Liberate Your Lawn! 

by Charles McGuigan 05.2024 

In the enclosed side yard of my boyhood home on the Isle of Palms, I was lying on a bed of grass staring into a flawless blue sky. The only interruption to this field of vibrant blue was a single white cloud that moved leisurely to the east, heading toward the Atlantic. I breathed deeply of new-mown grass that was tinged with the pleasant sweetness of gasoline, and I could hear the sputtering of the lawnmower and the whirr of its blade. Even though I could not see him, because my view was blocked by the wall that surrounded the yard, I knew my father was pushing that mower. For many years after that, the smell of freshly mown grass, or the sound of a lawnmower conjured that memory, which was always followed by a sense of security, as if all was right in the world.

All that has changed. Nowadays when I smell that mixture of gasoline and freshly-cut grass, and hear the belching and drone of a lawnmower, I am more apt to think of Apocalypse Now. Specifically that iconic scene when the Air Cavalry takes flight in a swarm of Huey Gunships, menacing birds of prey, their rotor blades churning the air thunderously. Then the obliteration of jungle foliage and human beings with jellied fire, and Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore being moved by the smell of napalm, reminiscent of gasoline. 

So much for fond memories.

Lush, emerald lawns cover over 40 million acres in the continental United States. That’s nearly fifty thousand square miles, roughly the size of New York State. It is the largest crop in the country, even edging out corn, and has absolutely no food value. These uniform swards of green, whether they blanket golf courses or the yards of residential homes, come at a dear cost to the environment.

In some states, turf grasses cover large portions of the ground. Ten percent of Delaware is devoted to lawns, and in Connecticut and Rhode Island the number soars to twenty percent.

Lawns in the United States require about 2.4 million metric tons of fertilizer annually, which contributes to increased nitrogen levels in runoff water, and in far too many instances herbicides and pesticides are used, which eventually end up in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. And consider this: each day, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, nearly nine billion gallons of fresh water are pissed away to keep a non-native species of grass ever-green.

Add to that, loss of habitat, and because manicured lawns do not flower, pollinators perish for lack of nectar. This, too:  turf grass is a monoculture: it offers no biodiversity.

And though lawns do sequester carbon, they don’t do it nearly as well as a more bio-diverse ground covering.

During the last recession, Richmond had a bumper crop of abandoned properties, and Chris Gough, an associate professor of biology at VCU, seized the moment. 

“We followed up by digging in the soils and quantifying the amount of carbon in the soils and how that changes over time after people leave,” says Chris. “And so the take home from that was lawns that were abandoned for a longer period of time actually accumulated more carbon because there was a recovery, a return, back to the prior ecosystem that existed before it was grass. You eventually get woody species, trees, shrubs, bushes and so it appears that as that plays out over time after abandonment there’s this accumulation of carbon in the soil.”

There is a national trend that has been gaining momentum for well over a decade. More and more people are allowing nature to take its course by introducing native plants into their yards and letting the cultivated grasses die out. I have witnessed its progress in Richmond, year by year, and when one front yard on a given block eliminates turf grass there is a sort of domino effect, with neighboring homes following suit. Many front yards in Bellevue are now blanketed with perennials and native ground covers. They look natural, they celebrate their own diversity, they restore ecosystems, and unlike the boring conformity of a green lawn, these perennial landscapes—varied and colorful—possess an aesthetic that appeals to all five senses.

“And if every one of us little homeowners would bring some natives, we could help restore habitats, we could bring back biodiversity.” Catherine Farmer told me a few years back. Catherine is responsible for the removal of invasive species and the restoration of native plants on Belle Island, a volunteer initiative she started almost a decade ago. 

It is in the small engagements, the slightest of skirmishes, that the tides are sometimes turned so a war might be won. 

I recently had the pleasure of meeting a group of four women whose rallying cry is Liberate Your Lawn! All Bellevue residents, Bonnie Holland and Anna Sundstom live next door to one another on Claremont, and Laura Dooley lives just up the street from Suzanne Bessenger on Avondale. Along with their shared passion for things that grow in the good earth, each one of these women had lived in California at one point or other in their lives.

“There’s no coincidence that all of us have lived in California at some point because what we’re doing here is the norm there,” says Bonnie. “Water is such a major concern there that this is what people did in their front yards, and so I did this for fifteen years before we moved here.”

We’re sitting at a table, the five of us.

Bonnie looks at her next door neighbor on Claremont, who happens to be her next door neighbor at the table.  “One of the things when we were buying our house is we saw your garden, Anna,” says Bonnie, “And we were like ‘Yes, this is it, at least one neighbor’s going to be okay with what we’re going to do.”

“I started really just growing food out front because that’s the only full sun we had,” Anna remembers. “It was probably back in 2012 or 2013. We did raised beds first. After that, I realized I needed to plant more flowers, and when Bonnie moved in I realized I needed more color.”

As it turns out Bonnie, like the late great garden designer Gertrude Jekyll, is also a visual artist,.

“I used to paint and this has sort of taken the place of that for me,” says Bonnie.

Bonnie considers why some people have a love affair with their lawns. “One of the things they seem to  like about their lawn is that it’s so tidy,” she says.  The same tidiness can be achieved by planting perennials instead of turf grass. “You can have someone come in and design a low maintenance landscape with perennials that is drought tolerant and eco-friendly,” says Bonnie. “But it’s super tidy and looks pulled together and I think that’s important to some people. You could also do a lawn substitute like clover or creeping thyme.”

But not one of these four women is looking for the manicured look of a front yard. 

“For me I like the wildness,” Bonnie say. “I love that it’s alive. I feel the wish to control nature is a vestige of a former time when that’s what people thought they were supposed to do to nature. It’s a holdover from that.”

“Humans began to think they were apart from nature,” Laura Dooley says.  “And we need to move back to a time when humans were seen as a part of nature.”
Bonnie suggests that many folks harbor good memories of turf grass lawns.”They have these associations with it, maybe they grew up with it,” she says. “And they have these warm, fuzzy associations with it. And it looks neat and tidy to them.”

Laura nods. “I agree completely,” she says. “I’ve thought of different reasons people hold on to lawns. For one thing, they think it’s less maintenance. In terms of maintenance, lawns require watering, and irrigation systems. They require pesticides and reseeding and fertilization, and they require lawn mowing every week in the summer.  They require raking in the fall, or else your lawn will die.”

None of that is required of a yard planted with perennials.  “I water my plants for the first two weeks after I put them in and then that’s it,” says Laura. “I don’t do any watering after that. I don’t do fertilizing. I don’t do any mowing or raking. I welcome the leaves in my yard in the fall because they mulch my ground. They’re free mulch and they add nutrients to the soil. I think how much money people put into lawns compared to what money I’ve put into my garden so far in two years. I bought some plants from Bill Shanabruch and other native plant purveyors. I’ve also gotten so many plants free from people. I haven’t needed to buy much. And native plants thrive in clay soil so you don’t need to bring in truckloads of soil. It’s cheaper honestly than maintaining a lawn.”

These front yard gardens offer many other benefits. “It’s such good exercise,” Suzanne Bessenger says. “And it’s a good way to connect with your neighbors.”

Bonnie smiles when Suzanne says this. “People talk to me about my garden all the time when they’re walking by,” she says. “That’s a big social connection I have.

“All the response I’ve gotten from neighbors has been positive,” says Laura. “Anyone walking by has said, ‘You’re doing beautiful things here.’  I just had a really positive response.  Gardening has built community for me.”

And these front yard gardens are educational for all who come in contact with them. Laura mentions her daughter. “On a daily basis she’s outside exploring the plants because there’s something new to see every day,” she says. “What’s blooming, or what insect or animal visitors do we have today? It’s a way to bring our younger generation back into feeling part of nature, and they learn to have respect for other species besides humans.”

These small ecosystems encourage us to experience the world as it really is. “When you go through the world thinking about everything as alive and contributing something everything becomes magical,” Suzanne says. “It’s all a miracle.” 

There is some labor involved in creating these green spaces.  “When I’m out in front working people are like, ‘I love this, this is beautiful, but it must be so much work,’” says Bonnie. “When people first started saying that to me I really had to think about it. Is it really a lot of work? What it is is good work.”

Then Suzanne tells a story that occurred in her hometown on the West Coast. “There was a woman in her eighties who had this fantastic garden in her front yard and she was out there puttering,” she says. “And these other people walked by and one of them said, ‘Oh it’s so beautiful, but it must be a lot of work.  And she said, ‘No, it’s a lot of play.’” 

There’s no doubt about it. This approach to front lawns is taking off, and it spreads from house to house, from street to street. 

“It is a tremendous sense of joy for me,” says Bonnie. “And I have people regularly walk by and say that my garden is a source of joy for them as well. People come by and they’re like ‘This is our favorite little stretch.’” 

And then Suzanne asks us to imagine the future.  “How awesome would it be if a whole block was like that? I would always walk down that block.”

Someone says, “What if the entire neighborhood was like that?”

“It would be like living in a park,” says Suzanne.