As Americans, we spend $27 billion per year caring for our turf and lawns --that's 10 times than what we spend on school textbooks!
America has lost 30 percent of its songbirds. Amphibians are especially susceptible to pesticides and herbicides, which keep grass free of weeds and bugs. Without the bugs, there's no food for the toads. Bye! Bye!
In the West, most homeowners pour up to 60 percent of their household water on their lawns, trees and shrubs. Did you know that a 25' x 40' lawn needs 10,000 gallons of water each summer?
At most home product stores, nearly 25 percent of aisle space is devoted to lawn care products. Rows of chemicals, lawn mowers and other gas-powered devices abound. On the weekends, otherwise quiet neighborhoods are filled with the rancor of power mowers, edgers, power pruners and leaf blowers. The typical lawn mower spews out 20 times the amount of pollution than the average car on the road today.
Americans use 4.5 billion pounds of toxic pesticides a year in home gardens --more per acre than is used in agriculture.
Lawns are TMT - Too Much Trouble: they waste water we don't have, they create yard waste, which must be disposed of, they cost thousands of dollars to maintain, and they require poisons to stay green!
A cost-benefit analysis comparing natives to a conventional lawn after 20 years reflected an 80 percent savings in labor costs. Not to mention water savings or benefits to the environment.
Let's bury the lawn aesthetic once and for all and instead use nature without abusing her. We can learn how native plants evolved as an ecological system through the process of natural selection without any input from human beings, and by employing principles of design and science; we can create a garden that is inspired by nature and fits in beautifully in our neighborhood. When designed and built properly, any of these gardens can be beautiful, inexpensive and easy to maintain solutions to the TMT lawn.
But perhaps, more importantly you'll be gardening with mother nature, not against her.