Lawn Alternative Plantings in Natural Areas and At Home (2025)
Plants & Horticulture
•
53m
Turfgrass lawns are the number one irrigated crop in North America. While the lawns of our play fields and picnic spaces are valuable, other lawns exist as an unconsidered, socially-default landscape. All these roadsides, corporate campuses, parking lots, and other incidental lawn spaces in our landscapes have the potential to become something more. While converting these lawn spaces into full prairie restorations would be better overall for the environment and potentially better for ecosystem services, this is often not feasible or desired due to safety or aesthetic concerns associated with taller vegetation. Here we propose a “middle ground” of native lawn alternatives– plantings that are short, like lawn, but that deliver ecosystem services over and above those provided by turfgrass.
Up Next in Plants & Horticulture
-
Natives That Need More Love: Short-st...
Luke Dahlberg, conservation seed program manager at Citizens for Conservation, shares his expertise in horticulture and the significance of native plants. He discusses the challenges of propagating underrepresented spring species, the impact of poaching, and economic factors affecting plant avail...
-
FreeTeaser: Natives That Need More Lo...
In this session, Luke discusses the challenges of propagating underrepresented spring species, the impact of poaching, and economic factors affecting plant availability. The conversation covers various native plants, their growth habits, and cultivation challenges, while providing recommendations...
-
You Are An Educator: Elevating Enrich...
A disconnect exists between the popular and traditional ideas of landscape and the ecological forefront our industry has begun to embrace. All of us in the green industry are responsible for accurately representing the importance of our work and the value of doing that work well. Come together fo...
