American yards are wreaking havoc on the ecosystem. Is a new era of landscape design just around the rose bush?
But while expansive lawns may impress the neighbors, razing wild areas to plant non-native, low-growing turfgrass is wreaking havoc on the earth. On his blog, ecologist Jameson Crumpler calls lawns ârural monoculture eyesores that displace native ecosystems at a rate between 5,000 and 385,000 acres per day ⊠and they provide no benefits over the long term; no food, no clean water, no wildlife habitat, and no foundation for preserving our once rich national heritage.â Put another way, these lawns (and the pretty but useless bred flowers we decorate them with) arewastelands for the endangered honey bees, hummingbirds, butterflies and other creatures we need to pollinate our food supply.
Additionally, the mowing, trimming and blowing required creates air and noise pollution (not to mention health risks to equipment operators). According to one Swedish study, using a mower for one hour has the same carbon footprint as a 100-mile car trip. And after weâre done cutting our grass down to size, we water it⊠so we can cut it again and repeat the process ad nauseam. At a time when California is drying up and international conflicts over water scarcity are set to increase, more than 30 percent of the nationâs drinking supply is devoted to lawn irrigation.