across the country. I know planting natives for a pollinator friendly garden has taken off among the Warwick Gardeners Club in the past couple of years.”
She also rails against the pesticides that kill beneficial insects and contaminate groundwater, threatening human health as well as the lives of pets and wildlife.
“Personally, I would like to see the poison spraying yard companies forced to evolve their techniques but in the meantime be closed, or at least stop putting direct advertising flyers in everyone’s mailbox. This is insanely dangerous,” she said. “Pollinator-friendly is a neutral term. The birds and butterflies all need the plants they evolved with.”
A recent study found the world to be losing 3 to 5 percent of its fruit, vegetable and nut production because of shrinking pollinator populations and diversity, according to Sarah Kuta, writing in Smithsonian magazine. Reduction in availability of those foods results in health conditions like diabetes and heart disease, leading to an estimated 427,000 more deaths, she said.
To help remedy the situation, Orange Environment’s Hudson Valley Pollinator Project will launch a pilot venture that provides 60 gardeners, willing to report back monthly, with pollinator-friendly pocket garden starter kits, says Wibiralske. The kits contain seeds for eye-catching native flowers that nurture pollinator insects and birds, rather than cultivar flowers, often originating in Europe, that have been common.
And yes, Wibiralske says, some native pollinator-friendly plants can withstand bands of vandal deer, as long as the animals’ hunger hasn’t reached undiscriminating intensity. Then they eat almost any plant.
“Several relatively easy to find plants native to our area attract pollinator butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds and are considered less palatable to deer,” she said.
Those include butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa), common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca), cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis), blue lobelia (Lobelia siphilitaca), seaside goldenrod (Solidago sempervirens), sweet goldenrod (Solidago odora), bee balm (Marnada didyma), wild bergamot (Minarda fistulosa) and Culver’s root (Veronicastrum virginicum).
Many of these will be for sale at the Pollinator Fest at Warwick Valley Winery and Distillery on May 20.
“The best approach for ecologically smart pollinator and habitat restoration gardening is to grow straight, wild type species from seeds—not cuttings—of plants native to our communities,” and not plants specially bred, she said, noting that some plant nurseries specialize in selling suitable native plants.
“Native plants and native insects, birds and other animals have co-evolved over millions of years to create highly tuned mutually beneficial relationships,” said Wibiralske. “Native plants provide high quality food at the right time that sustains native animals, and the animals, including insects, assist in pollination or dispersal of seeds, aiding successful reproduction of the plants.”
So how did lawns evolve to be so useless?
Lawn bravado
Christopher Sellers allowed his Long Island backyard to grow wild and was gratified to find blackberries among new inhabitants. Author of Crabgrass Crucible and historian of environment, culture and health at Stony Brook University, he is uniquely aware of the way grass has become a vestige of past values.
Really, the short grass lawns surrounding homes are the result of late 19th Century vanity, when English country estates “swallowed” the property of small landowners, as those landowners migrated to cities in the 17th and 18th Centuries, said Sellers.
“It was conspicuous consumption, a show of wealth,” he said. “The use of lawns for ornamentation was a leap away from functionality. They made economic power visible. It was similar in America. The lawn showed that you didn’t have to raise food, that you were deliberately non-agricultural. The lawn was a result of art and science–smooth, even and glistening green.”
With the rise of the middle class in the 20th Century, 40-60% of Americans were homeowners, and suburbs proliferated, with showy lawns and social pressure to maintain them.
Lawns were used for golf and other sports. Manuals on lawn maintenance appeared in the late 19th Century, such as Scott’s “The Art of Keeping Lawns,” in 1872. Pesticide use was encouraged, along with lots of water, plentiful in England but not so much in the southwest U.S. and California, Sellers noted.
After World War II, when suburbs were developed on the abundant low cost land to give veterans an alternative to urban living, those trim uniform lawns were selling points, and their upkeep was expected, using water, weed killers and mowers.
Lawn culture crisis
After Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” was published in 1962, a furor about pesticides erupted, with alarm about their contamination of both groundwater and air and the public health consequences. As that concern continues in the wake of EPA weakness, “zeroscaping” has attracted a following in California and elsewhere, using native vegetables in different colors, said Sellers.
Meanwhile, Sellers and his family launched their own lawn rebellion.
“We took out our front lawn and don’t water it in August and September. It was brown without water,” he said. “Now we have tall grasses with patches of Black-eyed Susans. At least one flower blooms each season.”
He pulls weeds or sprays them with vinegar, but alternatives to the short grass lawn are still unusual around him. He notices only two other neighbors stepping out of line with their lawns.
“In the U.S., the golf course push with horticultural technology still dominates,” said Sellers. “Class aspirations are important. This island replicates itself with landscapers. Developers are stuck on an ideal and lawns are ecological deserts.”
Meanwhile, though, his family is drawn to the Pollinator Pathway, and they particularly support the severely endangered Monarch Butterfly, which has come through their yard. They planted milkweed, providing the butterfly with a nourishing waystation.
What can catalyze progress is municipal involvement, Sellers suggests. “Local government has a part in change,” he said.
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