Why Lawns Are So Much Trouble

What is the Perfect Lawn?

Millions of dollars and countless hours are invested every year to breed turf grasses ever closer to becoming the perfect lawn.  But what is the perfect turf?  Here are some of the more important objectives: 

• Luscious, deep-green color as early as possible in the spring and late into winter

• Can be mown to 2” tall once a week without permanent damage

• Aggressive roots that can quickly fill bare spots 

• Can grow happily in any light, in any soil, and in any amount of moisture 

Accomplishing these objectives is quite difficult and some companies have been trying to discover the perfect turf grass for more than 100 years.  Scotts was founded in 1868 as a premium seed company and has been trying to breed the perfect turf since the early 1900s (Wikipedia.org, Scotts Miracle-Gro Company, 2019)​.     

Global Expedition to Find Your Turf Grass 

Any plant species that is green most of the year, can survive being cut back repeatedly and often, spreads around aggressively, and can grow in almost any condition is often classified by botanists and ecologists as an invasive species, or at least a very successful weed.  Think of Japanese stilt grass; it satisfies these conditions. 

The search for the perfect grass has spanned the globe.  Here are the most frequently-used turf grasses in the United States, all of which are classified as non-native, invasive weeds. 

Kentucky Bluegrass 

Native to North Asia, Algeria, and Morocco.  Imported by the Spanish Empire as a forage species.  Considered an unwelcome exotic plant indicative of degraded landscape conditions.​ (Wikipedia.org, Poa pratensis, 2019)​ 

Perennial Ryegrass 

Native to Africa, Asia, and Europe. Used as livestock fodder.  Considered an invasive species.​ (CABI, 2019)​ 

Tall Fescue 

Typically, a cultivar of the European Festuca arundinacea (Kentucky 31) used for cattle forage and soil stabilization.  Normally grows to 3-4’ tall.  Considered an invasive species and a noxious weed in some states.​ (Wikipedia.org, Festuca arundinacea, 2019)​ 

Bermudagrass 

Native to Africa, it is considered invasive in Bermuda!  Known for its aggressive, hard-to-eradicate nature; also known as “devil grass.”​ (Wikipedia.org, Cynodon dactylon, 2019)​ 

Zoysia 

A broad range of species native to Australia, islands in the Pacific, India, and Korea.  Forms dense mats and mounds; can look like moss.  Commonly used by golf courses for tee boxes.​ (Wikipedia.org, Zoysia, 2019)​   

Given where turf grasses originated, is it any wonder why your lawn doesn’t look perfect? Or has developed a nitrogen dependency?

Why does Turf Grass Struggle in My Yard? 

Warning! This is about to get a little sciency…

All plants have a sweet spot – a range of environmental conditions that cause little to no stress on the plant.  For most plants, these conditions are fairly specific. Each turf grass species has fairly narrow sweet spot and they vary only slightly from one another. 

Turf grasses have been bred to work for the most customers possible (e.g., your friendly neighborhood lawn and landscape contractor), which usually means situations where the topsoil has been stripped away, initial drainage is not bad, and there are no trees.  Remember where our turf grasses originated: warm, dry, sandy Australian, North African, Indian, and Mediterranean soils.  These are the conditions where turf grasses thrive.  But turf grasses are real plants and they have their preferences, and they have their limits.​ (Lowes.com, 2019)​ 

Turf grasses prefer lots of sun and well-draining soil

The above chart shows the average sweet spot of turf grass species: mostly sun to full sun with sometimes dry soils.  However, their performance quickly wane when conditions stray from the ideal. Turf grasses struggle to grow even in the shade of a large tree, or in soil compacted by frequent people or mower traffic. 

If you had a lawn area with nice soil, a lot of sun, and moisture levels that are just about right, you probably wouldn’t be reading this article, because you probably wouldn’t be having a problem with how your lawn looks.  But even then, how it looks isn’t necessarily everything, right? 

Dawn of the Lawn 

Andrew Jackson Downing, in his 1844 book titled “Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening,” declared that, “No expenditure in ornamental gardening is, to our mind, productive of so much beauty as that incurred in producing a well-kept lawn,” including shrubbery of “the finest foreign sorts.”  You see, Mr. Downing was a plant marketer trying to create new customers for his nursery products, and it worked.  What eventually followed was the creation of myriad seed, chemical, equipment, and service companies that now comprise an $80B industry​. (Kolbert, 2008)​ It has been nearly 200 years since the Downing “Treatise” was written.  Where are we now?  And where are we headed? 

The earth is no longer considered an enormous, inexhaustible source of raw materials that we need to “tame” by cutting it down, paving it over, or even mowing it over.  The impacts of our activities are now undeniable. Bird populations are crashing​ (Gill, 2019)​, butterflies are struggling ​(Halpern, 2019)​, plant diversity loss foretells long-term habitability problems ​(Virginia Institute of Marine Science, 2011)​, and pollinator populations are collapsing frighteningly quickly ​(Ramaswamy, 2017). In fact, climate change is now a federal inter-agency topic of concern​ (U.S. Global Change Research Program, 2019)​. 

But what can the ordinary citizen do?  Yes, we can change our light bulbs, reuse shopping bags, and buy organic blueberries, but when can we see the different that these changes really make?  When and how can we “see” that we are helping birds, butterflies, plant diversity, and pollinators?

The New Alternative Lawn

How about your lawn?  The typical American lawn is less diverse than an average desert, and we Americans spend more money on lawns than we do on foreign aid.  What if we could put back those billions of dollars into our local environment and local communities instead?​ (Graber-Stiehl, 2018)​ 

Well, are there alternatives to the traditional lawn?  Something that can help both our local and global environment yet not look untended or take up even more of my time? The clear answer is “YES!” 

Building an Alternative Lawn 

Every yard is different.  Different soils, different moisture profiles, different amounts of light, and different types of owners.  There can be no one-size-fits-all approach.  That’s been tried.  It hasn’t worked. Instead, WildLawn believes in a philosophical and ecological approach that satisfies both the needs of the environment and the people living in it.   

The WildLawn process starts with a sit-down over coffee to listen and learn about your aspirations and frustrations with your current lawn.  We then assess your current property to see what’s possible.  We take soil samples, model the hydrology, examine weed pressures, and calculate water-holding capacities.  We look around the broader neighborhood to discover clues about what the area might have once been and what it could become it were allowed to do so. 

All of these, then, become inputs into designing a new lawn experience that directly improves the environmental functioning of the lawn as well as meeting your most important family objectives. 

Not all properties are good candidates for a WildLawn.  Sometimes, a store-bought turf grass is the best of the available options.  But for many people, turf grass isn’t an option at all.  They want to mow only a couple of times and they want to say “NO” to fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides.  They want to see butterflies and pollinators flying about.  They want their dogs and grandchildren to be and feel safe in the yard.  Yet they still want a lawn that doesn’t look like a mess or that effectively becomes a large garden that they have to take care of. 

The WildLawn Difference 

WildLawn is not a lawn care company.  We aren’t looking for a mowing contract or spraying contract.  We don’t want to trim your bushes or spread mulch. Rather, WildLawn is a specially-focused initiative by one the leading ecological restoration firms to bring an environmentally intelligent, responsible, and effective alternative lawn solution within reach of every homeowner. 

To do this, WildLawn has spent more than a decade discovering, researching, and developing strains of practically unknown native plant species that can look and function like the natural lawns we see occurring in nature all around the northeast.  WildLawn staff are experts at understanding what type of alternative lawn your yard can support (check out the WildLawn Inspiration Gallery). We know that trying to force nature into doing something that it doesn’t want to do is expensive, frustrating, and often futile.  Like trying to successfully grow a grass found in Morocco in a yard in Princeton, NJ. 

We take full responsibility for the success of your WildLawn.  We design it, we install it, and we maintain it until it is fully established.  We guarantee that your WildLawn functions as designed; if you don’t love it, we’ll give you your old lawn back! 

Give us a call at 844-326-7344 or schedule a free consultation on our website at wildlawn.com/contact. 

​​References 

​​CABI. (2019, November 16). Lolium perenne. Retrieved from Invasive Species Compendium: https://www.cabi.org/isc/datasheet/31166 

​Gill, V. (2019, September 19). Bird populations in US and Canada down 3bn in 50 years. Retrieved from BBC.com: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49744435 

​Graber-Stiehl, I. (2018, May 18). Lawns Are an Ecological Disaster. Retrieved from earther.gizmodo.com: https://earther.gizmodo.com/lawns-are-an-ecological-disaster-1826070720 

​Halpern, S. (2019, February 20). The Vanishing Flights of the Monarch Butterfly. Retrieved from NewYorker.com: https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/the-vanishing-flights-of-the-monarch-butterfly 

​Kolbert, E. (2008, July 14). Turf War. Retrieved from The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/07/21/turf-war-elizabeth-kolbert 

​Lowes.com. (2019, November 16). SYNLawn. Retrieved from Lowe's Home Improvement: https://www.lowes.com/pd/SYNLawn-7-5-ft-x-11-ft-Artificial-Grass/1000507519 

​Ramaswamy, S. (2017, February 21). Reversing Pollinator Decline is Key to Feeding the Future. Retrieved from USDA.gov: https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2016/06/24/reversing-pollinator-decline-key-feeding-future 

​U.S. Global Change Research Program. (2019, November 17). Understand Climate Change. Retrieved from GlobalChange.gov: https://www.globalchange.gov/climate-change 

​Virginia Institute of Marine Science. (2011, March 24). Loss of plant diversity threatens Earth's life-support systems. Retrieved from ScienceDaily.com: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110303153116.htm 

​Wikipedia.org. (2019, November 16). Cynodon dactylon. Retrieved from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynodon_dactylon 

​Wikipedia.org. (2019, November 16). Festuca arundinacea. Retrieved from Wikipoedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festuca_arundinacea 

​Wikipedia.org. (2019, November 15). Poa pratensis. Retrieved from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poa_pratensis 

​Wikipedia.org. (2019, November 16). Scotts Miracle-Gro Company. Retrieved from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotts_Miracle-Gro_Company 

​Wikipedia.org. (2019, November 16). Zoysia. Retrieved from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoysia 

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