Green Up Your Green Thumb

As the American suburb skyrocketed in popularity in the years following World War II, it began to have an immediate impact on culture and collective consciousness United States. Open streets, larger land plots, and front-yard driveways thrust a person’s choice of automobile forward, just as the new suburban design made that same car a transportation necessity. Rows of similar and often identical homes fostered an atmosphere of calmness and conformity, and neat hedgerows and picket fences cordoned off properties firmly but politely. And at the centerpiece of each of these newly idealized homes was, always, a green, meticulous lawn.

People in the United States love their lawns—American consumers put down nearly 12 billion dollars in 2003 to maintain that familiar plot of green. And while it might seem a bit indulgent, with water and fertilizer readily and cheaply available, and a potential 20% increase in property value at stake, Americans had good economic reason to spend so freely. Unfortunately and somewhat ironically, though, the most impressively green lawns also tend to be the most extremely bad for the environment.

Aside from the carbon released by deforestation in clearing new lawn property, a precisely-manucured lawn demands constant attention with water that has been collected, purified, and pumped with power provided in large part by coal plants. While plant fertilizers rich in nitrates and phosphates can do wonders by encouraging plant grown on land, they often end up in runoff, where they pollute lakes and streams with fish-killing algal blooms, and a greenish-blue tint.

But the most obvious polluters by far are the lawnmowers, leaf-blowers, edgers, and trimmers. Despite their smaller-sized engines, lawn equipment is loud and notoriously inefficient, often relying on older, dirtier two-stroke engines, which produce not only heat-trapping carbon dioxide, but also a variety of particulate pollutants, and noxious, incompletely combusted hydrocarbons. The damage caused by these small engines is further amplified by the fact that they receive little maintenance or tuning up until their eventual failure, after which disturbing numbers of them end up leeching oils and other toxins into public landfills.

But there are plenty of ways for landowners to green up their green thumb. Eco-friendly fertilizers can be extracted from a variety of common waste products, reducing both energy spent in the creation of commercial fertilizer and the amount of waste that ends up in landfills. Drawing from their experience developing batteries for hybrid vehicles, battery companies like PowerGenix are helping to create a generation of cordless electric garden tools that are quiet, clean, emissions-free and more powerful than their gas-driven cousins, without the toxic threat presented by older battery technologies. 

While there are plenty of other simple, homespun tips for maintaining a lawn that is both green and green friendly, the fact remains that in many parts of the country, low rainfall, cold winters, and sandy soil make the manicured lawn of green Bermuda grass simply unrealistic without a massive, negative impact on the environment as a whole. The best bet for an environmentally conscious lawn is almost always native landscaping—see the EPA’s website on the topic for further information.

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The Moss Option
Composting For Climate Change
Nature, Landscape, and Building for Sustainability

Photo by Jason Coleman