Nothing annoys me more than a manicured lawn of Kentucky blue grass.  Our affinity for open landscapes have led some anthropologists to theorize that our love affair with open vista’s started with the first hominids that roamed the savannahs of Africa.  The unfortunate effect of this bad gene (if it does exist) is that these biological deserts we call lawns are the favored landscape of most Americans. Wastelands of verdant green lawn is just another human induced apocalypse we impose upon the fabric of our planet.  Insulting mother earth further is the debilitating effects of maintaining these green monsters.

Wild Turkey

I’m sure if we turned a meager 30% of the American lawn into open meadow that our reliance on the teat of big oil would be noticeably lessoned not to mention the converse effect of free services that a meadow provides via the biota found within. Non-point sources of pollution in the form of fertilizers, herbicides and petroleum by-products would also be reduced.  Lawns are only slightly more pervious than bituminous concrete (pavement) which means that chemicals and wastes sit tight on the surface just waiting for the rain to swiftly carry it off to the nearest waterway.  Lawns consisting of one or two non-native grasses, most commonly fescues are tantamount to the diversity of a mudflat.  Actually mudflats consist of cracked earth where certain adaptive herbaceous species can live, grow and flower – making these habitats richer than your front lawn. Adding insult to injury is the human perception that open field and meadows are places to be feared.  People today won’t let their kids explore these magical worlds because of the misguided observation that these habitats attract vermin such as mice, rats, woodchucks and dare I say – “ticks.”  Certainly a field can hosts all these things and more but with a little care and preparation all the negative effects of their existence can be thwarted.