In contrast, using your yard to grow your own food helps you put valuable soil back into production , and backyard gardens tend to use a third less water than standard lawns. Best of all, it’s easier than you think to get started.
This ecological damage isn’t always close to home. Every year, fertilizer runoff from suburban lawns lands in the Mississippi River and travels to the Gulf of Mexico, where it creates a hypoxic (dead) zone that kills off millions of fish and other species.
For a natural alternative, leave the grass clippings on the lawn after mowing it so that they can decompose in place and restore fertility to the soil. In fact, research shows that if lawn clippings were left to decay on every lawn in the United States, 37 billion pounds of carbon would be stored each year. 18)
But, the cost of this near-universal cultivation practice is staggering for the environment.
Lawn care products are also likely to be overapplied, resulting in unsafe conditions for all species involved.
Don’t be fooled by appearances. A grassy lawn might look natural, but in regards to its usefulness for other species, it might as well be asphalt. Most common lawn grasses aren’t native to America, meaning that the vast majority of local insects struggle to survive in them.
Non-native grass species aren’t naturally suited to North American conditions, meaning that copious amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides are often needed to keep them healthy.