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Rethinking Lawns

Incorporating Native Plants into Home Landscapes

The U.S. has more than 50 million acres of lawn: the size of Minnesota, three times the area of any irrigated crop, and twice the size of the combined national parks in the lower 48 states.

Each year, Americans use 3 billion gallons of gas for mowing (3% of U.S. gas consumption) and 53 million pounds of herbicide on their lawns. Each day, we go through an average of 9 billion gallons of water (30% of all American home, business, and educational facility water use) just to keep lawns looking fresh and green.

Seemingly small things add up when there’s that much grass. With mowing, watering, weeding, and the flooding grass increases, lawn is expensive! Lawn grass is just one species of thousands we could plant in our cities.

What if we tried something else? Experts from the Chicago Park District, Chicago Botanic Garden, and other institutions are trying different plants that might work, including native prairie flowers and grasses.

Learn more about this experiment and how you might incorporate some of its ideas into your own home's landscape from Becky Barak, one of the project leads, an assistant conservation scientist at Chicago Botanic Garden, and an adjunct professor at Northwestern University.

This presentation is presented in collaboration with the Skokie Beautification and Improvement Commission.

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