Author: Eric Murphy
At the beginning of July, I visited my family in rural Ontario for the long weekend. This is the time of the year when lawns are at their greenest, and often requiring the most maintenance and care. Walking around our small town and its many backroads, I saw lawn after lawn – some were left wild and overgrown, but far more looked meticulously maintained, with sprinklers providing a steady stream of water. Not visible were the fertilizers or pesticides that may have been used to make the lawns lush as possible and keep away insects or weeds.
It’s far from revolutionary to say that most lawns are bad for the environment. I remember at least a decade ago seeing YouTube videos with the title “Your Yard is EVIL” identifying the many environmental shortcomings of a turfgrass lawn. For those new to the subject, and who might be wondering why any climate activists might take issue with their lawn, here’s a quick summary of the usual points.
The Trouble with Turfgrass
- Canada and the U.S. inherited our approach to lawns from England, where they first gained popularity amongst the wealthy in the 17th century. While those early lawns may have thrived in England, in North America, many of these grasses are non-native. Additionally, the ideal sprawling, lush lawn established in England is a monoculture that requires a lot of maintenance and crowds out biodiversity.
- Watering lawns accounts for about one-third of all residential water use in Canada, and much of that water is potable.
- In the U.S., turfgrass is the most common irrigated crop (beating out even important food sources like corn) and Americans use more than 70 million pounds of pesticides on their lawns each year.
- Then there’s the mowing – cutting your grass for an hour with a gas-powered lawn mower pollutes as much as making the five hour drive from Ottawa to Quebec city.
- Finally, although grass has some value as a carbon sink and can absorb rainwater to prevent flooding, it’s far from the most effective crop at either task.
Because of the above reasons and more, for decades now, many environmentally-minded homeowners have eschewed the standard grass lawn for more climate-friendly alternatives. If you truly are looking to cultivate a yard that is not only carbon-neutral, but can even benefit the environment as a carbon sink or haven for pollinators, the grass lawns we inherited from England will never be the best option.
However, last month’s visit to my hometown was a potent reminder of how across Canada, maintaining a lush, freshly-mowed lawn is not only the status quo, but a point of pride. In some municipalities, a turfgrass lawn can even be a legal requirement. So, for those who aren’t ready or able to give up their beloved lawn for a pollinator garden or xeriscape, Climate Legacy has compiled a few tips to help reduce your lawn’s carbon footprint and better integrate it with your local environment.
Five Tips to ‘Green’ Your Lawn
1. Downsize your lawn to cut your workload and increase biodiversity
The most surefire way to reduce your lawn’s carbon footprint is to reduce the size of the lawn itself. This is an especially useful approach if you value your grass for outdoor recreation – if you have grandkids who like to use your lawn for an impromptu game of badminton, for example, you will need at least some turfgrass. But any space they don’t need can be converted to a flower garden, vegetable garden, rock garden, or more native groundcovers (we’ll explore these more in tip #2).
If you reduce the amount of grass covering your lawn by half, that will mean half as much mowing or watering. Alternatively, if planting a different crop feels like too much work, another option is to let more of your lawn grow wild, and only mow and water the sections you plan to use. Some folks with larger properties opt to mow paths through their lawn, creating impromptu walking trails and saving hours of work and expense. It is also important to keep any grass near water unmowed to prevent soil erosion, and unfertilized to prevent runoff from polluting local waterways.
2. Diversify! Embrace clover or other groundcovers
Many grass purists put in a tremendous effort to cull the clover from their lawns, even using herbicides to remove it, but this is often a lost opportunity. Clover is drought tolerant, requires less water and mowing than grass, and not only doesn’t need fertilizer, but can actually provide nitrogen to your soil. If allowed to bloom, clover can also help sustain a healthy bee population. Although some opt for a lawn made up entirely of clover, even just allowing it to mingle with your grass brings many of these benefits.
Clover does have some drawbacks though. If you’re allergic to bees you may want to avoid it, and clover isn’t as resilient as grass, so it won’t stand up quite as well to frequent foot traffic. Some may also point out that many species of clover are non-native, but the same is usually true of the grass we grow.
Clover is just one great alternative to grass, but it may not be the best fit for your region or your space. If you’d like to learn about some more options, here’s a blog that explores groundcovers that are native to Canada and bring benefits that turfgrass typically lacks.
3. Replace fertilizer with mulch
A climate-friendly yard cannot include synthetic fertilizers. Many homeowners use these to achieve a lush, healthy-looking lawn, but their toll on our planet isn’t worth the benefits. In a 2019 interview, Cornell University professor of plant and soil ecology David Wolfe shared that for each ton of synthetic nitrogen produced for fertilizers, four to six tons of carbon ends up in the atmosphere. Once they reach your garden, fertilizers typically provide more nitrogen that plants can absorb, and the excess is converted to nitrogen oxide gas, which ends up – you guessed it – trapping heat in our atmosphere.
Many lawns do just fine without fertilizer, but if your lawn needs a nitrogen boost, a great alternative is either organic fertilizers (which are better than synthetic, but not perfect) or using mulch. The most commonly recommended mulch is likely hanging around your lawn already. Lawn clippings and fallen leaves further shredded by a lawnmower can both be left on your lawn to return nutrients to the soil. Enriching your lawn this way can retain moisture, meaning you’ll need to water less, and a healthier lawn reduces erosion. Other mulch options include wood chips, bark, pine needles, and straw, to name just a few.
4. If you have to water, water thoughtfully
Watering is a bit like fertilizing, in that many lawns do just fine without it, and the lawns that may need it often get too much. Whenever possible, let rainwater do the work for you. This means avoiding watering your lawn when rain is in the forecast, and if possible, using rain gutters or downspouts to direct the rain onto your lawn and into rain barrels, which you can use as water sources between rainfalls.
Grass is also more resilient to dry spells than many of us realize. Even when it’s turning brown, grass may just be dormant. Many species of grass can remain dormant for up to six weeks without experiencing lasting harm, but while grass is dormant you’ll want to keep off it, as foot traffic can kill dormant grass that might otherwise have bounced back.
5. Mow right, and without the combustion engine
Many of us see mowing as a cardinal climate sin of lawn maintenance, and for good reason. As mentioned, mowing with a gas-powered lawn mower pollutes more than driving, especially if you have an older model (gas-powered mowers can also cause respiratory problems). An electric mower is a much better option for keeping carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and out of your lungs, and also reduces noise pollution.
How you mow can also affect the health of your lawn, and may go a long way towards reducing the sort of maintenance that expands a lawn’s carbon footprint. Reducing your mowing in spring, or even waiting until June to start mowing, can protect pollinators. Once you start mowing, you’ll want to cut most turfgrass to 3 to 4 inches. Taller grass is typically healthier and has a stronger root system, which improves its ability to soak up water and prevent flooding. The shade from tall grass also makes your lawn more inhospitable to weeds.
If you have a newer mower, yours may also come with a ‘mulching mode’ that does a better job of cutting the grass finely and distributing clippings where they can return nutrients to your soil.
Conclusion: Changing How We Think About Grass
As I researched this newsletter, I spoke with Rieky Stuart, one of Climate Legacy’s steering committee members. Rieky shared a bit about her journey converting her lawn in Victoria to a mix of vegetables and flowers. All of these thrive much better in the area, which is a rain shadow, and where only limited watering is allowed. Rieky had many useful tips for building a healthy garden free of grass, including laying down cardboard to remove unwanted patches of lawn, and placing dirt on top of the cardboard where new plants can thrive.
What most stood out to me about my conversation with Rieky though, was a story from when her family first arrived in Canada from Holland. In Holland, Rieky was used to seeing grass in public parks, but the strictly maintained lawns we consider standard in Canada were a surprise.
“On my walk to school I walked by the London Life Insurance building,” Rieky recalls, “which had a lawn which did not have one weed, which was perfectly manicured – I’m sure they took nail scissors to it – and I had never, ever seen anything like that before.”
Rieky’s recollection is a helpful reminder that our lawns in Canada and the U.S. (and the UK before that) are far from the norm globally. Maintenance-heavy and carbon intensive turfgrass lawns result from decades of status quo bias. Because there are millions of acres of lawn in Canada (exact statistics are elusive, but the U.S. has roughly 40 million acres), if we shift our status quo away from unnecessary watering, gas-powered mowing, and the use of synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides, we will be one step closer to achieving a truly sustainable way of life.
This story was featured in the July edition of our newsletter! If you want to read more stories like this, as well as climate resources right to your inbox, consider joining our newsletter!