Rethinking the Quintessential Lawn

Are Vienna's gardens on their way out?

Lawns are cultural icons—but they’re also ecological dead zones. In this episode, Jorden Dye and Kimberly Weir explore how native planting, edible gardens, and rewilding can save water, cut emissions, support pollinators, and make neighborhoods more livable. From Nevada’s “Cash for Grass” program to backyard biodiversity, it’s time to rethink what a beautiful yard really looks like and how the cultural, ecological, and mental health benefits of reconnecting with nature right outside your door.

Recommended Resources

• What Cambridge did

• What Nevada did

• What California did

• Colorado, Minnesota, and Maryland passed “pollinator-friendly” laws

• Lawn Alternatives for Dogs

• Kimberly’s Substack ⁠newsletter post⁠

Transcript

Kimberly

Welcome to this episode of Sustainable Planet. I'm political scientist Kimberly Weir and my co host is Jordan Dye, a guy who knows an awful lot about sustainability issues. Hey Jordan.

Jorden

Hey Kimberly. Thanks for joining me today. In our last episode we looked at the hidden costs of conventional lawns, from water use to emissions to biodiversity loss around cities. This time we're talking about what comes next from native planting to edible gardens to letting your yard just go a little wild. We're digging into sustainable alternatives and how to make your outdoor space part of the solution, not the problem. So Kimberly, we're seeing more cities and towns offer incentives for tearing up the turf. Do you think that that's where the real change will come from? Policy? Or do we need something deeper, like an actual cultural shift?

Kimberly

We live in a fairly water rich area. So this is most of what the city does here is to actually give out trees to plant, encouraging, you know, planting trees. And in fact every year the park system gives away trees and requests. The people who are more likely to get them are the crests from people who are living in the green, like, like urban, like the least green areas, right, the green deserts. And so the places where there are a lot of city streets but not a whole lot of grass and so forth. But if they can have like a lot of like curb area where there's a like a grass bit in between where the sidewalk and the street is. And so, so I think that that's, you know, they get the higher priority. But I think that policy really has to be the driving force when it comes to this. Everything we talked about in the first episode, just how culturally embedded lawns and lawn culture is and like in the United States and perhaps I, I don't know if the Canadian system follows the, you know, like Memorial Day and like all of those Memorial way, what you should be doing on these holidays. Well by Memorial Day you should have done these things with your lawn. And, and so I think that, that you know, that's just going to be always. The resistance is going to be there.

Jorden

Yeah, no, I, I definitely agree and I think, you know, this kind of opening question builds off the end of our conversation in the last Road, where even my hope for a cultural change is just thinking it took 150 years, maybe in 150 years. And so I agree with you. I think policy really has to, to drive it. Now we're going to focus on lawns. I just, I want to do another plug for the sustainable city episode that you and Michael did back in episode eight because I think you guys got a bit into urban canopy and some of the stuff touching on that. I will. Before we go back to lawns, I just want to say I hope your city's giving out more than just male trees.

Kimberly

I'm not. We. We have. We are surrounded by trees. I am grateful. On our property, we live in the city of Cincinnati, but we live on two and a half acres and most of it is wooded. And so we are, We're. We're. It was actually proportioned off from the Mount Airy forest, which is one of the largest city forests in the United States. So I'm really grateful for that because that's where I hike. I talk about hiking all the time. It's like literally 300ft down the street. And that's what we used. We live on part of what used to be just sort of an odd section that some developers. When the city sold it, some developers bought it and put houses with lots of wooded area around them. And that's why we love it here.

Jorden

Wow, that's. That's amazing. But not all of us can live in a forest, right. So for those of us in the city or in the suburbs, we do have some options. What we can do to move beyond Olon, though. Did you have a favorite from the options that we kind of looked at.

Kimberly

I love the native plants. I mean, it's just. I think that's just sort of, you know, let it go. I mean, so we have the lawn space for our dogs, but everything else that I have. So Michael does the like the yard work and the weed whacking and stuff. But I do like everything else practically. He does. What if a tree falls and blocks our driveway? Kind of. And we both shovel snow in our very long driveway, but we actually shovel manually.

Jorden

I was going to say, I've seen pictures of the driveway. I think you both doing it is out of necessity. Just would not get done with one person.

Kimberly

No. Yeah. So we. We tagged him to do it. But. And I. We both. I. I love snow. We both actually enjoy it as it's good exercise too. So. But yeah. So everything else though, I. I take care of and I fight every year with the invasive species. We're going to do an episode on invasive species because, man, I got a lot to say about that. Just trying to overtake what, what green yard space that we actually have. But we. What we do of what we do have everything. I plant meal except for vegetable. The few. The vegetables that I grow and, and even. I mean I grow a lot of herbs too. And I've got tomatoes that, that volunteer back and stuff. So, so and, and also all of the, the around our house and, and even we've got space in our actual yard that we've sort of let go over and we actually have a portion of our, our lawn that after we got a fence put in because we had a dog who was an escape artist and he finally like after five years of the our previous owners had put in, I was not crazy about that. But five years he completely obeyed this. And then one day he just decided to cross the line. And after that it was like we had Houdini. One day I went to retrieve him. I talk about an aside, but it's totally worth it. I he's. I was standing out talking to a delivery person and he just crossed that line and took off up our driveway. And it's on a bit of a slope so I am like running after him as fast as I can, but there's no way I can keep up with this dog. You know, five year old dog with like, like going at light speed because he's just finally free. And we also. So we live surrounded by woods, but we also live like not far from a huge intersection and out front of our house is a four lane boulevard. And so I was just mortified that he was going to end up being hit. So I am running up and I run back and Michael was actually recording his podcast that morning, it was a Saturday morning. And I run back and said we've got to go get Ernie. Ernie escaped. And so we get in the car to go up and we get to the top of the driveway and the delivery driver had actually seen him running on the street, got him into his van and brought him back and he was pulling to the top of our day with Ernie sitting in the passenger seat. Like it was the best thing in the world that ever happened. So anyway, after that we got a fence put in because we hadn't really needed one. But it actually is really good because beyond that then where the dogs were never really going anywhere because the invisible fence was then we could just let that park go wild. So that's been really nice. And then also we have a huge. We have an electrical box in our. A tree started growing to let the tree grow. I hope it hasn't like undermined the wires and so forth. But you know, whatever they're the wires going all the way up to where the, where the actual poles are. I'm sure there are plenty of roots wrapped around those too. So we'll be okay. But we have perennials everywhere and they're awesome because they are such amazing pollinators. Which is actually going to be our next episode. We decided that follow up on this and and it's just amazing to see the wildlife that it supports. And so that is why I'm a huge fan of that as opposed another one you you had mentioned was no Mo Mayo no mow May. And there is no way we could get through a May here without mowing because April maybe we we usually try to put it off as long as possible at May. No way we could end up with too much rain and we would just be like knee deep in grass and then it would be even harder and it's worse for the grass if you. If you let it get that long. So that would be terrible for us. But we could do no mow April.

Jorden

Well and then still gets back to if you're.

Kimberly

If.

Jorden

If it still is that grass. It needs to be taken care of as a grass. Right there's there always going to be that. That balance. I'm. I'm with you. I think that. I think native plant gardens are are my favorite. So I mentioned the last episode. I have a little bit of an in ground garden and the rest has to be planter boxes. So because of of Calgary's, you know, sub arctic temperatures in the in the winter, I can't do perennials in the the planters because they're just there. The root system freezes. But I'm at the point now where I've slowly built up that in ground garden to be completely edible. All perennials. So it's my rhubarb comes back every year. I only have herbs that come back. I have a winter onion. So this, this onion goes by many names. Creeping onion, winter onion, crawling onion. It basically is like a larger thicker green onion that like puts off a little bulb at the end of the year, falls down and re kind of seeds itself. I love this plant because it's actually my great great uncles, he started it in like 1910 and when they were moving out of their house in the late 90s, my parents like took some of it and split off the bulb and I've kept it alive and now I'm the last person who has any of this plant still growing. So I think that's one of the cool things about some of some of these and it's a lot easier now than it was even 10 years ago to try to get into to some of these native plants. Like you can go to garden Centers now and they'll have sections fully set up for not just your zone. Right. Because I think anybody's garden will know you can grow anything in a zone.

Kimberly

But getting down are changing too actually because of climate change for sure.

Jorden

I literally a friend was at a garden center in Calgary and this was not a greenhouse. It was just an outdoor garden center and saw pineapples growing last weekend. So you just think about for a second pineapples in Alberta, Canada growing with no support blew my mind. But I think this is kind of a fun switch. You know for a hundred years we've been really what can we move around? What can we get to grow in this weird space? And this is a switch back to what was growing here before. And there's almost a kind of a cool process of rediscovering what your landscape should look like. And I think that that's a really interesting part of actually engaging with the native plants.

Kimberly

Yeah we even where we live in. We're not in Arctic subal Arctic Alberta. We have things that I have plants that cannot win that just won't winter over or will a few years depending but then just will end up croaking and not make it. But. But there are things now that I planted fig trees out front and I'm sure they're you know, genetically modified in some way or you know like spliced, whatever. Yeah, they. They've been. It's a breed that is like more amenable to growing where I live as opposed to some Greek island. But they actually are doing really well. I still have five years later still. I don't have figs. This is it. This is the last year I'm giving them. But they're actually. I like the way they smell and and they're really good and they need almost no water which is really cool.

Jorden

Nice. Yeah.

Kimberly

So those are the sorts of things that are worth I think putting out and having and you know they soak up a lot of CO2 and also they. I mean everything in our house it could be really, really hot in temperature wise in the area but we're still like way cooler around our house for all of the greenery around us.

Jorden

Well and that's especially on when you have a bit of land like yours. You can actually start. I guess this is the third kind of big one is food forests have kind of you mentioned your neighbor is a really small and this like honestly this might be familiar to anybody who had like a grandparent who lived in a smaller town like on the out in like that kind of suburban environment in the 80s, I found that like that I. When I was a kid, we'd like. My great grandmother's house had three different fruit trees in it and the garden was just a part of it. And I. And I think that that's kind of. You can do it at that level or I have seen some people who have gone to fully designed yards and. And. But to your point about you actually have a lower temperature around your house because of all that greenery. It's so like you can shift the microclimate of an area like through trees and greenery and that then you can get into. You need less water for the plants around it because you've created more shade. And you can take this to a really cool but really intense kind of level of planning.

Kimberly

There was something. This was really interesting to me that with. With no momay, Cambridge University actually did this. They did this in 2020. I'm sure part of this had with COVID but they decided to let a whole entire field just go native. It was the first time since 1770 when they planted the lawns, if you think about the era. Totally makes sense, right? They. They was a very specific reason why they had these features and very, you know, and so they were very fashionable at the time. And so now this meadow. So one of the researchers there at the university, a plant scientist, started doing all this research on this. The meadow now supports three times more species than with with plants, spiders and bugs than the rest of the lawn. They counted 14 species with conversion conservation designations compared to just six in the lawns. It reflects 25 more 5, 25% more sunlight than a regular lawn does. The they these. By letting it go native, it saves 1.36 tons of CO2 emissions. That's as many basically a return trip between London and New York once a year by plane in emissions saved by letting just this one section go native. And because Cambridge has become more direct pro more prone to drought, the university's lawns have been dying off. So now they're also needing to reseed and that's really expensive. And to keep them up, they've got to water them now because they've got, you know, water issues. And the wildflowers and native plants tend to have deeper roots like we talked about in the first episode. And so they're less likely. They. They last a lot longer. So it's really amazing when they did this comparison of just how much better this was, it was a really great experiment that they ended up, you know.

Jorden

Sort of doing yeah, and I love the numbers there for one patch. And I think just to make the connection just really explicit for everybody, think about the diversity of insects and animals that are being supported in the same area. So I think that's the actual really surprising thing about it. If this had been two different sites even in the same city or something, then you could, okay, you could see this one's pulling a lot maybe from the rounding but surrounding area. But you're talking about a university campus where one part of it, a five minute walk is, is a different ecosystem at that point.

Kimberly

Oh, absolutely. So yeah, yeah.

Jorden

And that's amazing. It's also a tip that I would add for, for people who, you know, maybe have bought a new place is if like my parents, that it hasn't got the in yet or you know, you're buying a house that the previous owners had let it go down. You can. It used to be much more common for grass seed to either be a 50, 50 or 60, 40 blend of a grava native grass seed and clover. We used to use clover a lot more because of its root system and it's easier to, to kind of maintain. So just as a simple. Again we talked about the last one. You can switch to grass varieties that use less water or more drought resistant, but you can also go back to that older style of lawn. And then I was watching some videos this weekend of landscaping company out of the US that makes their own mix. And so they basically start with a 70% clover seed, they do a 30% grass seed. And then on after they see that on top of that they go with ground clever ground cover, little crawly kind of plants like the little tiny little white buds and stuff. Yeah. And they, and they overseed that over the entire lawn and that. So they basically in or they're planting a meadow. So one year after it starts, you have everything you need to have this wild little meadow in a front yard. And it looks so idyllic like actually.

Kimberly

Well, and that's the thing with, with the clover like so we actually ended up planting clover seed where we had to do some just like naked spots and so forth, which with dogs happens. But, but that's something that we definitely said. Okay, well what can we plant here that's native? What is it that's durable? Is it, you know, is it a shade area or is it a sun area? Those sorts of things. Taking all those into consideration, we planted a lot more clover. And I love it because I love the bees. I love the bees. I don't. I've learned not to walk barefoot in the yard because of the clover and the bees. But it's so cool to just to see so many of them. Like, this is. You know, we're doing them a favor. And, you know, a lot of people, you know, especially when it comes to edible landscapes and food forests, is that. That we've been conditioned to think of things as weeds, when in fact, dandelions are actually really important to the ecosystem system. They're particularly important to bees early in the spring because they're one of the first bloomers, and they have deep roots and they help to aerate soil, and they help to reduce erosion. And so having dandelions is actually important. And also, my grandmother used to eat dandelion leaves. Like, that was. That was like eating greens. They're really bitter. And I've tried eating them and trying to find ways to prepare them, because one year I just had, like, in our vegetable garden, I should say my vegetable garden, since I'm the one who's the maintainer of said garden, that is. There's just all these dandelions just started cropping up. And so. So I said, okay, I'm gonna eat them because here they're in my garden. And I know the dogs haven't been around them. And I tried. I tried so many ways to like them, but I really didn't. And I like bitter stuff, so I was kind of disappointed I didn't. But there were also a lot of violets that grew, and I pulled. I dug them all out and I re. I relocated them, and they're now a whole barrier of violets growing along our. Back in our backyard along a garden that's. There.

Jorden

There one way you might. And this is so a candied jalapeno dressing.

Kimberly

Okay. That sounds like something that might help to balance out the bitterness. It's like watercress is quite bitter.

Jorden

Yeah. And. And it's like I, like, I find dandelions like two times watercress. Right. Like, but so you're basically going enough on the sweetness that. That hits you first. The spicy kind of covers out and the bitterness brings those two down. So you're it. You got to lean into to that.

Kimberly

I'm not a big sweet eater, so. As talked about in the chocolate. So, you know, I'm the one who eats the 88 is my daily dose. Right. But. But yeah, I think it would be worth trying because I feel like it's a wasted thing. It's like food waste. Right. Sitting there out there waiting to be eaten. And so I really kind of re evaluated my relationship with dandelions in terms of where I pull them out some sometimes you just like you don't want them sucking up the water in an actual garden, but you also. So there are places where it's beneficial to keep them because you know, they're going to help retain the water and aerate the soil. And so we. I also saw a thing. Sir David Attenborough is huge. You know, biologist, environmentalist, you know, does all things. And I saw a thing posted around, around the time it was the no mo. I want to say no mo Monday. I don't know why should have no mo Mondays too. But, but, but the no mo may that he was saying also is really important. Don't spray DAND because the. The bees are pollinating. And if you spray those then it's going to actually kill the bees. And that's like you definitely like when we will talk about with pollinators why we revelate. Do not want to kill bees. We want to preserve them in any way possible. And so he, you know, big pushes, big name people talking about these things I think can help.

Jorden

Well, and so two things. One, a big one that I love to keep in the garden for both, for so many reasons, is chives leaves.

Kimberly

Yeah, I have those too. Yeah.

Jorden

Yeah, the perennial come back. Beautiful taste to them. I typically actually let mine go full to the bloom. I want the chive blossoms because if you have not made chive blossom vinegar, you're missing out on life. So literally just like a mason jar filled with chive blossoms covered with white vinegar. Give it two weeks, it'll be the lightest, most like delectable pink, purple. And I have like that on lettuce is enough of a drought.

Kimberly

I also let, I let things go. I planted leeks one year and it was a winter crop, which was really cool. And they actually wintered over and came up in the spring. Actually had some that came up in November. And this. I was out in the snow. Actually we had snow around whatever time it was and I was out in the snow collecting these. But I let some of them go and I also let them go to flower, which was really cool to see too. But I did the same thing with the herbs, like just let them go to flower too, because they are also pollinators. You know, you don't want to do it with the whole plant because you don't want to end up like not having, you know, you know, to be able to pull from it. I know you need to like, like Basil. You're going to lose the basil if you don't, like, take it all, you.

Jorden

Know, and this is the. There's certain plants, so, like, you know, always, obviously, like, look that specifically. But this has actually been a lifelong battle with my mother and my grandmother. My grandma taught me to garden, loves it. My mom.

Kimberly

So clearly, she's the one who's right.

Jorden

Clearly. Except for my garden always does better. So that's what I mean.

Kimberly

Your grandmother's the one who was right. Right. Not your mom.

Jorden

Yeah, no, no. And so. But a couple of things that I do that, like, it, like, blows my. My grandma's mind. They just don't get it. But I stopped picking my garden about mid August, the perennial one. Right. So I want it to do a full grow and then go to seed before it dies off. So. And it does that on its own schedule, not me cutting it down at the last minute. And then every two years. Yeah, for the third year. So every third year, I do not touch the garden at all. I will not take anything from it. So last year. And so it's not like the entire garden, I'll be rotating plants. So last year was a rhubarb year. That rhubarb did not get picked up at all. It got to grow up. It went to seed. I mean, I did cut the seed down so that my neighbors didn't have to deal with that, but it fully went. And this year it came up. I picked the first ones and it exploded. I now have four and a half foot rhubarb with, I think the small little plan is putting off about 35 to 40 shoots. And so there's a bit of also, like, just treating your garden like a living thing. Right. Like, and that's. So I always get in with my. My mom and my grandma about that, because they're still very much like love gard, but the garden is there to produce, and it's got to come off. And I'm like, these are living plants. You know, maybe they need some time to reset, to rebuild.

Kimberly

Absolutely. So. And that's why, I mean, farmers allow fields to go follow, you know, fallow for a year, a season, so they can rehab. Rehabilitate in their own natural way. And so, yeah, there. So as we were talking about the. A lot of this is just culturally embedded in us. So if you've got a vegetable garden, you're there for that reason. And you need to plant these producer plants and how big can they be? And so for. And I'm much more of the live and let live sort of person. Like, you know, I love like all of those herbs and stuff that you were talking about. I actually like the best time of year to eat when these things are. That's why I was envious of people where they have this going on all year long. And so, but, but we, what we need, I think as we talked about at the start and agreed is that we need to have some policy shifts. Like there have to be some things that are moving us in the direction of rethinking how we think about the space that we occupy, the green space we occup. And so that as we mentioned in the last episode, Nevada, they've had some serious water shortage issues and they've had some really interesting strategies that they have used to try to. First of all, they've banned any new builds. You cannot grow grass, like just full stop. And they actually pay property owners to convert grass to desert landscaping. They encourage the xeriscaping, the drought tolerant plants and the mulch and the rocks and the stones and drip irrigation systems. And also the city will actually pay owners to remove lawns. So it's not even like you have to foot the bill for this. It's $5 a square foot. For businesses and complexes, it's $3. So when you average that out, it's like $4. Right. To do, for the city to do this. And it's worth it because for the amount of water that it saves the city and having to deal with that and knowing that they can never increase the water price. Right.

Jorden

So, and that's the big thing I found on this was that it helps the cities because of the messed up economics of it. I was, I. It's me a deep dive on what are the costs, what are the benefits. Can I, can I, I would love to come on and say, hey, this will pay for itself kind of thing. Unfortunately, because of those messed up economics, the best estimates I could find, and these were based in the US but between 10 and $13 per square foot to switch to removal on and to re put in a completely natural wild lawn. And in cases unless you're in a place like, you know where you're gonna get paid to do that, I don't think that's going to be most people's direct rip it up and go. And even to, you know, your point on the last episode about should you get rid of something that's good, I'm usually much more of a fan of let's do a gradual change so you can start, you know, maybe you overseed with clover that next year as the first step, that kind of thing. But it really, it's on the cities that they see those massive savings and it really does make up any cost. I, I, the one I like dug into a lot was the California Cash for Grass program. And just in what they've done to date, it's been a wildly successful program that's converted 218 million square feet of grass. But in the water savings, going back to the cost of this, I was 68,000 homes per year of water converted just from this program that's only been running a couple years. And it's been so successful, they've actually pushed it forward. And I think that, you know, you know, California and Nevada in Vegas is the prime example of you shouldn't be growing things in a desert and how many years the joke about what they're doing in the desert there. So I think it's great to see them finally kind of to drive that. But it's going to be those states, those places that are facing that water pressure now that I think drive this kind of policy change.

Kimberly

And I think also the further south you go in Arizona, when you hit Tempe and Tempe and, and Phoenix and so forth, it's just like to actually, you just don't see with grass out front, they have got anything, but because they just, it's not something that's even feasible for most people. And I think it's an important point that you make with the, it's not just the difference of like, well, should I get rid of my mower, you know, my gas mower for an electric mower sort of thing, like actually pulling up grass to replace it like that in and of itself, they're the particulates that are, you know, go out and the, the dust and so forth. And, and so, you know, that's something too. I like your idea better of the gradual thing rather than to just tear it all up. Imagine all of the people in the city doing that at the same time, like, oh, there's a drought. And now we're adding all of this additional, like, basically smog to the air because we're doing this.

Jorden

So an analogy for change I use, and I think it applies to almost every, like, it's very rare that this analogy doesn't hold and that most change is, can be analogized to changing the hull of a shift ship while sailing across the water. Right.

Kimberly

So you go, you've given us this one before. Very appropriate. Yes.

Jorden

Yeah. And so, but, and I think it's, it's, it's here too, right? You can do some really bad things in the idea of I'm, I want the great outcome or you can accept that your outcome's not going to be perfect for a while and make smaller changes that lead to a better end state. And I, and I think that that's the, the tension. One of the tensions in this space that kind of really started standing out to me though was the municipal and state or prov. For. For us here because a lot of these, A lot of the laws that driving and we ended last episode on the kind of homeowner association and stuff are actually controlled at the municipal level. And they're like many NIMBY movements. And that cultural pressure there's is a much more concentrated group, so it's easier to get them worked up. And you see the cities actually stepping in to stop some of this stuff with states having to come in and be the ones to kind of make blanket rules that you're allowed to rewild your lawn.

Kimberly

And I think that in Colorado we see. I mean Colorado is a great place just for. So, I mean, talk about the ecological haven of the United States. Like here are the things that you can mostly like they do most everything like ahead of everybody else in the way that California is always sort of like culturally ahead of everyone else. And, and you know, but not just Colorado, but there are some other states, Minnesota, Maryland, others that have actually stepped in and said, hey, you know, you at the city level might not like this, but this is something we really need to push forward. Forward, I think, you know, and this is something that we talked about with again the, the sponge. I called it spongebob Cities like the, the. Because of the sponge cities that, that we talked about this and they're getting more attention in the United States now. And it's about what eco lawns are about, like, you know, trying to make sure that we're planting the okay. So if you are prone to flooding or you know, will the lawn survive? If you're prone to drought, will the lawn surv having a city plan? But you know, we also know that municipalities bear the brunt of so many. Like it's expensive, right? You don't get enough local tax dollars sometimes to be able to do the stuff that needs to happen. And so if the state's going to make the policy, then hopefully the state's also going to put some money behind this to say, okay, well, yep, we're going to move in this direction. But you know, states and Provinces only have so much money too. And so that ends up being, being the, the deciding factor too often.

Jorden

It's a great point. And I think that this is also one where it's, it's getting the municipalities to understand that this can actually save them money if this is done right. Like, we're not trying to force you to do something new to, you know, add a new program. This is literally. We just don't want you to stop people from doing it. And I think like there's even ways you can. I don't like this. I want to be clear, but I. There's lots of times I think in sustainability you got to think about what's the, what somebody's object and how can I mitigate it. So even if I don't think it should be like. But I want them to agree, right? So I know that with a lot of this there's a fear that it's not going to look pretty. And at the end of the episode I have a little thing that I had written down to walk us through to imagine this new world. So I hope I can convince everybody it's going to be pretty. But you can put in still requirements for that look that are still within that, that broad, you know, like of new plants or one of my favorites. We didn't talk about this as, as a method, but something I've seen more common is people actually completely removing their front yards, going to planter boxes. Front yard gardens have become more, more common in Calgary and I love that. But I know that when those started happening, those were fought back against because now there's no grass. Like it's all gravel around garden beds and we just, we need to let those things happen. But you could still create standards. And I don't have them off top of my head, but I think that like, if that's the concern, right, like, oh, we don't want this to look unruly, then okay, it doesn't. Wild doesn't have to equal wilderness, right?

Kimberly

Well, and where cities are trying to push for more sustainable, where places are trying to push for more sustainable cities and development and it requires money, that's one thing. But as you point out, this is not like some of these are just people wanting to do this and move in this direction and it's the cities that are getting in their way of doing this. And you know, eco lawns and alternative ground covers as we talked briefly about in the last episode, like, this is really important stuff because this is going to really like there's a difference Between a natural turf grass and what we think of as lawn grass and the natural turf grass, this is what we should have. But the lawn grass is what most people end up with.

Jorden

The way I think about it is the difference between like natural grass and like the, the turf grass we have now is the same difference between our lawn grass and like a putting green right there. You, you know, they're in the same family, but they're so wildly different. And that's the, the same thing here, right? Yeah, technically, same family. Wildly, wildly different. Wildly different.

Kimberly

Yeah. And so like, like we talked about clover, creeping thyme, sedum and all, all sorts of native grasses that. Okay, so it's not going to be like you're going to have like little splotches and stuff and it's not going to all be like a little carpet that you can walk across, but it's going to be so much better. In terms of natural, natural turf grass is an act, is actually an effective carbon sink because it can Capture up to 2 tons more of CO2A between, sorry, it can capture up to 2 tons of CO2 a year which is more than 8 times what lawns can capture. And that's before we start subtracting the emissions for manicured lawns. So like you have to actually take more off because you're going to spend more time manicuring those other, like the, the lawn grass, I don't know how else to distinguish the two. The putting, we'll call it the putting green grass. Right, Just for ease of reference here. And natural grass also captures more rainwater as we talk talked about. And you know, these are the sorts of things if you're a dog owner especially you want this stuff. They're good because they're tough and they're low growing, they're urine resistant and they withstand the dog traffic and they're non toxic to pets. And, and the moss is also a good alternative too and that's especially for wet shady areas. So there are all sorts of options that are out there that, that make for better and it doesn't mean you have to turn your lawn into a native garden.

Jorden

No. And, and this is the thing though is I'm struck by. Because, because you almost said it. And, and you're right too that you know, if, sure it's not that perfect, picture perfect manicured lawn that you walk out on. And I was just struck as, as, because that's how I even think about it. Like that, like that's my default. And like where else in the world do Our cultures especially think that uniform conformity to the exact same look, which has no personality is the ideal. I don just. It's so oxymoronic.

Kimberly

Right. Yeah. That's funny. And I also think you can have the natural turf grass and still use your. Your rideable lawn mower, you know, like you don't have to give that up. So maybe make this trade off. Maybe that's what we should have said at the end of the last episode is okay now, you know, trade off to natural turf grass but you get to keep your riding mower, you know.

Jorden

Yeah. And I think there's. This is also kind of doves tales with the some. It's weird because there's also a lot of stuff happening at municipal levels with their own kind of grass green space. So I know like. So the city of Calgary and I know it's become quite common across Canada, I don't know about the states, is no longer mowing the kind of like the grass that's in between like you know, overpasses those odd sections that we leave everywhere. I know that that doesn't get moat anymore. Or actually in Calgary we hire a group of goats that we release into a few of them that are particularly bad.

Kimberly

You're not even joking, are you?

Jorden

No, I'm not. No. We literally have go send around and they.

Kimberly

That's awesome.

Jorden

Yeah, yeah, it. It is great.

Kimberly

Well, I grew up on the east coast and it was always, I mean for like. I mean when we're talking about like my whole life I remember driving up and down the Jersey Turnpike and the northeast extension and various places and through Connecticut and so forth and they actually had to put signs in these medians that you're talking about. No MOW areas like. Like they're trying to like tell the people who were going to come through like do not mow this because we're to rewild this. And it was always seemed like to me like you've got this great beautiful thing with all of these plants growing and then you've got this ugly sign there don't mow. And like who in their right mind would want to go through and mow this? But they were. The signs were everywhere. They're still there. It's. It's just funny.

Jorden

I wonder if it was for the employees or was it for other.

Kimberly

No, I think it was for the employees just to kind of remind them like oh nope, we're not gonna like there are some areas particular that I'm sure it was. There are some areas sections that they wanted to have moan for whatever reason, but this wasn't not one of them. So we're going to put this ugly sign up rather than say, you know, nature preserve or something. It's like don't mow.

Jorden

I'm the only reason I wonder is because I can imagine that they get lots of calls though because I know what happened here from angry citizens who are complaining, why haven't you mowed that? It's, it's. You haven't mowed it unkempt. So I wonder a bit of the side that could actually be not mowing this.

Kimberly

People who like my neighbor who love to mow and they're just going to get their. We'll do that for the city. We'll take make that hit.

Jorden

I think the interesting thing about this is that as much as we've talked about how this is so ingrained, we are seeing in, in millennials and, and Gen Z a bit of a cultural change. And particularly I, I did I couldn't find evidence of this. So I'm just, just wild Jordan HYPOTHESIS I actually think it has a bit to do with the breakdown of homeownership culture in my generation and the generation below me. And I think that so this completely like just my subjective experience. But I do know a lot of my friends who don't think of themselves as owning a full home with a garden that it's actually, I mean whether financially out of reach or just not lifestyle goal. And I wonder if that is kind of leading to a bit of a breakdown of the connection to a lawn. Because if you're not, if you're already not thinking about a house, what does it matter if you have a green grass lawn?

Kimberly

Yeah, I thought it was interesting. I saw a statistic that 77% of Americans use their yard at least once a, a month. And I thought once a month. That doesn't seem like very often. So I didn't even bother to like read more about it and, and but certainly there are some like some people who take full advantage of their, their yard, their lawn or a section of it at least and, and really want to have it like we do with the dogs. Like we're not, you know, we don't want to let it just go native because they like to go out and play and they like, we like to play Frisbee with them and we like to you know, like in the winter time time we get out get out our, our snow saucer and saucer with the dogs and they love that and throw things like we've Got a tire we throw around the yard for one of our dogs. And, and that's just, you know, we would be destroying the plants we would try to cultivate. So for us the alternative turf grass is actually really good. But in our backyard where like the dogs almost never go because they have enough in the front, we just sort of let it do whatever and you know, like, so there, there are, you know, periwinkles. We have to, we try to like keep it but so that we, we still need to go back there and use it sometimes. So we don't want it completely overgrown. But you know, we see the periwinkles and various other stuff that just sort of come up and, and, and don't make a point of removing them unless we just happen to be mowing that that particular time.

Jorden

I think those are really good points. And a couple there like that you don't have to get rid of all grass that no, no one here is saying that and that there's different parts of your yard or, or you know, if it is just your entire have different purposes. And so there's going to be different applications, designs is going to best suit that. And just really driving home that wilding doesn't mean completely wild, unkempt, like you're trying to cut through the bush, right? Like that. And I think some people's minds jump there though, right? Like, oh, you mean if I stop I'm going to have four and a half foot grass and I got a wade through it and I'll lose toddlers. It's not what we're talking about.

Kimberly

Even the part of our yard where we did just like let go, the grass still is only not even knee high. So maybe you would lose toddlers, but really there it's not even that dense or anything. And, and we have made a point of trying to still keep it because it, we don't want the, that part to completely cut off our visual to the whole like that part of the driveway we can actually see, we still can't actually see to the street from where we are, but we get to see a little bit more of it. So we're trying to at least keep the invasive species back because they just want to overtake. And that's one thing that's really sad about what has happened. It might actually give people the wrong idea about, you know, like going through, hacking through like with a machete, like you're in the bush. Because we have so many invasive species now. And what the Native Americans, indigenous people used to do was actually manage the land. They would do controlled burnings and were very good about that. And the trees were healthy and grew well. And, and now we don't do that nearly. We just don't. And, and that's definitely. So we're at battle with that. So I can see how people, some people might think that that's what you're going to end up with, and that's not the case.

Jorden

It's kind of. It's tangential to this and it also be a really cool topic, but indigenous land management, especially like in the US East Coast. One of the best quotes I ever read on this is from an indigenous scholar who said, did Europeans really think that that many thousands of chestnut trees just magically happened? Like, it's because indigenous land management, depending on the culture there, there's so many. So I'm speaking at generalities, but was it very active engagement with the land? Right. And I think we sometimes think of it as this, like, idyllic. Oh, it was just untouched before, but it really wasn't. It was really actively managed to both benefit the environment and the communities. And I actually think, like switching your perspective of your, your area and your lawn to a bit more of how can I bring back some of the natural ones, how can I bring in pollinators? And sorry I didn't make this point earlier, but I always have most tomatoes of anybody around because of the amount of pollinators I get, because the amount of flowers I put out, any bud that comes up on any of my plants, it gets pollinated. And so there's even just like benefits to yourself of. And again, this is almost moving from, if you think about the culture of the lawn is sterilizing nature is removing yourself from it. Right. And, and, and per. And perfecting it. There's my, you know, famous podcast air quotes again. But this version is rewilding it. And again, we talked about many ways of doing this. Whether you want that kind of meadow look, whether you want a garden, you want to go with a, like the food forest or like planter boxes. There's. There's not one look for everybody. But it's really starting to think of what do you want out of your land and how can you engage with it again.

Kimberly

Yeah. And I think that's a much better investment than what your brother, like, who said after a year of doing that, like, it's totally not worth it. This would be totally worth it for other ways, like, economically, you can reap the benefits of this if you have a garden, you know, if you Your flowers will bloom better. Your. Your veg vegetables will grow more, proliferate, you know, proliferated or whatever.

Jorden

Prolific.

Kimberly

Yeah, prolific. Yeah. Your vegetables will grow more. You'll have more tomatoes at the end of the day. Yeah. And so. So those sorts of things definitely make. I think that it's. It's, again, it's about rethinking. And so when it comes to, like, how hopeful I am, you. You know, I think that definitely if we see younger generations pushing back on this, that will be part of it, but maybe it's just they haven't grown up yet and they haven't reached that point, and then when they become like, you know, get a house and get married and move on, they're going to be like, oh, yeah, I want to have that garden that my parents had. And, and I don't know. And so I. I hope that that's not the case. I hope that this definitely is a kind of a kill your lawn and move on sort of thing. Don't. Don't like, literally kill your lawn, because you don't definitely don't want to do that either, but, you know, re. Nourish your lawn, Rethink your lawn.

Jorden

Yeah.

Kimberly

I don't know. Or how hopeful are you about this?

Jorden

I. Oh, you know, I don't know how I can get there, but I can see the end state, and that always makes me hopeful. Oh, yeah.

Kimberly

So tell us what your. What your idyllic garden would look like.

Jorden

Well, and that's what I want. It's actually the image that came to mind as we were talking about. This wasn't my garden. It was a walk through a neighborhood. And it was when I made that comment of, you know, the current kind of nice walk through a neighborhood is a treed neighborhood. Right. Green grass everywhere, everywhere. You're out for a stroll. Anybody can picture this, whether you live in that neighborhood or not. We've all seen it. You know, like, it's perfectly manicured or lawns everywhere. And I don't know, I want. I can see moving from that sterile almost like I really want to make some fascist jokes, because that's what I feel like that is. But now imagine you're walking down that same neighborhood. Trees everywhere. You still have that beautiful canopy. It's got that. The houses are offset. But now in the first yard you're walking by, it's a wild flower meadow because that's what they went with. And all its pinks to yellows to purples to. To whites, all dotting the landscape in a. You Know, it looks haphazard, but at the end of the day, almost like a Monet kind of popping out at you. But before you're even past that, you're already seeing the next person's yard, which is 30 planter boxes out in the front of it, growing everything from squash to tomatoes, and onto the next one, which is more like your yard, which has a little bit of a wild turf grass that's kind of set out there where you can see they've got a fire pit yard is. Is builds into nature. And that. That's kind of the vision I can imagine walking through a neighborhood like that where you see. And then your yard's a reflection of you more than it is now. And I can picture that. So I don't know if we can ever get there, and I don't know if I'm hopeful, but I. I find being able to see it is the first step.

Kimberly

I think it's interesting you. You mentioned Monet, because my first thought when you said that was, you know, we were talking in the first episode about cultivated French gardens, and yet what do we think of when we. We think of Monets and the flowers and that whole just riot of colors. And that's so for many people, if you would ask them to describe a French garden, that might be what comes to mind. Right. As opposed to. And so that's sort of what has more of. More like a much broader sort of imprint in my head when I think of that, having visited Versailles, I definitely, like, could see, you know, and there's something to be appreciated for those European gardens that look like that. They're beautiful places to walk through. They always have fountains, which are awesome and stuff, benches where you can sit, but the, you know, the benches aren't necessarily as shaded as you would be if you were just walking through, you know, Monet's meadow. So I'd take the Monet any day.

Jorden

Yeah. And I mean, I. Honestly, anybody who thinks maybe if you're at the end of this episode, if you're still defaulting, well, I really like that, actually. Like, go search English country garden versus French garden and, like, and put them up side by side and actually ask yourself which one looks more inviting, which one looks like that you could disappear into it and be a part. Part of it. That's all.

Kimberly

And I think I. I think that's the important thing is, again, it's about everything we talk about with sustainability is what are we willing to do what. Where can we make a difference if it's something that matters? So much to us. Like we talked about with the travel episodes, we're going to travel, so we need to figure out other ways that we can balance that out. And for me, this is something I'm absolutely willing to compromise on. And not only compromise, but to me, it's actually the reward is doing this.

Jorden

Yeah, no, 100%. And that's why I, and that's why I wanted that little vision of, of a need neighborhood like that, because that every year I've told Kimberly about this, but, like, setting up my flowers in my garden, like, it creates my little oasis. Like, I work from home a lot and, and I cannot say the amount of, like, just for my mental health, of being able to go out for a coffee in the sun and sit. And the way I have it turned is that, like, trees all around and you just, you feel like for a moment you're not in the city and you're just in this beautiful little garden. And that is so, so important to me.

Kimberly

Yeah. And I think too, just, just the actual garden is just like, I, I, I'm always, I am one who, I don't put in headphones, I don't do anything while I just go out and I just immerse myself in it. And, and that to me is like also a mental health rejuvenation as well. So.

Jorden

Yeah.

Kimberly

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