Lawn Begone: Grow Native Plants to Save Water and Create Habitat

By: Billy Goodnick, Santa Barbara Landscape Architect

Los Angeles’ water district just announced the strictest water restrictions ever imposed in the state. It is very likely that Santa Barbara will face similar conservation rules. What’s a good way to start conserving? Santa Barbara’s former city landscape architect suggests you replace your lawn with native plants.

Ask Yourself This: Do I Even Need a Lawn?

Throughout California’s cities and suburbs, people are ignoring the siren song of the “perfect” lawn. Instead, they’re growing food, creating cozy courtyards, and planting rain gardens to capture and harvest precious rainfall. Some even replace swing sets and some plant wondrous backyard “biology labs” filled with native plants where their kids can zoom in on nature’s workings.

Southern California is a region where lawns have no business existing if you’re concerned with protecting one of our most precious resources — water. In nondrought years, SoCal receives between 15 to 20 inches (381 to 508 millimeters) of rain annually, most of it falling in winter.

Yet, in every neighborhood we find those monotonous patches of green, sucking up life-giving liquid. If that liquid isn’t falling from the sky, it’s coming from somewhere else where it could serve a higher purpose — like help save the planet.

Five Ways Liquidating Your Lawn Helps Protect the Planet

Did you know that the natural limitations of water in our region mean that our native plants are much better adapted to use and store rainfall than nonnative lawn grasses? Turf is the largest irrigated crop in the U.S., taking up more space than we devote to growing corn, wheat, and fruit trees combined. When maintained in the traditional way it comes with a lot of other baggage that affects the environment and the health of your family and community.

1. Most of the popular, nonnative cool-season grasses such as fescues (Festuca spp.), Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis), and perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne) need about 1.5 inches (38.1 millimeters) of water per week during the growing season to thrive, which puts a huge strain on our water supplies, to the tune of 9 billion gallons per day, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. That water could instead nurture native plants which support biodiversity for wildlife and make up a healthy, diverse ecosystem.

2. Air pollution from gas-powered mowers, hedge trimmers, and leaf blowers accounts for at least 5% of the emissions in the U.S., contributing to climate change.

3. Overuse of synthetic fertilizers can percolate into the water table and run off into creeks, wetlands, and beaches. Sixty-five percent of U.S. estuaries and coastal waters are eutrophic, meaning they are over enriched in nutrients, which in turn encourages excessive plant growth. This can lead to problems such as algae blooms that starve the water of oxygen and later emit carbon dioxide as they decompose.

4. In our warming world, native trees will be heroes in the fight to mitigate climate change and more. All trees produce oxygen, sequester carbon, and temper climate by lowering air temperatures and increasing humidity. But native trees do all this while providing crucial habitat that supports the foundation of life in your yard. (In your face, lawns!)

5. Since many folks depend on gas-powered mowers, there’s the unceasing din of mowers, blowers, and other power tools that rattle our nerves. Wouldn’t you rather hear birds, frogs, and rustling trees?

How To Get Started

Why wait for our water woes to get to the point where local water agencies slap hefty restrictions on our water use or increase the cost? Be proactive and shift gears by starting now.

The first step, of course, is to completely remove your existing lawn to start anew with a clean canvas. Don’t be lulled into thinking that brown foliage or bare dirt means your arch nemeses aren’t lurking. It only takes a few latent seeds or dormant Bermuda grass (Cynodon dactylon) sprigs to pop up and drop you to your knees with a weeding fork. A quick search online turns up lots of non-herbicide techniques that retain the dynamic web of life under your gardening Crocs.

The simplest switch is to replace the thirsty monoculture of grass with a diverse combination of low-growing, easy-care plants like Coastal sagebrush (Artemisia californica ‘Canyon Gray’), California lilacs (Ceanothus spp.), and silver carpet beach aster (Lessingia filaginifolia ‘Silver Carpet’), a lovely daisy flower that can cover a 50–square foot (4–square meter) area. For more ideas, look no further than Santa Barbara Botanic Garden’s Meadow.

Need a surface to walk on or to toss a ball with the pooch? Check out lawn alternatives in the Island View Section at the Pritzlaff Conservation Center where you’ll find swaths of native blue grama grass (Bouteloua gracilis), sedges (Carex spp.), and more.

Or consider whether your outdoor space might benefit from another “room” to enjoy — perhaps a cozy, quiet space to read or meditate. Surround your new getaway with groupings of locally appropriate native plants that change with the seasons, attract local pollinators, and contribute to the habitat value of visiting critters.

Simple Steps for a Planet-friendly Lawn

Sure, kids and dogs like to play on something soft, and it’s not likely you’ll carpet your garden with old mattresses. If you have a compelling reason to grow a lawn, at least use best practices to care for it in the most benign, planet-friendly way.

• Add native plants in and around your lawn as space allows, where they will cut fertilizer use and save water. Consider clumps of native grasses like blue grama (Bouteloua gracilis) or clustered field sedge (Carex praegracilis) or other ground covers like yarrow (Achillea millefolia) or turkey tangle frogfruit (Phyla nodiflora). In larger scale gardens, deer grass (Muhlenbergia rigens) makes an eye-catching focal point and in summer and fall “dances” when a breeze wafts through its graceful, flowering wands.

• Follow tried-and-true water conservation hardware upgrades, like rotor water nozzles, that send water right to the grass instead of misting away on a breeze. Consider a “smart” irrigation controller that uses real-time weather information to adjust settings for rainy or super-hot days.

• Set your mower one-half inch higher in the summer to conserve water and create more shade to cool the ground.

• Check out the latest innovations in human powered (hand) mowers which are easy to push, quiet, and feature self-sharpening blades. Some new “mulching” power mowers pulverize grass blades to create an insulating layer of mulch which insulates as it decomposes, reducing evaporation, supplying nitrogen, and eliminating the need for disposal.

Monarch Caterpillar

Billy’s Go-to, Tried-and-true Faves:

• Toyon (Heteromeles arbutifolia): A great background screen or small multi-trunk “drama” tree

• St. Catherine’s lace (Eriogonum giganteum): It bursts with off-white, flat-topped flower clusters against downy gray foliage

• Island snapdragon (Gambelia speciosa): Medium-height shrub perfect near the edges of native oaks (Quercus spp.), prized for its lipstick red flowers that attract hummers

• De La Mina verbena (Verbena lilacina ‘De la Mina’): Knee-high, sun or part-shade bush produces lavender-colored, carnation-scented flowers yearlong; its scientific name sounds like a fairy tale princess

Stuck for ideas? Visit the Garden’s new website, which includes a section dedicated to native plant resources. You can also visit WaterwiseGardeningSB.org for a gallery of imaginative lawn alternatives.

Take a deep breath, grab a folding chair, and sit still in your garden. Imagine the soft hum of bees, butterflies, and feathered friends. Now, get growing.

About Billy Goodnick: Billy Goodnick updated this article from his 2013 book “Yards: Turn Any Outdoor Space Into the Garden of Your Dreams” (St. Lynn’s Press). He was the City of Santa Barbara’s landscape architect for more than 20 years and currently is a landscape consultant specializing in residential-scale, low-water gardens, and the drummer for local rock ’n’ roll band King Bee. Visit billygoodnick.com. O

Board Chair Valerie Hoffman's Native Garden post lawn removal