Chuck Martin: Where is the American lawn headed?
Chuck Martin, Whiting Forest
Published 1:49 am EDT, Saturday, August 8, 2020
A mixture of fine fescues called "No Mow" at Dow Gardens in the Whiting Forest area. Staff is only mowing the areas planted in "No Mow" only a couple of times a year and allowing it to grow 12 inches. (Photo provided/Chuck Martin)
For the last three weeks I have been writing about the history and Americans' views of their lawns. If you have made the decision to read these articles, I hope that I didn't waste your time and I related to you that tending an American lawn is as American as grilling a hamburger, thinking baseball is a favorite pastime and fist bumping. Through these articles, I also hinted that the high maintenance American lawn is not very environmentally friendly. Our lawns suck up fertilizer, water, pesticides and time that have been demonstrated to have adverse effects on our environment.
The next topic I would like to discuss is the sustainability of the American lawn. What does the future look like with regards to the lawn in the American landscape.
Just to let you know I have not gotten out my Ouija board, crystal ball or tarot cards. I am not very good in telling the future. In fact I thought that the Beatles were just a fad of the 60s and the iPhone would never sell.
Not being very good at seeing the future, I can speak though to a few things that are happening in the landscape that might change the way we maintain and design our landscapes.
Taking a look at our Canadian friends, in 2010 they made the decision to ban the use of "weed and feed" products. This is a trend in Canada discouraging the use of herbicides for cosmetic purposes. At that time I looked into changing my career into smuggling weed-and-feed products into Canada and sell them on the black market. I then came to my senses and decided to continue to pull weeds as a career.
Weed and feed products are created by adding an herbicide to fertilizer in order to have one product that will kill weeds and enrich the grass at the same time. The opposition of these products stated the fertilizer should be put down early in the season before the growth of broadleaf weeds and herbicides should be applied later in the season after they have started to grow. So the timing of the two products doesn't coincide. They also argued that herbicides should only be spot treated and not cover the whole lawn where there might not be weeds.
During this time many lawn care personal were concerned that this type of ruling might occur in the United States. This concern has not occurred in the United States. In fact the lawn care companies that apply herbicides and fertilizer together still have increasing profits and are gaining in popularity every year.
The question: Are Americans so infatuated with their lawns that this trend will continue or will someday the use of herbicides for cosmetic purposes be restricted? Will our expectation of a perfect lawn be altered?
A trend in America is the concern for pollinators and creating habitats to increase their numbers. This means designing gardens that have flowering plants that are pollinated by insects.
Turf grasses are wind pollinated and our lawns create a sterile environment for insect pollinators. I have recently seen a trend where broadleaf flowering plants are put into lawn seed mixtures. Shorter plants like white clover, creeping thyme, self-heal and ground plum are considered weeds by most homeowners but now their seed is being added to grass mixtures to help the pollinators. This completely eliminates the use of herbicides and encourages dandelions. Can you imagine people actually wanting dandelions in their lawn? I am having the shakes just thinking about it.
In many parts of the country there is a concern that we are over irrigating our lawns. With this concern people are looking at using plants that require less water. Xeriscaping is becoming popular in areas of our country where there is a shortage of water causing irrigation to be expensive. Xeriscaping is a term that was devised in 1981 by the water department of Denver to encourage less water usage. Because of our love of lawns many parts of the country have not embraced xeriscaping because one of the major concepts is a reduction of lawns. While visiting Colorado, I noticed that xeriscaping and lawn reduction is accepted practice. I was told that people actually are shamed for watering their lawns.
We are looking at a mixture of fine fescues called "No Mow" at Dow Gardens in the Whiting Forest area. We are mowing the areas planted in "No Mow" only a couple of times a year and allowing it to grow 12 inches. It has been interesting to see how the public and fellow employees have reacted to the unkempt look that "No Mow" provides. I have seen people who are awed by the "romantic" look while others say it looks messy.
After years of irrigating, spraying herbicides and fertilizing I am having a hard time learning the care and maintenance of a "No Mow" lawn. If you have experience or knowledge of this type of turf, please give me a call and help educate me. If you are interested to see the "No Mow" grass and give me your opinion, I would love to talk with you.
Not knowing if the American lawn is sustainable and will be around for many more future generations, I can confidently say that the way we view and maintain our lawns will change. How soon the change will occur will depend upon how our lawns are continually viewed by the homeowner along with their desires and the public environmental concerns.