Not soon enough

THE U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL Protection Agency has announced that it is finally going to impose restrictions on the amount of pollution that can be spewed by lawnmowers, weed whackers, and other gas-powered engines in lawn and garden equipment. Effective in 2011, these machines will be required to cut smog-forming emissions by 35 percent.

The EPA has estimated that small gas-powered lawn and garden machinery emits anywhere from 9 to 33 percent of some air pollutants, depending on where you live. The person operating the equipment gets an even higher dose. Anything that removes some of this pollution has to be counted as good.


But why wait until 2011 to enjoy these benefits? Instead of a lawn mower, why not use a scythe? It's good exercise and nonpolluting as well. Much easier to store, too.

The scythe shown at left is a traditional Austrian scythe from Lee Valley. I was assured by an expert on scythes that it is an excellent choice for a beginner who is just interested in cutting grass. (There are other styles of scythes that might be more useful for other situations.) To learn more about this scythe, see this page at the Lee Valley website. (If you have any trouble finding it, look under Gardening/Lawn Care/Assorted).

Pesticides and Lawn Care

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL'S online real estate section continues its somewhat unlikely role as a promoter of organic landscaping. In an article titled "'Green Lawns' Spur Neighborhood Wars," Gwendolyn Bounds describes her own effort to create a conventional lawn using only organic methods. Now, personally I regard conventional lawns as pretty silly no matter how they're arrived at. But there's no doubting their popularity. (See "The Sad Story of the American Lawn" for why.) And if people must have them by all means let them be maintained organically.

Bounds does a great--indeed, rather frightening--job of explaining why this matters. She cites research conducted at the Harvard School of Public Health, which "found that individuals reporting exposure to pesticides had a 70% higher incidence of Parkinson's disease than those not reporting exposure. The report notes that among individuals who are not farmers, the significant association is 'most likely explained by use of pesticides in home or in gardening.'" According to Bounds, research at the Mayo Clinic also found a connection between Parkinson's and pesticide exposure, while other research has found a connection between exposure to herbicides in lawns and gardens and cancer in dogs.

To all of this, I hope you will join me in saying a big, hearty "Yikes!"

If you do want a weed-free "perfect" lawn and also want it to be organic, the article makes it plain that the process can take time and effort. The secret to a lush organic lawn, Bounds says, is to attain such a thick planting of grass that weeds don't stand a chance. Recommended steps are:

1. Get a soil test. With the results in hand, you then have to determine what soil amendments are needed to promote optimal grass growth.
2. Stop using "unnatural" herbicides. Instead, Bounds recommends using a natural corn-gluten herbicide, which works by preventing seeds from germinating. This is an interesting suggestion, with potential applications even in the "wild" garden. I'll have more to say about corn-gluten herbicides tomorrow.
3. Use natural fertilizers. Bounds makes heavy use of natural fertilizers such as organic compost in order to ensure thick growth.
4. Set the mower to "high" (at least 3 inches). Taller grass has a better shot at crowding out weeds.
5. Water early in the morning, about once a week, making sure the lawn gets about an inch of water each week. Heavy watering is designed to ensure a lush lawn; unfortunately it's not an environmentally benign recommendation because it is very wasteful of water. I mention this only because the article mentions it, but it is not a practice I personally would ever recommend.
6. Seed bare spots in fall. Bounds suggests adding white clover to the usual lawn mix because it adds nitrogen to the soil and is such a tough plant. Although white clover is not native, it is a very good bee plant, and I think it can be useful in a wild garden. I'll talk more about that the day after tomorrow.

On the whole, however, I much prefer my alternative, which is to give up on lawn altogether.

The Sad Story of the American Lawn

EVER WONDER WHY LARGE LAWNS ARE A STATUS SYMBOL? When one of the members of an e-list I belonged to asked this question online, I took great pleasure in hauling out a book called The Lawn: A History of an American Obsession by Virginia Scott Jenkins, published by the Smithsonian Institution Press in 1994. Here's the answer I came up with:

Jenkins says that the lawn as we know it now is a product of the American suburbs of the 1950s. However, the idea of lawn got its start at the end of the 18th century, when a few upper class Americans tried to imitate the landscaping style of English and French country estates. (As it happens, this landscaping style is spectacularly unsuitable to growing conditions in most of North America, but apparently the attraction of lawn-as-status-symbol was already far stronger than the counter-argument of lawn-as-pain-in-the-neck.)

Within 100 years, the popularity of lawn had trickled down to the American upper middle class. However, by this time the style already looked almost nothing like the aristocratic European landscapes that originally inspired it. European visitors to North America in the 19th century regarded the American front lawn as "strange," according to Jenkins.

In the 20th century, the lawn was adopted by the middle middle class, which took it along as the suburbs were developed, making lawn the conventional style of landscaping for conventional suburban housing throughout North America. The popularity of lawns was encouraged by the growing popularity of golf, which helped to funnel money into development of tools, chemicals, and special seed mixes required to maintain lawns (especially in environments to which they're not suited). A third influence was increasing affluence and the 40-hour work week--because of these, the North American middle class now had the time and money necessary to maintain those lawns. Today lawn care is a multi-billion dollar industry.

According to the Wikipedia, a recent NASA study found that nearly 32 million acres of the United States are now covered with lawn. Unfortunately, this popular style of landscaping can be very destructive:

• Conventional lawns are often composed of just one species of (typically non-native) plant, which reduces biodiversity to a minimal level.
• Conventional lawns are very poor wildlife habitat. Relatively few animals can use lawn for any purpose, and those that do use lawns are often introduced species and/or pest species.
• Conventional lawn care typically involves use of pesticides, herbicides, synthetic fertilizers, and gasoline-powered lawnmowers, all of which are likely to damage the environment.
• Keeping a lawn green in summer typically requires supplemental watering.

And finally, unless you have kids who play a lot of sports, lawns are generally unproductive. Land that could have been used to grow food, shelter animals, grow trees, or allowed to serve some other useful purpose is instead placed at the service of (a largely imagined) self-aggrandizement. To me, this is the saddest part of the sad story of the American lawn.

Natural Landscaping in the News

"LATEST GARDEN RIVALRY is eco-friendly design," according to a headline appearing today in the San Diego Source, reprinting an article that appeared originally in the Wall Street Journal.

Author Troy McMullen writes, "This spring, landscapers who specialize in green gardening are reporting a sharp increase in business and growing interest in complex systems that capture and recycle rainwater and snowmelt. Another area seeing stepped-up activity is eco-friendly 'hardscaping.' Some homeowners are ripping up the blacktop and concrete on their driveways and patios and putting in permeable paving materials that allow water to pass through to the ground beneath, reducing runoff that can create soil erosion and flood municipal sewer systems."

The article includes some interesting information from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: Americans spend more than 3 billion hours per year maintaining lawns; most of this activity involves the use of equipment that burns about 720 million gallons of gas per year. A regular lawnmower emits as much pollution in an hour as would 11 cars, and a riding mower emits as much as 34 cars. Americans also spill some 4 million gallons of fuel each year while refueling their lawn equipment. The typical landscaped yard also requires more than 10,000 gallons of water a year.

"The use of native plants has become increasingly popular among some gardeners in the past 10 years," McMullen writes.

Alternatives to Peat

MY FAVORITE GARDEN BLOGGER has been writing about peat. A lot of people are raising questions about the environmental cost of using peat, which is taken from bogs and wetlands. Blogger Jodi DeLong, aka Bloomingwriter, is a thoughtful, concerned gardener (to say nothing of a charming and knowledgeable writer) who, in addition to all the other useful information she dispenses, takes the time to ponder questions such as this one.

On reading Jodi's blog, my first thought was to offer an alternative to peat. Fortunately, I know about a mulch/soil amendment formula that is so good I doubt anyone who uses it will ever want to give peat another thought. I got the recipe from Anne Lovejoy, a garden writer who lives in Seattle and is very popular on the West Coast:

*composted manure + dried alfalfa*

If you can’t get the dried alfalfa from a garden-supply company, blocks of dried alfalfa (aka 'alfalfa pellets') are sold as goat feed in small sizes or horse feed in large sizes; the smaller size works better if you can get it. If you buy alfalfa as animal feed, you have to be sure that it hasn’t been medicated, however.

When it gets wet, the dried alfalfa swells and forms the best weed barrier you've ever seen. This combination also feeds the plants. Lovejoy says, “When combined, manure-based compost and alfalfa synergistically release extra nitrogen to plants, which benefit them both quickly and over time.” I mostly know that I'm in love with this stuff. It's much easier to put down than peat is; as far as I know, the nutrient value is much higher. And it rewets readily, which peat does not.

Now, I have always remembered the recipe as calling for equal parts of the two ingredients. I've gotten excellent results just by putting down a scoopful of manure followed by the same amount of alfalfa, and so on. However, Lovejoy gave a more complicated explanation in a recent Seattle Post-Intelligencer column I found on the Internet. Personally, I plan to stick with my easy version: one scoop manure, one scoop alfalfa pellets, repeat.

What about peat? One of the advantages of being primarily a native plant gardener is that I don't usually have to worry about questions like this. Generally speaking, native plants are adapted to native soils. Sometimes I have to make changes to soil that has been badly treated (compacted, for instance) in the past, but the changes are generally minimal. I usually start a native garden by putting down cardboard topped by compost. This kills any grass and attracts various critters (worms, burrowing animals) who will break up compacted soil. After that, however, a native garden is supposed to take care of itself. Most of the time, the closest I come to improving the soil is to toss around any rotting logs, wood chips, stumps, broken branches (I make brush piles), rocks, leaves, or other natural materials that happen to come my way. My idea of mulch is to plant things so close together than no weed would dare to try to get in the way!

All of which is to say that I don't know much about the peat controversy because I don't have to: This is one of those environmental questions that, being largely into native plants, I get to skip on the test.

I'm grateful for gardeners who, like Jodi, take the time to do their homework and make environmentally responsible choices in their gardens. If you're looking for an easy way to be environmentally benign, however, think about gardening with native plants: You get to be virtuous, and it's a lot less work.