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“An Introduction to Wild Lawns,” with Eric Lee-Mäder
Are you seeking a lawn replacement that can function like the lawn you have—be walkable (unlike a full-on meadow), and mowable—but that isn’t an ecological drain? A “wild lawn” might be the answer.
What You’ll Learn in This Class
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How to convert your existing lawn to a wild one—or how to start from a blank slate
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Ideas for the native grasses and small-scale wildflowers you can combine into your wild lawn
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Tips for supporting beneficial insects and songbirds—while saving water and skipping the chemicals
At 40+ million acres in the United States, lawns constitute the single largest horticultural “crop” on the continent, a lot of it irrigated, fertilized, and composed of invasive Eurasian grasses. They sequester little carbon; do little to capture rainwater, and provide scant nutritional value to wild animals.
But lawns are also a kind of simple comfort that a lot of us need or want. They are habitat to our kids and pets, a defensible firebreak around our living spaces during dry summers. They signify intent and care in our communities.
This webinar highlights the potential and achievable alternative paradigm of wild lawns. Instead of manicured and uniform greens, wild lawns are irregular in texture and composition, low-growing but scattered with drifts of small wildflowers, built upon a matrix of native grasses that require neither supplemental water nor fertilizer.
Wild lawns can be fostered in situ—by converting existing lawns—or created from scratch. They can provide durable/walkable/mowable groundcover, while also supporting pollinators and songbirds. They are like a regular lawn, but lower maintenance and more full of life.
Come with your questions to ask live in class or submit in advance (with a photo attached for design and plant ID help, for instance).
About Eric — Our Guest Expert:
Eric Lee-Mäder is co-owner of Northwest Meadowscapes, a native seed farm in Port Townsend, Wash., specializing in pollinator-friendly native flowers and grasses.
He is the author of “The Milkweed Lands: An Epic Story of One Plant: Its Nature and Ecology,” and was lead author of several books from the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation.
He was Xerces’s pollinator and agricultural biodiversity co-director, directing the non-profit’s private-sector initiatives across thousands of acres with companies like General Mills, Nestlé and Danone, undertaking pollinator habitat restoration on farms that supply them with ingredients.