Common Buttonbush is a beautiful native plant loved by pollinators. Photo by Dario Urt.
In the United States, 40 million acres are dedicated to lawns, an area roughly the size of Colorado. These 40 million acres, which neither feed us nor feed wildlife, consume around 9 billion gallons of water each day. Many of these lawns are treated with herbicides, pesticides, and synthetic fertilizers. As we move into an era where the environmental costs of our decisions become more apparent each year, it’s time to rethink the great American lawn.
Having a beautiful outdoor space to enjoy is important, but how many of us really need a large lawn? If you have a large yard, converting a section of your lawn into a permanent pollinator meadow is the most impactful thing that you can do to support beneficial insects, birds, and amphibians. Mowing pathways through a meadow rather than mowing an entire large lawn every week benefits your wild neighbors and can also be beautiful.
You’ll likely find that you have a succession of wildflowers that appear naturally through the growing season. If not, then what better time to try your hand at native plant gardening? Visit WUHSMS in the fall for their native plant sale to buy locally grown native plants that are started from seed by students. If you have a smaller yard, try surrounding your outdoor areas with native plants that support wildlife. Large lawn areas are essentially deserts for wildlife, but if we each add habitat and native plants into our gardens, together we can have a big impact on supporting the wildlife around us.
Once it is time to bring out the yard care tools, there are a number of options that can help support a healthy planet while also creating a beautiful garden. This could be the year that you switch to electric lawn care. Mowing your lawn with a gas-powered machine means having to keep gas on hand and breathing in damaging exhaust fumes every week. Using a commercial gas-powered leaf blower for one hour produces as much smog-forming air pollution as driving 1,100 miles in a car. Gas-powered equipment also produces damaging noise pollution–we’ve all heard the blaring noise of lawn machinery throughout neighborhoods. Switching to electric equipment has a big impact on how much pollution you are personally responsible for, while also making your neighborhood a more pleasant place to be. If you are looking for a way to help the environment, switching your lawn care equipment to electric can make a difference.
What you can do:
- If you’d like to learn more about the benefits of electric yard equipment (or share info with a noisy neighbor who may be unaware) Sustainable Woodstock has some resources available on our website. Check out our Landowner Fact Sheet and Leaf Blower Brochure
- Join us at the Market on the Green on July 22nd to try out an electric push mower and weed whackers
- Learn about different garden styles and Ways to Rewild with Wilde Bee Farm. Wilde Bee has planted various small pollinator gardens around town in partnership with Sustainable Woodstock.
- Visit www.nwf.org/nativeplantfinder, where you can enter your zip code to see plants native to your area.