Green Your Lawn

How to Make Your Lawn Eco Friendly

Grass lawns are normally not green and eco friendly (see why here). If you need to keep some lawn in your home, but still want to live a green lifestyle, here’s how to green your lawn.

(Smile – click here for a humorous look at what we do with our lawns).

Step 1: Reduce Water to Green Your Lawn

Lawns take a huge amount of water.  In fact, according to the Huffington Post, Americans use over 7 billion gallons of water every day just for their lawns.

7 billion gallons of water every day, just for lawns!

In California alone, homeowners water 10 million acres of residential grass, consuming enough water to supply the drinking needs of 40 million households, according to the non-profit Environmental Working Group (EWG).

So, to reduce your water use with these tips:

1. Let your grass grow a little longer in between cuts (about 2 and a half to 3 inches or 6 to 8 cm). It will stay greener, is less likely to scorch, and will need less water.
2. Replace some of your lawn with decorative grasses and / or with flowers, which will use much less water
3. Plant trees around your lawn to provide some shade, which will again reduce your watering requirements.  Trees and shrubs also provide interest and colour to your garden, as well as attracting wildlife.
4. Most people over-water lawns.  But how can you tell if yours gets too much water?   Buy a very inexpensive lawn moisture meter. Or you can even get an intelligent irrigation control system that attunes your watering to the weather and your lawn’s needs.
5. Don’t remove the clippings after you mow the lawn.  They act as mulch, reducing weed growth and reducing water use.
6. If you live in an area that is prone to drought, then allow your lawn to go brown at peak heat times.  It’s simply dormant, not dead, and it will turn green again once the rains return.

Step 2: Reduce Chemicals to Green Your Lawn

Here’s something that’s quite horrific. According to the Huffington Post, American homeowners use, on average, 10 times the amount of pesticides per acre than farmers!  (I don’t have stats for other countries, but I’m sure it’s high in most developed countries).

Here’s how to reduce your chemical use:

1. Birds are great pest eaters – set up a bird feeder and enjoy the sights and sounds of beautiful birds looking after your lawn for you!
2. Don’t use chemicals to remove weeds.  Pull weeds out, roots and all.  Or simply mow them with the lawn.
3. Lawn fertilizer encourages growth, but high-nitrogen fertilizers have a very nasty manufacturing process, contributing to greenhouse gases.
4. So look for natural ways to encourage growth instead.  For example, in Spring and Summer sow microclover (look for grass seed mix with microclover)  – it fixes nitrogen from the air and feeds it back down to the grass roots.  (It’s also a great way of solving any bare patches in your lawn!).

Step 3: Reduce Air Pollution to Green Your Lawn

Many neighborhoods are awash with the noise of lawn mowers and leaf blowers. Here’s what to do.

1.  Lawn mowers

Using a push mower is aerobic exercise (save money on your gym membership!).   Especially if you have a small lawn it’s probably easier and quicker to use a push mower than faffing with wires and extension cables or petrol / gas.  There are push mowers for all budgets and sizes.
(My father always said he got a much better lawn when he used a manual mower.  I think he was right).

2.  Leaf Blowers

Don’t mop up fallen leaves, they make great mulch for all of your garden including the lawn.  And you’ll save the air pollution that leaf blowers generate, and you’ll keep the peace with your neighbors.

 Garden Care Services

A final word about eco friendly lawns. Many people leave lawn care to professional companies.

These companies have many gardens to look after, and they want to find the easiest ways possible for them.  For example, many companies will use chemicals to kill weeds rather than bend down and pull them out.

Also, I see advertisements for supposedly eco friendly garden maintenance companies, yet when I actually look at what they’re using, much of it is not green at all.  I get really angry when I see them calling themselves green and eco friendly!

Having said that, there are some genuinely green garden maintenance companies.   Do your research!

If the company you’re using now, doesn’t want to do things the green way, then find someone else.

And of course, there are always neighbourhood kids looking to earn some money by using a push mower or doing some weeding.

Win-Win!

When you green your lawn, you also reduce your workload (keeping a lawn mowed is a lot of work!) so you win and so does the environment – what’s not to love!

If you enjoyed this article, please Share, Like or Tweet it (buttons below) or leave a Comment – thank you!