This story was originally published on Undark, and reproduced here in collaboration with Climate Desk. Appleton, Wisconsin, will bring No Mow May in the United States in 2020. Proponents claimed that by temporarily forgoing mowing in the spring and letting lawns grow with flowers instead, residents could help bees and insect pollinators. They even went so far as to
[[{“value”:”This article was first published by Undark, and it is now available these as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
No Mow May was introduced to the United States in the Wisconsin city of Appleton in 2020. Each spring, by briefly forgoing sweeping and letting private lawns grow with flowers, residents could support bees and other insect pollinators, proponents claimed. In fact, they actually claimed that their own independently published scientific study supported the practice.
However, the study was fully retracted after critics discovered serious flaws in the work conducted in Appleton more than two years after.
To Sara Stricker, a plant pathologist, it was another sign of anti- grass zealotry gone astray. She launched a campaign in the spring of 2023 to criticize No Mow May, claiming the movement was misguided and did n’t deliver on its promise. However, she noted that typically, people do n’t want to digest the research behind it:” They just want the quick hashtag and a little sign with a cute little icon in it that makes them feel good.”
It almost goes without saying that a lawn has less biodiversity than a local ecosystem, according to the article.
Before much, Stricker’s inbox filled with hate mail. For instance, she said she was accused of being in the pocket of industry. The Guelph Turfgrass Institute, which has outdoor research fields for the express purpose of studying the green stuff that includes lawns, sports fields, and golf fairways, employs Stricker as a communications and referral coordinator for the Guelph Turfgrass Institute, which has offices outside of Toronto. She maintains that she was merely attempting to strike up a conversation, and acknowledges that her institution receives support from chemical factories and the lawn care sector, which are both common in agricultural and agricultural research. But, she said,” None of us are walking around with devil horns saying,’ Woohaha, I want to kill something today.’ We’re all in it because we like being inside, we like doing sports, we like nature”.
Stricker had not simply called for a Blitzkrieg on biodiversity. In fact, she urged people to plant a wider variety of species if they wanted to support wildlife. ( Other experts have proposed similar measures. ) No Mow May was doubtful to have much of a difference in an experiment conducted in GreenMaster, a trade publication for American golf course managers. Over the course of the one-month study, untended plots of Kentucky bluegrass did not significantly support more flowers compared to plots mowed at two and a half inches.
But why did grass experts from a top grass-growing institute in North America come over swinging against something so seemingly harmless as No Mow May? If something as simple as not mowing for a month does n’t do much for biodiversity, then what lawn- care practices—from tearing up sod entirely to planting lush wildflower meadows—are supported by data and research?
One of the largest and quickest-growing landscapes in the US is made up of weeds. These ecosystems—water- starving, energy- rigorous monocultures—extend way beyond the picket fence, including highway medians, sac- de- sacs, and business office parks. De facto lawns even exist under thermal arrays, on soccer fields, and in city parks. In the US, it’s a landmass that, by some estimates, covers an area about the size of Iowa.
The concept of nicely- trimmed, strongly shorn spaces originated as a status symbol in Europe. In an effort to recoup the locations they left behind, colonizers planted grasses. By the 18th century, wealthy Americans began tending official lawns, and little after, especially in the wake of post- war industrialization and suburban development, the masses followed suit.
However, as volunteer organizations and individuals became more vocal in urging its eradication by the 1980s, the lawn started to lose its appeal. The essay” Why Clear” by author Michael Pollan was published in 1989. which vividly described lawns as “nature purged of sex and death”. In some circles, lawns have come to exemplify a consumerist sensibility. ” Over the past 50 years, we’ve gradually fallen out of love with lawns”, The Washington Post reported in 2022. ” They began to signal waste, disregard, disharmony, homogeneity, gentrification, zombie Boomerism”.
” You can drive a stake through its heart, you can put on the garlic”, but you still wo n’t ever get rid of the grass.
The imperatives to remove lawns span a range of concerns: managing limited water, building climate resiliency, boosting biodiversity, and yet supporting emotional health. Any change is definitely preferable to the status quo, according to Virginia Tech restoration ecologist J. Leighton Reid. He claimed that “it nearly goes without saying that a lawn has less biodiversity than a local ecosystem.” ” I mean, that’s really certainly going to be the case”.
But what really works? Quick-fix lawn-conversion solutions frequently run into issues in the field. For one, modern agricultural and botanical research frequently concentrates on large-scale industrial production. ( Private firms, such as those marketing chemical fertilizers and herbicides, overwhelmingly bankroll R&, D in the US. ) In contrast, ornate lawn maintenance falls to practitioners—DIYers and hired professionals alike—who learn from experience and tend to focus on what looks best. No one is certain how to replace the lawn and make it into a more useful ecosystem, but advers even take matters into their own hands.
Maybe the grass itself poses the most clear and lasting issue. Grassy grasses typically have a number of sexual methods and survival strategies that are difficult to eradicate. As Laura Jackson, director of the University of Northern Iowa’s Tallgrass Prairie Center, which conducts huge- scale prairie restoration, put it:” You can drive a stake through its heart, you can put on the garlic, you can get out the silver cross or whatever, and you’re also going to have that stuff”.
Old habits die hard, also. When it comes to lawns—to walk barefoot on a soft carpet of grass, the sensibility, the institution of lawn care, the entire way of thinking—the practice seems invincible. So some people use gas-powered mowers to mow their lawns while their neighbors encircle them with No Mow May signs. Certainly, there has to be a middle ground.
The conventional lawn may be late for disruption because monoculture grasses do not support significant life, according to ecologists. Just put, lawns are remarkably beautiful: They look natural, but are not literally “green” in terms of supporting a practical ecosystem.
One study on 159 home yards in the Washington, DC, area found that, even in the lush suburbs, an area rich with flowering plants, the landscape filled with nonnative vegetation lacked resources for birds. These exotic plant species were able to eat fewer insects than the Carolina chickadee, a favorite local bird species. In essence, the affluent landscape doubled as a food desert for the birds.
Therefore, the impetus to convert. The best way to do but, nevertheless, is questionable. One master’s thesis study looked at Virginia’s grasslands, and it found that native wildflowers established more frequently when the existing grass was completely destroyed ( as opposed to seeding the wildflowers without having the grass removed ). Another PhD student discovered proof that restored grassland’s local plant diversity is a pale copy in comparison to grassland that remained somewhat undisturbed.
” You ca n’t try to salvage that human piece from restoration,” says the director. You ca n’t pretend it’s just for nature”.
Reid, the restoration ecologist at Virginia Tech who oversaw these studies, said he’s not sure how well the findings translated because the studies focused on large-scale post-agricultural production systems. However, one thing to remember is that it’s a case for clearly delineated strips that geographically individual grass from local plantings, given that native species fare better with less competition from grasses.
But, it’s not that there is disagreement over the why. Lawns could stand to benefit from greater biodiversity. However, it’s the way it should be, from electrical tools to sod-busting mechanical tools to chemical herbicides.
The lack of one-size-fits-all restrictive advice is also a result of favoritism on an institutional scale as well as the heterogeneity of the landscape ( the average rainfall and climate in Virginia is not the same as, say, southern California ). Reid contends that it should be no less important to study lawn conversion with an eye toward biodiversity despite fiscal incentives focusing on research related to the commercial production of food.
That’s doubtful, nevertheless. His research partly derived from an effort to develop pastures that prevented cows from becoming bored from consuming nonnative grasses in the summer. He continued,” I do n’t think they would have received it as well as pitching it as a cattle production study,” adding,” If we had pitched that as a lawn transformation study.”
Out in the Corn Belt, Jackson at the Tallgrass Prairie Center, which distributes seed and technical assistance for plantings along Iowa’s people roadsides, contends that urban lawns likely amount to a rounding error in terms of, say, providing food for migrant butterflies. ” It’s absolutely of no significance whatsoever from the point of view of monarch populations”, she said. ” From a social point of view, from the point of view of people caring about monarchs, if that were to translate into political action, that’d be great, that would be important. However, it does n’t move a needle at all from the perspective of milkweed’s water quality or number of stems.
Also, the institute’s research has some potentially useful findings. Jackson’s research on seeding milkweed ( the host plant for monarch caterpillars ) in road ditches with existing vegetation showed abysmal results without applying herbicides, such as Roundup, prior to planting. ” You get specifically no plants”, Jackson said. ” You use Roundup once, you get a few more, and, if you round it up a couple of times, you get a few more”.
The amount of herbicides used yearly in wildflower restoration is small when compared to the large volumes sprayed on crops like corn and soybeans, despite Jackson’s stated preference that she personally prefers not to use chemical controls, which are controversied because of their harmful effects on soil, insect, and human health. The reality is there’s little prairie left, and it is n’t regenerating on its own. ” We’ve done a lot of damage and it’s not going to be easy to undo that damage”, she said.
” I do n’t hate lawns. I like usable lawns. And bastard lawns are no functional”.
Jackson championed restoration, and her blanket advice for others was just to underscore the uncertainty:” A great deal of humility is called for in this business”.
However, Linda Chalker- Scott, a professor and extension industrial horticulturist at Washington State University, suggested grass- killing herbicides only be used as a last resort. Challen- Scott has a reputation for disproving “horticultural myths.” Her first skepticism piqued when she was reading a textbook on landscaping and came across some fishy citations:” So that’s when I started thinking,’ Also, where is this information coming from? ‘ And therefore tracing it back and saying,’ Well, this is n’t science. This is merely someone’s anecdote or some self-proclaimed guru telling people what to do, not someone’s.
She has co-authored a study that found flaws in using cardboard and other sheet mulches to cover a yard in order to smother and kill off existing vegetation. She generally advises against digging up grass ( it removes organic matter and disturbs the soil ). She claimed that using 12 inches of crude wood chips is worse than using dark plastic, which kills undesired plants by solarization and reduces the movement of gasses from the soil into the atmosphere and vice versa. Mulching grasses when inert, she said, “is the single best way to prepare soil for planting, to get rid of weeds, and to pretty much improve and retain soil tilth”.
Chalker- Scott even made it evident that she was n’t advocating for the total elimination of lawns. ” I do n’t hate lawns. I like practical lawns. And bastard lawns”, she said, describing those planted with a roll of turf, “are not functional”.
Perhaps there is n’t a single true path cut out of the grass. About 10 years before, Nancy Shackelford, an ecologist at the University of Victoria, co- authored a paper outlining nine principles for restoration. ” We talked a lot in that 2013 paper about resilience and self- boosting ecosystems, as in, like,’ Take the humans out of it.’ And I do n’t really aspire to that anymore”.
Today, she said, the best laid plans involve restored ecosystems that people want to maintain. ” Restoration is usually about values. Often”, she said. So, you ca n’t take that human piece as much as you can try to restore it, so. You ca n’t pretend it’s just for nature”.
Ecology ultimately lacks great cohesive theories, and her perspective reflects a larger shift. When the principal restoration group, the Society for Ecological Restoration, updated its primer, for instance, the global conservation organization described restoration taking many shapes. Any step appeared to be a good first step, according to Shackelford, and also what might seem like a simple symbolic lawn restoration can be helpful. However, she claimed that occasionally, the global community suggested that a restored ecosystem could and should take care of itself.
But she was less and less certain that people had a say in managing all ecosystems. It’s kind of our job at this point”.”}]] This story was originally published by Undark, and it is a part of the Climate Desk collaboration. No Mow May was introduced to the United States in the Wisconsin city of Appleton in 2020. Each spring, by briefly forgoing sweeping and letting private lawns grow with flowers, residents could support bees and other insect pollinators, proponents claimed. However, they also
This story was originally published on Undark, and reproduced here in collaboration with Climate Desk. Appleton, Wisconsin, will bring No Mow May in the United States in 2020. Proponents claimed that by temporarily forgoing mowing in the spring and letting lawns grow with flowers instead, residents could help bees and insect pollinators. They even went so far as to
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