{"id":66334,"date":"2025-08-13T11:03:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T11:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/66334\/"},"modified":"2025-08-13T11:03:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T11:03:12","slug":"in-a-sea-of-brown-lawns-why-some-natural-gardeners-are-bringing-messy-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/66334\/","title":{"rendered":"In a sea of brown lawns, why some natural gardeners are bringing messy back"},"content":{"rendered":"

As abnormally dry weather sweeps across much of the country<\/a>\u00a0this summer, you may have\u00a0found yourself staring despondently at the brown, crispy patch of fried earth you once called your front lawn, felt your fingers twitch in the direction of the hose\u00a0and wondered: Should I?\u00a0Am I even allowed<\/a>?<\/p>\n

But environmental and horticultural experts, as well as proponents of the no-lawn movement<\/a>, say the question\u00a0is\u00a0actually\u00a0whether it’s responsible to have a full grass\u00a0lawn at all anymore<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The David Suzuki Foundation has previously estimated<\/a> there are about 6.2 million lawns across Canada, and calculated<\/a> that anywhere from 8.2 to 22.7 per cent of several large Canadian municipalities are turf grass.\u00a0In 2021, two-thirds of Canadian households\u00a0reported they had a lawn, according to Statistics Canada<\/a>.<\/p>\n

These lawns\u00a0are “biodiversity deserts,” according to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences<\/a>, supporting very few insects and wildlife. They’re\u00a0also notorious for their water waste<\/a> and contribute to water scarcity. Maintaining them often involves harmful pesticides and fertilizers, while frequent mowing emits greenhouse gases.<\/p>\n

And with many Canadian cities experiencing prolonged dry conditions, many lawns are looking … parched.<\/p>\n

Enter the no-lawn,\u00a0anti-lawn<\/a>\u00a0or re-wilding movement<\/a>, a sustainable approach to landscaping and an attempt to shift our perspective on what yards can look like \u2014 and their purpose. This can include a\u00a0naturalized yard<\/a>, a habitat garden, using yards to grow food, or even just converting a section of your lawn to dedicate to native plant species and pollinators.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“There’s a\u00a0crazy amount of lawn out there, like tens of millions of acres in Canada and the United States, dedicated to growing just turf grass,”\u00a0said Brendon Samuels,\u00a0a postdoctoral fellow with the Ecological Design Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University.<\/p>\n

“Which is an\u00a0imported, non-native group of species that\u00a0has no real ecological value, that is very expensive to maintain\u00a0and that doesn’t look so nice when you’re in the middle of a heat wave in the summer.”<\/p>\n

WATCH | People are rethinking lawns:\u00a0\"\"<\/p>\n

People are rethinking lawns amid a ‘cultural shift’<\/p>\n

Brendon Samuels, a postdoctoral fellow with the Ecological Design Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University, says people are thinking more about individual actions they can take ‘in the midst of a biodiversity loss crisis that’s largely fuelled by habitat loss and land use planning.”Lawns should be area\u00a0rugs’<\/p>\n

Naturalized yards have a range of benefits, Samuels said, like helping preserve the monarch butterfly species by growing milkweed, or making\u00a0one’s area more resilient to climate change with more green coverage.<\/p>\n

Native plants help keep areas cooler and damper during heat waves, because they have deeper root systems that can access groundwater, he said. They also help increase the resilience of landscapes during floods, he added. And yes, you don’t need to water them as often as a turf grass lawn to keep them healthy, he said, making them more drought-resistant.<\/p>\n

\"ABrendon Samuels, a postdoctoral fellow with the Ecological Design Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University, has a naturalized yard, pictured here in London, Ont. (Brendon Samuels)<\/p>\n

Last year, a study by the National Wildlife Federation<\/a> found that\u00a012 per cent of the U.S. adults surveyed said they were converting parts of their lawn to a natural or wildflower landscape.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The movement is particularly popular with a younger generation seeking out alternatives to grass, and is prominent on social media, notes Home and Garden magazine<\/a>.\u00a0And Garden Design magazine<\/a> predicted that native plants and eco-friendly gardening will be the No. 1 gardening trend of 2025, followed by “less tidy” gardens.<\/p>\n

On Pinterest<\/a>, there are some 23,000 searches for “naturalistic garden.” Some\u00a0videos on TikTok<\/a>\u00a0about growing native gardens have millions of views.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

“We’re bringing messy back,” said\u00a0Grant Minkhorst\u00a0of Toronto, known as “Gardening Grant” on TikTok,\u00a0in a video last\u00a0month<\/a>\u00a0with 25,000 views where he shows off his thick vegetable beds, lunging perennial border and droopy prairie coneflowers.<\/p>\n

“My measure of success is how much food did we produce? How many pollinators visited our gardens? That’s about it,” he added in the description.<\/p>\n

And on Reddit, there are some 283,000 members of the “no lawns” subreddit<\/a>, an online community devoted to “alternatives to monoculture lawns.” There, people there share photos of yards filled entirely with pink\u00a0coneflowers and sprawling yellow coreopsis;\u00a0leafy plants that climb over fences and fields of purple bee balm.<\/p>\n

“As nature intended,” commented a Redditor on a video of someone’s sprawling, buzzing yard.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"TwoSamuels, left, plants his rainwater garden at his home in London, Ont. (Brendon Samuels)<\/p>\n

The more we can stop being tidy, the more wildness we can\u00a0bring into our gardens and landscapes, the better habitat we provide, said New York-based ecological horticulturist Rebecca McMackin\u00a0in a 2023 Ted Talk video<\/a> played more than 1.3 million times.<\/p>\n

“Why not get rid of your lawn, or shrink it drastically?” she said. “Lawns should be area rugs, not wall-to-wall carpet.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Have you ditched your grass for a naturalized lawn? Send us photos at ask@cbc.ca. The lawn as a status\u00a0symbol<\/p>\n

Lawns are a cultural import from 17th- and 18th-century Europe, where they were symbols of wealth and status, said\u00a0Samuels \u2014 back then, you needed significant resources\u00a0and labour to be able to maintain\u00a0one.<\/p>\n

“People default to the lawn because it’s very normative in our culture,” Samuels said.<\/p>\n

“What we’re seeing increasingly is people starting to question those norms and look for alternatives.”<\/p>\n

\"AA man mows his lawn in this 1956 archive photo. Lawns are a cultural import from 17th- and 18th-century Europe, where they were symbols of wealth and status. (Three Lions\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

That said, some people who have ditched the grass have faced hurdles. Lawn naturalization has been recognized as a\u00a0constitutional right<\/a>\u00a0for decades in Canada, but bylaws haven’t always caught up, and The Associated Press<\/a>\u00a0notes that\u00a0many homeowners’\u00a0associations still have rules about keeping yards manicured.<\/p>\n

Samuels himself came up against bylaw<\/a> when he created his own naturalized backyard and rainwater garden in London, Ont.<\/p>\n

CBC News has previously covered cases in several cities across the country where people have come up against bylaw complaints about their natural yards \u2014 but also others where those bylaws have shifted to allow people to keep their yards as is<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Some cities, such as Toronto<\/a>, offer grants for community-led projects to create pollinator gardens or convert a lawn area into one. Others offer exemptions<\/a> to mowing height bylaws for residents who create naturalized areas.<\/p>\n

And while some may assume naturalized yards would attract more pests, such as rodents or ticks, the opposite has been found to be true, according to a 2024 report <\/a>by the Ecological Design Lab. And the David\u00a0Suzuki Foundation\u00a0explains\u00a0that “simplified environments, like turfgrass lawns, favour\u00a0white-footed mice, a key reservoir for Lyme disease in Canada.”<\/p>\n

“A traditional lawn is one of the worst landscapes for wildlife \u2014 and one of the best for ticks.”<\/p>\n

There’s a balance to be had here, Samuels said.<\/p>\n

“We’re not going after anyone’s lawn,” he said. “But I think municipalities and individual property owners should be considering, ‘Do we need this much lawn?'”<\/p>\n

WATCH | The problem with lawns:\u00a0\"\"<\/p>\n

Why you should naturalize your lawn<\/p>\n

With summer weather on the horizon, many British Columbians are starting to think about water conservation. Some experts say one of the best ways to do that is to naturalize lawns, allowing native plants and wildflowers to flourish. Darius Mahdavi headed out to the UBC Botanical Gardens to learn more.<\/p>\n

This story has been updated to clarify attribution of the source of statements made about the ecological impact of some types of turf lawns.
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