Goodbye Grass, Hello Bugs: Bringing Life Back to Our Yards

The color green is associated with a clean, healthy environment. When we see a green space, we often think it’s good, whether it is a beautiful forest or a neighborhood lawn. All plants provide for wildlife, right? Unfortunately, no. Some landscapes, in particular lawns, provide very little to no habitat. So, what can folks do to change their landscape? How can they rethink or replace their lawn to support wildlife?

To explore this topic, we are joined by Emily May and Stephanie Frischie. Emily is part of our pesticide reduction team at Xerces. With a focus on pesticides in agriculture, Emily works with farmers, researchers, conservation professionals, and agencies across the U.S. to reduce pesticide risks to pollinators and other beneficial insects, support the adoption of ecologically sound pest management practices, and expand high-quality habitat in working lands. 

Stephanie Frischie is an Agronomist and Native Plant Materials Specialist at Xerces. Stephanie brings technical expertise on native plant materials, native plants, and plant-insect interactions to her work across conservation agronomy; plant ecology; ecological restoration; and native seed production, use, policy, research, and quality — all to improve the supply and growth of important plant species for restoration of insect habitat.

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Photo: Emily May

Thank you for listening! For more information go to xerces.org/bugbanter.

Transcript

Matthew: Welcome to Bug Banter with the Xerces Society, where we explore the world of invertebrates and discover how to help these extraordinary animals. If you want to support our work, go to xerces.org/donate.

Rachel: Hi, I’m Rachel Dunham in Missoula, Montana.

Matthew: And I'm Matthew Shepherd in Portland, Oregon.

Rachel: The color green is associated with a clean, healthy environment. When we see a green space, we often think it’s good, whether it is a beautiful forest or a neighborhood lawn. All plants provide for wildlife, right? Unfortunately, no. Some landscapes, in particular lawns, provide very little to no habitat. So, what can folks do to change their landscape? How can they rethink or replace their lawn to support wildlife?

Rachel: To explore this topic, we are joined by Emily May and Stephanie Frischie. Emily is part of our pesticide reduction team at Xerces. With a focus on pesticides in agriculture, Emily works with farmers, researchers, conservation professionals, and agencies across the U.S. to reduce pesticide risks to pollinators and other beneficial insects, supporting the adoption of ecologically sound pest management practices, and expand high-quality habitat in working lands.

Rachel: Stephanie Frischie is an agronomist and native plant materials specialist at Xerces. Stephanie brings technical expertise on native plant materials, native plants, and plant-insect interactions to [her] work across conservation agronomy; plant ecology; ecological restoration; and native seed production, use, policy, research, and quality—all to improve the supply and growth of important plant species for restoration of insect habitat.

Rachel: Welcome back to Bug Banter, Emily and Stephanie! We’re excited to have you here today.

Stephanie: Hi, Rachel. And hi, Matthew. Great to be here with Emily.

Emily: Great to be here with all of you. Love to be back on Bug Banter.

Matthew: We're so happy you're here. So lawns, they're ingrained into American culture, perceived as a symbol of success and suburban respectability. Neighbor disputes have been triggered over them, and their presence and care may be written into home ownership agreements. It's a big topic. So maybe we can start with getting a sense of the scale of this problem. How many acres of lawn are there across the U.S.?

Emily: So, thanks, Matthew, for starting us off there. Lawns, as you said, are incredibly ingrained into how we think about residential areas in the U.S. If it were considered a crop, turfgrass lawns would actually be the largest irrigated crop in the U.S. And there's estimates suggesting we have over 40 million acres of lawn. Which is more than any single irrigated, agricultural crop. So even small changes in how we manage lawns can add up across that really big footprint of land. If we could add some flowers back into even 5% of lawns in America, that's 2 million acres of potential flowering habitat. So I think there's reasons to look at lawns.

Emily: There's reasons why we have lawns, right? Beyond even just the social pressure of keeping a space looking nice, and neat, and manicured, lawns provide places for kids to play, for pets to run around, places to gather, to have picnics. In some cases, some areas of the country, they might be reducing tick risk or fire risk. So keeping some areas mowed might be part of how people are managing those risks around their home. But, of course, there's a challenge here, which is that a conventional lawn that's just turfgrass, that's frequently mowed, that's sometimes treated, that's sometimes watered, fertilized, provides very little habitat for wildlife. And you might see a few generalist species using it. But they are resource intensive and of relatively low value to wildlife. So, I'll turn it over to Steph, because I know she’s thought a lot about this, as well. But that's the answer to your first question.

Stephanie: Yeah. And when Rachel did the introduction—I am an agronomist—that's my undergraduate degree. And agronomy is the sciences of crops and cropping systems. And turfgrass is a subspecialty that you can study within agronomy. So a lot of that is for athletic fields or golf courses, but also these parks and residential areas. And we've started off by saying lawns are a problem here, but like Emily said, there's a lot of good reasons for a lawn, and it's also relative. A lawn is perennial vegetation, usually. A lawn also is a permeable surface. So lawns can also be relatively better than a paved or hard surface like that.

Matthew: I was gonna ask whether lawns provide any value to wildlife. And also say that I know I loaded the question when I refer to the scale of the problem. I was provoking you a little bit there. Emily, you mentioned that generalist wildlife, so presumably there's some wildlife that might use a lawn. So if we were thinking about how we can bring more wildlife into our landscapes, that a lawn has some benefits?

Emily: Yeah. I think that also depends on how it's being managed, and whether anything else is able to grow in there and provide maybe some nectar and pollen. And when you start through thinking management of a lawn, you could begin by mowing less frequently. And offering the opportunity for having more nectar and pollen and flowering plants. And that sort of less mowing, and less water use, and fewer inputs—if you were to start somewhere, rethinking just your management, you can have—that's less work for you as an individual, as well. So there's a benefit for you, too.

Matthew: You've already touched on this, but there are benefits to replacing or reducing your lawn?

Emily: Yeah, there's all kinds of benefits to reducing and replacing your lawn. Not only just for wildlife, not only for your ability to mow less frequently, and use less gas, maybe use less pesticide, and less fertilizer on your lawn, less water. There's a lot of ways to make a landscape more manageable for you and also far more valuable for the wildlife around you. So I know we're gonna talk a lot about that this episode. What's the spectrum of potential approaches to replacing and rethinking your lawn?

Matthew: So there are benefits, to changing your lawn. I mean, is there a happy medium? Do you have to get rid of all of your lawn or can you keep some of it?

Stephanie: Of course. You can have some choices there, and again, decide the reasons why you have a lawn. The flexibility that you have can make your lawn more diverse in terms of the plants. So it may still be an area that you mow, and that is open and nice to walk on or sit in, but there may be more flowers with pollen and nectar resources, or that can be host plants for some of our little insect and invertebrate wildlife. You can also—it all depends on how much space you have to work with also—you may instead replace lawn with flower beds, or add containers to your patio or your balcony. So I think—I'm looking out the window now at my lawn, and it's a very narrow strip that we just use at this point. We pull the cars off onto that, and that's where we wash them when we wash the cars. So, that's why we have lawn right now. Haha. But everything else is either a flower bed or wooded, in our case.

Stephanie: And I can share a little anecdote here. My home is in the eastern deciduous forest in the state of Indiana. And so thousands and hundreds of years ago this was a forest. And people moved through here, managed it. When European settlers came, they grazed cattle here, it was part of their pasture. Then in the fifties, this became a suburban area with houses, and it was mown grass with a few big trees. And now what, maybe 50, 60, 70 years later, it stopped being mowed and it has naturally grown back into a forest, with some planted trees, but a lot of trees just coming in from the neighboring woods. So that was a very long view and passive way. I've seen some older historic photos of this place, and it's amazing to see that it was all lawn and now it's woods. And I'm looking out at spring ephemeral wildflowers blooming, and all of the green leaves starting to break bud.

Matthew: That's impressive. And when you said 1950 suburb, I think of that as almost like the classic, like Hollywood image of that's when we were just mown lawns surrounding the houses.

Emily: My son loves to talk about the fact that our house used to be underwater because we live in a place that used to be Lake Champlain or the Champlain Sea before, you know, many, many thousands of years ago. And that's why we're now in a bottom clay plain soils, where I live in Vermont. But yeah, he asks me all the time, “Mom, this used to be underwater, right?” Haha. But now it's a mixture of forest and meadow and lawn. And to come back to your question, Matthew, I think, the goal isn't to get rid of all lawns, right? It's to think about goals, to think about—to be more intentional about how and where we keep them. Keep it where it serves a purpose, and then look for opportunities to add diversity back into the landscape to make it more amenable for wildlife.

Emily: On the simpler end, like I mentioned before, you can start by just letting parts of the lawn grow a bit longer, maybe overseed it with flowering species. And then move maybe towards more intentional plantings, more native plant beds, meadow style planting, shrub borders, trees. I think you just look at your space and see what it can accommodate, and what purpose you really wanna fulfill by having it there. I think the key idea, in general, is just increasing diversity and structure because that's what supports insects. That's what supports the rest of that food web. It's what allows you to have all kinds of birds around your house, and all kinds of things to look at and enjoy the experience of having around you.

Emily: If I were to start somewhere, if this is a spectrum of different approaches, I'll—. Sometimes people will ask, “What's the one thing I should plant?” And I think if there's one sort of bang for your buck place to start, if you have the space to do it, would be a tree or a shrub, some kind of a woody plant. Woody plants tend to support a much higher diversity of insects than turf, and maybe even many herbaceous plants, as well. And that's especially true thinking about caterpillars. If you're a bird person, caterpillars are really a critical food source for your birds. And a single tree might be able to support hundreds of species of caterpillars. It has a ton of surface area and vertical structure. So it's really great high impact, one place to start.

Rachel: So you've started talking about that transition, and what people can do to make their lawn more wildlife friendly. So I think lots of folks have heard of a bee lawn. What is a bee lawn, and how is that different from a classic one?

Stephanie: I think of a bee lawn as a nice blanket term for a lawn that does have some flowers in it. They're short, so their growth point is low. It's a lawn that still gets mowed sometimes, but there's long enough intervals between mowing, or the mower height—mowing height is high enough that flowers are able to bloom and be there within the lawn there. So one classic—this is not a North American native plant—but Dutch white clover is in many places in North America, it's very naturalized. It's planted as a forage crop. And if you have a, quote, unquote, “weedier” or neglected area of lawn, so to speak, white clover can be a pretty common, likely species to have there. That's also one that's marketed and sold for planting in bee lawns.

Stephanie: A native plant you could sow or encourage in a bee lawn? I have several actually. Lots of native violets, depending on where you live in the country. Self-heal, Prunella, another—a genus that keeps blooming and doesn't seem to mind being cut too much. And then, again, thinking of the Eastern U.S., there's a native strawberry that is very low growing and spreading, and can also tolerate the mowing—maybe not so much the traffic, foot traffic, and that kind of thing, and trampling—but yeah, makes a nice mix in lawns, as well.

Emily: Yeah, I would echo that. I think I've seen most of those in my own lawn at some point or another, along with some other mints, like henbit, creeping Charlie, and those just seem to grow in pretty much any condition, no matter how many times I mow them, they will come back. And they do provide some nectar resources for bees that are coming through—I'll see bumble bees in there.

Emily: I did want to mention there was a study in Western Massachusetts that looked at mowing frequency in suburban yards, and they found that simply mowing less often allowed more flowers to bloom, which in turn supported more pollinators in those yards. And so how often you mow has a really huge impact on what flowers are able to be available there and able to grow. Lawns that were mowed every two to three weeks had twice the flowers of lawns that were mowed more frequently, and supported a greater diversity of bee species coming to visit those flowers. So even without converting your lawn to a meadow, or to a flowering bed, you can have this kind of a bee lawn situation where you've reduced your mowing frequency, and maybe overseeded with something like a white clover, and increasing the value of that for some of the bees in the area, and other insects.

Rachel: It's great to hear. It makes me feel good about our lawn, because we don't mow it every week. And our violets are just coming up. I just noticed them this weekend. I was really excited. So we do call them bee lawns. But are these lawns with these floral resources used by any other insects, or other animals other than bees?

Matthew: I could answer it if you want.

Emily: Go for it, Matthew. I'd love to hear your answer to that question.

Matthew: I mean, I can answer it because I've read some of the studies on this. We know that yeah, for sure, flies will use them. And I see flies on the white clover, and some of the other plants in my own lawn. But there've been some studies that have shown—particularly the Dutch white clover—there's half a dozen species of butterflies that have been recorded nectaring on those. And there's also other studies that have looked more, slightly more widely, and obviously it varies depending on where the lawn is, and the conditions of it, and is it in a moister or a drier area, et cetera, et cetera. But for sure, fireflies will be out there using some of these less intense, even some of the more intensely managed lawns. And then there are millipedes, and all sorts of other things that people have found deeper down in the lawns. And intriguingly, one of the things that some studies have found has been that the more intensely managed lawns have more species that we would consider to be pest species in them that people don't want. So the diversity that comes in from less intense management actually makes your lawn better overall.

Emily: Certainly found plenty of beetle grubs in my lawn, for example. I have noticed, when I do mow, I have to mow very slowly when I have flowering plants in the lawn, because I notice there's moths, and flies, and other insects, bees that are in those areas. And I mow a bit higher and I'm mow slowly to allow them space to be able to get out of that area while I'm disturbing it.

Matthew: Let's assume that people have decided that they want to reduce the area of their lawn, or don't want a lawn at all anymore. What are the options for planting in the place of a lawn?

Emily: So I think I've started to answer this, just talking about the option of potentially adding in a woody plant, like a tree or a shrub, to get that vertical structure, and that surface area for things that feed or shelter in something like a woody plant. But I would say taking a step back, you can just start by looking at how you are using your space, and where do you spend time? How are you using the lawn or not? Where is that lawn just filling space on the property? And so that might help you identify some of the areas that could be transitioned. And then you can look at those to say, “Okay, what might be a good fit for this area?” Whether it's a shady area, or a sunny area that's gonna determine what kind of plants you might put in there. If you're going in sort of order of actions—maybe you've put in a tree—the next step that I might look at would be: can you put in a soft landing under that tree? So putting in some shade-tolerant species that are going around that base of the woody plant. That can be a nice next step.

Matthew: You said create a soft landing. What do you mean by that?

Emily: When I think about soft landings—and there might be a better definition than this—but I think about the northern walking stick, which is an insect that walks up to the top of a tree to drop its eggs. And so the female northern walking stick walks up the tree—it looks like a twig, it blends in—and then it's dropping its eggs down to the surface. So that's where my mind goes when I think about a soft landing. There's eggs that are raining down into this habitat. But it's also just softer than having an area that you keep mowed under that tree. It's a place for insects to live, for there to be leaf litter, for there to be places to overwinter and nest. But in my head, it's also this place where the walking stick eggs land softly.

Emily: The neat thing about walking sticks—just to finish that story—is that ants will bring them into their nests. They look like a seed case, almost. And so ants might pick them up, bring them into the heap, eat the outside of the egg case, and then take them into sort of the midden or the waste heap of the ant nest. And then walking stick larvae safely emerge in the spring, and walk right back out of that ant nest. So there's this neat interaction happening. I just, I think there's all of these stories that if we're not paying attention, we'll never know about. So nice to be observant in your own yard.

Stephanie: I wanted to say about soft landings. I believe that concept with that label or name on it, originated from Heather Holm, entomologist and education conservationist based in Minnesota. So she's got great resources about this, too. If you just look on a web search for “soft landings,” “Heather Holm,” H-O-L-M. And it is, like I talked about in my case, I have a lot of woods as my yard. But if you have less space, or are in this process of transitioning, and you have the one tree that you're starting with, you are thinking of this as a cylinder of forest. You have the tree canopy, that drip line. And like Emily was saying and illustrating with the walking stick as an example, so many of the wildlife have part of their life that's up in the canopy, another part that's in the soil or in that organic layer on top of the soil. And if you're just mowing and have lawn underneath a yard tree, you're not able to provide that full lifecycle of habitat that these wildlife need.

Stephanie: Also, if you've ever tried to mow around a tree, as that tree gets bigger, it's not—. Like, roots are on top of the soil, and those can be hard to mow over without damaging the root or your mower. And maybe you can't turn as tightly. So a soft landing, to me, is also an easier way to be friends with mowing around a tree. Just have a bigger circle that you're mowing.

Matthew: For someone wanting to replace the lawn, what would be a good first step, and what are some factors to consider?

Emily: I think there's a lot of ways to do this. It depends on how much space you're trying to convert, I think. And what kind of resources, and equipment, and time you have available. So I have lived in a few different places now, and when I was in Connecticut living on a very sort of pocket square, very small area of land, I was able to just take a little bit at a time, and do the sort of elbow grease work to dig out a little bit of lawn. And just transplant in some plants that I knew would start to fill out that space. And so every year I added a few more plants, and just kept moving those out. It was a full sun area, and I didn't have the space to put in a big tree—it was just a little pocket square. So really focused on just herbaceous plants and getting as much diversity as I could get in that space.

Emily: Now I'm on three acres of land, and so I have a lot more space to work with. And have to be more intentional about how I convert that space. I started when I moved here doing the same thing I did in Connecticut, and digging out areas, and transplanting in. And that's great. But it felt like I wasn't getting very far on three acres to do that by hand. And so I moved to the next step for me, which was: I had an area that was pretty much just turfgrass that had been mowed for many years. And so I rented a sod cutter, and I ripped out a big area of that, and seeded into it with a wildflower mix, which came in really nicely. And now I'm looking at other areas and thinking about how else I could convert larger zones. And I think this year I'm looking at smothering as an option. Because unfortunately, the rental shop closed that offered the sod cutter, so I can't use that again. So I'm gonna be looking at just doing some burlap and cardboard smothering for this year, and then I'll plant into that.

Emily: But I think there's many different options for converting, and it comes down to what you feel comfortable with. There's ways to do it maybe that are a little more aesthetically pleasing. I have folks that I know who have converted sections by doing buckwheat cover crops. So taking out sections of lawn, tilling them in, doing some buckwheat. And that offers a flowering plant that's there for the season where you're smothering out some of the other things that might be in your turfgrass. And then they seed into that area in the fall. This is all again, Northeast based. Steph, I know you've worked more extensively with sort of native plants and site preparation maybe in other areas of the country. So I'm curious what you'd say for folks who are in other maybe more arid regions of the country.

Stephanie: I think, in arid regions, one way you can remove your lawn is just stop watering it and let it die, right? Haha. And then you still may need to do some digging, or rent a sod cutter, depending on the size, and what your interest and abilities are to lift and remove that thatch layer. But the thatch layer also can be fine to leave in place and actually plant into. Whether you're planting a larger area where you're doing a seed mix, or you'll dig individual holes to plant transplants. I do—I like a lot of the methods Emily said, as well, but I have a very unesthetic method of straw bales. And I either take them out into their individual flakes and lay those flat—. It's a smothering method, but it's all biodegradable. So over time it just goes away. But it does a very good job of really smothering out the turfgrass there.

Stephanie: And I think the final method we could talk about is killing and removing lawn through herbicide use. And so that, likewise, you can do that application. There's certain times of the year, depending on what climate you're in, where that will work more effectively. And turfgrass is tough, right? It can take a lot of abuse and beating, and likewise, it can survive the one or two applications of herbicides. So some follow up applications are maybe something to anticipate needing, as well. And again, if you opt for that method of reducing turf, you can just leave that dead thatch in place, as well.

Matthew: Lots of different ways, and it sounds like, in some cases, a lot of work. Is there a realistic timeline for successfully removing a lawn? Or is it totally dependent on how you do it, and how much you try to take on each year?

Stephanie: Yeah, timelines, I think, just vary by the area that you're working in. I think when we talk about time, also, you're—yes, you may be mowing less, you may be doing some of those other turf maintenance activities less—but you're spending your time differently, probably. And hopefully that's a way that's more enjoyable to you. I do know a few friends who love mowing. It's like their flow, their zone out time, you know. Haha. But other friends find gardening and just tending their plants—that's a way they would prefer to spend outdoors around their house. Whether it's doing some of those gardening-like management activities, or, over time, as you get more plant diversity, you'll have more wildlife diversity, and just bug watching, or birdwatching is another way that time and enjoyment of your space comes into play here.

Matthew: That's certainly how I use it.

Emily: Yeah, I think the timeline just does depend on what method you're using, and maybe to what your existing conditions were. In some cases, turf has been managed so meticulously that there's very little diversity in there and it's actually fairly easy to convert. I found the sod cutting method worked quite well. It was one day of very backbreaking labor to pull sections of turf off, and then it was just seeding and watching what came up. And so that was, overall, a lot less effort, I think, than me mowing that space over and over again through a summer. So yeah, I think it comes down to the most practical method that will work for you. And the timeline's gonna vary depending on how gradual you're going, and how much, yeah, time that takes to end up smothering out, potentially, the existing vegetation.

Stephanie: I'm curious, Emily, with your sod cutting. What did you do with the sod that you removed?

Emily: You know, that's a good question. I ended up creating what is now a large brush pile and sod pile in my backyard. Which has other wildlife living in it, as my dog basically zeroes in on it every time he goes outside. I'm sure that there are rodents living in there, but I live out in the country, so there's not much downside to it for me to have that kind of a space.

Stephanie: Yeah, I used a sod cutter to establish a very large garden in turfgrass once, and I just did the method where I tried to flip the sod as I cut it, and so it was inverted and then I just left it in place there. The roots were up, it dried out and died, but it also created this biodegradable protective layer that I could garden among. And then that just added organic matter back to the soil over time.

Emily: Yeah. I started with that, and then realized I wasn't gonna be able to mow around the space that I had converted to the meadow, because there was this two-inch section of inverted turf all the way around it. So then I loaded it up and made it into, you could think of it as maybe a beetle bank.

Stephanie: Haha. There you go. It's a wildlife mound. Uh huh. 

Emily: It's a wildlife mound in the backyard that has now been covered up with branches and other things that have come down over time.

Stephanie: Yeah, yeah.

Rachel: I love all of these stories, and all of this great information. We have a lot of lawn, and I really wanna convert a lot of it, and so you're just giving me so many great ideas. So you've both talked about your personal experience with removing lawn. What was the biggest challenge that you faced while you did this?

Emily: I think the amount of labor involved can be high. When we rented the sod cutter it was a two-person job. Running the sod cutter was hard. And then we had effectively a machete and were cutting up sections of turf that were quite heavy, and moving them around. So it takes a lot of—that was a lot of elbow grease. Same with just digging out the turf and planting into it. That also takes some elbow grease. So I think there's elements of that where that was maybe a challenge. I live out in the country now, so I don't have to worry about what my neighbors think too much. But I think if you're in an area where you're doing a lawn conversion in a space that's more manicured, or where that's an expectation, I think, there are ways you could maybe mitigate your neighbor's concerns about it with signage. So even though I live in the country, I live on a country road, I did put up a pollinator habitat sign during this process just in case someone walked by. Thinking about what they might think about this giant hole in the yard that is slowly being filled in with plants.

Stephanie: I think also to follow up on that point by Emily, if you do want it to look more “generally acceptable” by the greater population, having plants that are more compact and that tend to have showy flowers, and having something like that blooming throughout the year, and having that more towards the street or the sidewalk—that's an important thing to keep in mind. It's also a term called “mullet gardening,” like the fabulous haircut that's shorter in the front, and longer in the back. And so if you think, if you're in a yard situation you may have a little more freedom to have less lawn in the back than in the front. And again, that can be a way of just thinking about what makes sense for your neighborhood, where you live, and how you and others are valuing the green spaces there.

Emily: I love the concept of mullet gardening, right? Yeah. It's like business in the front, party in the back.

Stephanie: Yep.

Emily: And I know I've had friends who have tried to convert their lawn in areas that have weed—municipal weed ordinances, and that has been a real challenge. I've had friends who have been served notice, right? That they need to mow their lawn. So I think one of the things that we get a common complaint about is those types of ordinances, HOA bylaws. And I think there's a few approaches there without even needing to change policy. You can just start small, and try and make it look intentional, like Steph said, focusing on those compact flowers, compact plants that have larger flowers can help. But people tend to respond more to the “cues of care” than to the actual plant palette. Just the—having defined edges, having mowed borders can make a big difference in how it's perceived by someone walking by or by your HOA officer. Focusing on: can you create some kind of an intentional edge to where you're putting in these types of flower beds? can make a big change. Manage the tidiness of those edges and borders. And then we could talk about more: could you go further and actually change your HOA policy, or your municipal weed ordinance from there? But I think starting by just thoughtful placement and creating this kind of intentionality in what you're doing can mitigate some of those concerns from your neighbors.

Stephanie: Yes. And the same idea—you can have a lawn that's almost no turf, but if you have the turf being these meandering pathways between the pollinator gardens or flower beds that's a mower width wide, it's very practical. That's another way that it looks very cared for and intentional. It also makes it easier for people to get out and walk among the flowers, and get to do that wildlife watching that I talked about before, too.

Rachel: Perfect segue into the next question I was gonna ask. Because we talked about all the options, and it is quite a bit of work, it definitely takes effort. So what were the results? I am curious, especially since you've both done this personally. We talked about the hard work that goes into it, but why do we do this? You know, in the end, like what have you seen as a result of transforming your lawn?

Emily: I get a great amount of just benefit to me in terms of both the aesthetics of it—there's plants that were in the mix that I put in that I had never grown before, and that I really enjoy now. Eastern figwort being one of them, which is just this lovely plant. It's attractive to bees, it's attractive to wasps. It's really tall. It's got this beautiful sort of structure. So I love looking at it. And it looks kind of jungle, too, when you're looking at it. So seeing what comes to the garden. There's constantly movement, there's constantly sound in the yard. And I think that's the main benefit to me is seeing everything that's using it. I'm like, “That's why I put this in.” When I had the lawn, it looks manicured, and there's some aesthetic value to that. But I think for me, the value comes from all of the wildlife interactions that you're able to have and experience from having those plants in there.

Stephanie: Yeah. For me, as well. I'm a botanist and plant person, first and foremost. So I just love getting to have as many different plants around me in my space as possible. And with that comes all kinds of bees, and butterflies. And I have chipmunks on my windowsill, and skinks, and bumble bee queens are starting to come out and move around. There's also, I think, a reverse social pressure. I'm in a mostly forested area here, and when I share pictures of my lawn with people, they think it looks amazing. So there's—that might be because of who I'm friends with, right? But you can definitely have a beautiful flower-filled yard and many different iterations or ways to do that.

Stephanie: I'm gonna just share one more thing here that a professional mentor and hero of mine would say when talking about the quintessential American suburban aesthetic is: “drug-dependent green rugs.” That's your lawn. “Meatball shrubs.” Those are the boxwood or yew that get trimmed. And “lollipop trees.” So that's a tree with a very straight single trunk, in this very rounded canopy, as well. That's a real aesthetic for many people. But I hope with some of the resources and information we're providing here, we also give people inspiration to try some more shapes and colors in their yards.

Matthew: So what resources are available for people who are thinking about this, and wanting to take their first steps?

Emily: So I would be remiss not to mention all of the practical resources that we have available in the Pollinator Conservation Resource Center on our website, including practical guides on regionally appropriate native plants, how to establish wildflower habitat from seed. We also have some more guidance for folks who are wanting to change other ways about how they manage their spaces around the house. We have a new guide on managing pests while protecting pollinators. So how can you use integrated pest management in your yard? There's also great resources like doing a habitat assessment for your yard—where could you fill in? If you are already a pollinator gardener, you've already been taking steps to improve conditions for bees and other insects in your yard. It's a guide that can help walk you through a checklist of what are the deficiencies? Where could you add more? Maybe you have a gap in flowering between June and July. Unlikely, but maybe that's what's on your deficiency list. And so it can just help you identify where you could improve over where your current baseline. So that's a nice resource that I like to mention.

Emily: In terms of thinking broader—. Financial resources. That's one thing that people might be looking for. There's actually a growing number of states that are actively supporting lawn conversion. Minnesota has a statewide program called Lawns to Legumes, Virginia offers tax rebates for conservation landscaping, Colorado offers subsidized lawn removal services and garden kits. And there's multiple cities throughout the greater Southwest that offer rebates for removing grass or converting to xeriscaping. And lots of states also offer tree planting or tree rebate type programs. So I wanted to point folks to National Wildlife Federation, which maintains a database of these state rebates and incentives for gardens and lawn removal, to just go ahead and look for that. Take a look at it and see if there's a program that you might qualify for.

Stephanie: Yep. I like the Habitat Assessment Guide that Emily mentioned, too, among the Xerces resources. Even if you've not really done much or thought about it, it really walks you through what the insect wildlife needs in a yard, and where all the opportunities are for that. A few external resources that I can suggest is a website called Rethinking Lawns. And that is an initiative in the upper Midwest in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Michigan, through several researchers looking at different native species and how they can be planted together. So there's great resources on the Rethinking Lawns website. And, “rethinking lawns,” that's, I think, a nice gentle framing about how we talk about lawns. And on the other end of the spectrum, I'm gonna mention a reference, or a resource called Kill Your Lawn. Haha. So I won't say any more than—you can make some assumptions based on that name, but there's a very not gentle vibe to that resource, also.

Matthew: And, Steph, I have to mention it, but I know that you are a co-author on a guide to creating meadows in place of lawns for, certainly for the Mid-Atlantic, which I realize is only one region, but the information in there is applicable to much wider regions.

Stephanie: Yes. Thank you for bringing that up, Matthew. That was done in partnership with a landscape architecture firm that was installing a lot of meadow. So larger, multiple acres of meadow plantings—more in corporate settings—but replacing that big mowing regime with a perennial native meadow. And so that's—Mid-Atlantic Native Meadows is the name of that publication.

Emily: That publication has one of the best graphics. I use it all the time. It's one of those sort of food web graphics showing what does the food web look like with a lawn, and what does the food web look like when you've introduced a diversity of native plants. And the difference is quite striking.

Stephanie: There's that graphic. There's also one that shows what your cost and time inputs are with the lawn—establishing a lawn, a turf lawn—versus a meadow. So it's showing you those fertilizer, and fuel, and mowing—how many times you're mowing. And then a lawn is cheaper at the beginning, but over its decades of lifetime, a meadow is not only cheaper, but has so many more social and ecological benefits. That's another good graphic in that Mid-Atlantic Native Meadows guide.

Matthew: You've already talked quite a lot about HOAs and ways to make your non-lawn look neater. Is there any other advice you can offer to folks who may have an HOA?

Emily: Yeah, I think I mentioned that you can probably get away some with some significant changes just by maintaining tidiness of where you've put the flower plantings, and that you're mowing intentionally around them, or creating intentional borders and edges or paths. But if you are wanting to go further, and wanting to potentially shift policy, you can start just by looking at the existing language. Many HOA rules don't explicitly require turfgrass lawns. They require things like “maintained,” or “orderly,” or “weed-free.” And so there's often more sort of flexibility in that language than people assume. But you might consider instead proposing some language that allows specifically for native plantings or for pollinator-friendly plantings. You can start by getting some support from your own neighbors, talking to your neighbors about what you're doing, offering up that sort of signage to show the intention behind the care that you're providing in your space, and why you're doing it.

Emily: And then, I think—. I'm not the HOA expert. There's other people on my team that provide support to folks who are wanting to help change those types of municipal ordinances, or HOA board and bylaws. So I would say we do have the ability to help with some of that. And one of the things that I know has been helpful in some cases has been providing examples of places where they have made this change. Just to show that there are a lot of places that have updated their guidelines to allow for more diverse native plantings, and that this—this is not—you're not completely overthrowing the HOA idea. There are examples of where this has been done quite successfully.

Emily: And then, I think, for folks who are feeling stymied, or like they're not getting anywhere, there’s just a reality that these kinds of things can take time. HOA boards turnover. You can join your HOA board, and what could feel maybe like a hard, “No,” or a wall at one point, can become possible later on. And some of that just comes with that social cues and social change. So I think people are becoming more familiar with leaving the leaves, becoming more familiar with not cleaning up immediately in the spring with some of these ways of management that feel natural to us but are unnatural, I think, in some of the broader spaces in gardening circles. But that just changes over time. Change takes time.

Stephanie: I wanted to mention, too. Emily's talked about signs several times, which I think are important, and they provide information, they show that there's intentionality there. Another idea I've seen, which I really love, is sidewalk chalk. So you are just writing, you know, what's happening in this area right now. What's blooming, what insects or wildlife have you been seeing. Your neighbors who walk their dogs, or the kids who ride their bikes can be invited and read or add their observations, also. So it's a much more dynamic and interactive kind of communication.

Stephanie: I also know another homeowner who—it's not a Little Free Library kind of thing—but they have some outdoor furniture there, and they also will cut a few flowers of what's blooming, and put them right up there by the sidewalk so people can observe the plants in a way that feels comfortable to them. They don't feel like they're trespassing on someone else's yard, and they can even pick up the vase and see the flowers. So those are some other ideas of helping your neighbors experience, and understand, and enjoy what's going on in your yard, too.

Emily: I love that stuff. When I lived in Connecticut, on my little pocket square, I actually purchased little plant labels to be able to label what each thing was in the yard to show, “Okay, here's this plant, this is its common name. This is its—.” It was like Emily's arboretum. But you could have dog walkers coming by and going, “Oh, what's that plant? I want it in my yard.” And giving them what they needed to be able to take that information with them.

Rachel: I love those ideas so much. And just inviting people into the space, and to be part of that. And I think so much of this is changing expectations. Because when you go to a national park or a national forest, or when a family goes camping, you don't expect it to be manicured because that's not what it ever has been. And so we're used to these spaces being manicured, and so trying to change that. But inviting people into that change, and educating them on it, and changing those expectations, I think is a really effective way to slowly change how we see what residential areas need, or should look like. Yeah, I love the sidewalk chalk. That's such a great idea.

Rachel: Thank you both for sharing all this wonderful information. So, to end here we have two brand new questions since you've both been on Bug Banter before. Mine is: what is your favorite book or other resource that you would recommend on invertebrates?

Stephanie: I'm gonna suggest a website, and it's another nonprofit called The Caterpillar Lab. It's also—and I have the page open right now, and there's a little video of caterpillars crawling across the screen. There's so much information that's presented in a fun way to learn. There's a 365-day calendar, there are puzzles. So I love learning about different groups of moths and butterflies, and their larvae through this resource.

Emily: Love The Caterpillar Lab. Great call out. I actually, I couldn't decide between two different books with this one. I have—basically anything by Dave Goulson. A Sting in the Tail is the one that came to mind. This was something that I brought with me in my bike pannier during my honeymoon, which was biking through Ireland and Scotland. And it had stories of rare bumble bees in it. And so it was—. I pulled that out as I was biking through these machair grasslands, coastal grasslands in Scotland and Ireland reading about the great yellow bumble bee that lives there. But really anything by Dave Goulson. And the other one that that comes to mind, and especially since you mentioned The Caterpillar Lab, is Night Magic. So both of these are pop science easy reads about invertebrates, but Night Magic by Leigh Ann Henion, it tells the story of nocturnal animals. And it tells a story about the synchronous fireflies of North Carolina. And also Mothapalooza, which is an event that is led by Jim McCormac who has published books about plants for caterpillars—but similar to The Caterpillar Lab. And it's an event that brings people out to look at caterpillars, and look at moths, and think about what's active at night that we're not paying attention to right now. So both of those are two that I really enjoyed.

Matthew: I read a lot of books, and have a collection, but I was hoping like, maybe I’d get a new one. But I've read both those, so. Haha. They're great books, though.

Emily: All right, Matthew, what's yours?

Matthew: Oh, no, I'm not the interviewee here. I'm just gonna keep plowing ahead with my next question. Although I do love The Moth Snowstorm, if you want to track that one down. If there's one thing that you could tell everybody in the world about invertebrates, what would it be?

Emily: I think if there was one thing that I would want people to understand it is that invertebrates are doing a huge chunk of the work that keeps our planet functioning, right? They are both incredibly important, and incredibly overlooked. And people tend to notice large animals, but most of the biodiversity on this planet is invertebrates. And many of the processes that we rely on are driven by them, whether it's pollinating plants, decomposing organic matter, building soil, controlling pests. They are not just one small piece of the system—they are the system. And we can't overlook them. And they're really essential to our world.

Emily: And so a lot of the choices that we make in our yards, in our towns, across the country, whether it's simplifying landscapes, or using pesticides, make it harder for them to do what they need to do to persist and thrive. And so when we change those choices, we can start to rebuild the system, and start to give them places to live. So I think that's a pretty broad answer to that question, but it's really—if there's one thing I want people to know, it's that this is [the] invertebrates’ world, and we need to make it a place where they can continue to live.

Stephanie: And one thing I wish everyone knew or understood about invertebrates is they have this creepy, crawly, icky reputation, perhaps. But they do creep, they do crawl—they're pretty small, as far as animals go. And to me, that's what makes them so special. Also, they don't run away, they're easy for us to observe. You can hold them in your hand. You can hold them in a container. You can stand next to someone else holding it in a container, if that's where your comfort level is. But they're such an accessible and ubiquitous kind of wildlife. And learning that—I don't know if they're more afraid of us than we are of them, I can't speak for them—but in most cases, there's not a lot of risk or harm from invertebrates. So give them a little bit of your warm, fuzzy feelings, rather than the creepy, crawly feelings, and take some time to observe and learn about them, and appreciate them.

Rachel: When both of you were speaking, I was like, I just wanna like clap, and be like, “Yes!” I think everyone who loves invertebrates can full heartedly agree with what you both said. And I appreciate your answers to those questions. It's very inspiring. And I think that the whole point of what we're doing here is to try to help people understand those things, and to change perspectives, and get people to change their actions, and talk to other people about it, too, and how cool they are. So, thank you both so much. This has been really wonderful to sit down and be able to talk to both of you, and learn from both of you, as well. So thank you for your time today. It was truly such a pleasure, as always, to have you here on Bug Banter.

Emily: Thank you so much for having us. Can't wait to come back to listen to Matthew read from The Moth Snowstorm aloud. Haha.

Matthew: Have to do read-aloud books now, do I?

Stephanie: Yeah, yeah. Thank you both, as well. It's great talking about lawns and rethinking them, and ways that lawns can be more than just turfgrass.

Rachel: Bug Banter is brought to you by the Xerces Society, a donor-based nonprofit that is working to protect insects and other invertebrates—the life that sustains us.

Rachel: If you are already a donor, thank you so much. If you want to support our work, go to xerces.org/donate. For information about this podcast or for show notes, go to xerces.org/bugbanter.