Look What I Found!

Picture a typical suburban home anywhere in America. What easily comes to mind is an image of a nice house, a car or two in the driveway, and beautifully trimmed lawn. Growing concern about climate change has begun to change this picture in relatively non-intrusive ways. Many people are putting solar panels on their roofs, and even more are trading in their gas-guzzlers for one of the many hybrid cars now on the market. The lawns, however, for the most part have stayed the same. Why? How does a patch of land growing only turf grass, sucking up water, energy and chemicals, impact our personal and global wellbeing? What if that patch was 128,000 square kilometers? That’s about three times the size of America’s irrigated corn crop (Milesi). Get the picture? But there are sustainable options, and one in particular that seems to me to be the most effective. Switching from traditional turf grass lawns to native plant gardens lessens pressure on water supplies and the environment.