The “No Lawn” movement is gaining traction as more and more homeowners learn that a lawn is not the only way to have a rewarding outdoor space – in fact, a lawn may be one of the least rewarding yards you can have.
Have you ever noticed that what the media sells us as “traditional” is often something that started only as far back as the post-war 1950s? In the decades since, we have tended to romanticize this strange era when men were granted a “family wage” which allowed them to support four people on a single income, and women were handed a domestic life out in the suburbs, complete with a picket fence and an uninterrupted patch of green lawn.
The tidiness of that green lawn, uninterrupted by anything that could possibly feed a pollinator, became the next Calvinist fixation for Americans, with the state of your lawn being a visual indicator of your moral fortitude. At a time when everyone was on the lookout for nonconformists or communists, a yard full of crabgrass was equivalent to skipping church – at least in the prosperous, exclusively white suburbs where the American lawn first became linked with the dream of home ownership.
But the pushback against this sea of monoculture conformity is real, and there is no better place to join the No Lawns movement than the Pacific Northwest. Not only will the climate in Seattle and the surrounding regions support a rewarding, green, garden space, this area is known for it’s non-conformist ideals and embrace of new ideas that make the world better.
You Care About Climate Change
Between the power required to maintain a lawn, the water usage, and the nitrogen dumped on them to keep them lush and green, lawns have a devastating environmental effect.
You Want to Save the Bees (and other pollinators)
Lawns, and monoculture in general, are terrible for pollinators. They provide little in the way of habitat or food for bees and other pollinators. What may appear to be a lush, green landscape to you is actually a food desert for our native pollinators. Even small changes to how we approach lawns and lawn maintenance, such as participating in events like No Mow May can have huge benefits for pollinators. One study found that yards participating in No Mow May had three times as many bee species and five times greater abundance of bees than yards who were not participating.
You Understand the Importance of Biodiversity
A stereotypical American lawn is a negative space. It provides no food or habitat. Even weed filled lawns lack the nutrient density needed by our local pollinators. Habitat loss is the single most important factor responsible for the long list of species listed as endangered and at risk of extinction in Washington state. A lawn provides about as much natural habitat as a parking lot. By joining the No Lawn movement, you commit to creating a space that supports pollinators and creates more habitat for our local wildlife. The impact of this choice is magnified when you replace your lawn with a garden rich in native plants.
You Love Puget Sound and Other Waterways in Western Washington
From fertilizer runoff to the sheer amount of water required to maintain them, lawns produce more harm to our local waterways than any other type of landscaping. The relative impermeability of lawns means that more of our famous rain and moisture ends up as polluted runoff rather than refilling our aquifers. Lawns are extremely inefficient with the water they receive, incorporating only one inch of rainwater per hour. Compare this to a typical forest which can incorporate 16 inches of rainwater per hour. All of that runoff carries chemicals, oil, and gasoline into our watershed, often as fast-moving stormwater that erodes the banks and beaches of our rivers, streams, and lakes.
You Need to Relax
Spending time in nature is good for us. You know this because you have experienced it. But not all natural space is created equal. The key for a truly relaxing natural space comes from a concept called Soft Fascination – a state where our attention is grabbed without extreme cognitive effort. According to New York Times columnist Lisa Damour, “soft fascination relieves stress by helping us close those mental browser tabs; unhurried reflection lets us sift through mental clutter, quiet internal noise, and come up with fresh, useful solutions.” Lawns, particularly those without any planting beds surrounding them, do not grab our attention in the way that a garden or a forest will. While a lawn will provide more stress reduction benefit than a busy urban street, it pales in comparison to the impact achieved by sitting in a garden rich with life.
You Want to Spend More Time Enjoying Your Yard
For a relatively uninteresting landscape, lawns require a ton of maintenance. There is the cutting, the trimming, the fertilizing, the weeding, the raking – it’s an ongoing, continuous hassle. That’s partially why we receive, and turn down, so many inquiries about lawn maintenance. We get it, it’s a total drag. But Shooting Star Gardens has never been, nor will we be, a mow, blow, and go landscaping company. We don’t want to spend our time in nature that way, and we don’t want our clients to be stuck with that obligation either.
A mature garden, especially one filled with drought-tolerant native plants, largely takes care of itself. It’s a rich ecosystem that requires far less input than a lawn while providing a net positive to your local pollinators and your mental health. And if you don’t want to spend your time doing any maintenance, Shooting Star Gardens provides various maintenance packages to keep your garden healthy.
It may feel overwhelming to start so consider starting somewhere. You can start with by joining the no mow May movement, not watering your lawn over the summer, shrinking the size of your lawn by adding garden beds instead, choosing eco-lawn over non native lawns, and removing it altogether. The important thing to remember is we are rethinking what defines beauty in a traditional American yard. Lawns are no longer at the forefront of a beautiful landscape; colorful blooms, evergreen shrubs, and trees are really what draw us in.