When lawn and order collide

The front-page story in Friday’s Bangor Daily News, “Pest infests Bangor lawns,” provided a cogent testimonial to our ever-growing disconnect with the natural world – a hubris that continues to lead us toward destructive consequences.

Thirty years ago when my wife and I moved to the Bangor area “landscaping” around a typical yard consisted of a casually mowed lawn, possibly a few foundation plantings and maybe an old tree with a tire swing attached to a lower branch. Since then we have witnessed a revolution in home landscaping, particularly in urban and suburban neighborhoods. Certainly this has produced more artfully tasteful home surroundings, and to the extent that it includes major tree and shrub plantings it is contributing to carbon sequestration (although the planting of some non-native species has the potential for changing our native forests, if these species become invasive).

But by far the biggest change that has occurred in recent years is the rather compulsive preoccupation with having a “perfect lawn” – driven by a combination of factors including TV ads, magazine articles, big box store promos, lawn care companies and peer pressure from neighbors. Thirty years ago most lawns in this area had a mixture of native and planted grasses, as well as clover, a plant that captures atmospheric nitrogen, converting it to a naturally enriching soil fertilizer. Modern lawn “feed and weed” additives kill clover. Of course those lawns had a mixture of weeds, including the dreaded dandelion and other wildflowers. These self-sufficient lawns required no fertilizer and rarely, if ever, needed watering.

Fast-forward to today where lawns are composed of carefully selected grass varieties, many of which are not native and not self-sufficient. To maintain these unnatural lawns requires regular fertilizing, watering and weed control. Inevitably some of the fertilizer and herbicide run off the lawn and add to the chemical pollution burden in our environment. In a world where potable water is becoming an ever more scarce commodity, lawn watering only exacerbates the situation. Add to this the extra energy required to produce chemical fertilizer and herbicides, pump water to the sprinkler and run the gas-powered lawn tractor more frequently (because unnatural lawns grow faster), and we are placing an ever greater burden on scarce energy resources.

But Mother Nature has a way of striking back when we mess with her too much. Japanese beetles, an introduced insect pest, were nearly non-existent in this part of Maine 30 years ago. One could argue that they have become more numerous because we now have warmer winters. That argument, while possibly true, does not address the real culprit – unnatural lawns. The lush, succulent roots of these pampered lawns provide the ideal feeding and over-wintering niches for exploding populations of grubs.

I have an old-fashioned, mostly native plant lawn that I don’t water and I don’t apply fertilizer, herbicides or pesticides. Very occasionally I will lime the lawn. This year, as in all past years, the lawn is green and grub free; but of course it has dandelions and clover, and other weedy flowering plants will pop up throughout the season. To me this provides an ever-changing delightful palette. I do get adult Japanese beetles that fly in from the neighborhood. These I hand pick off critical plants and drown in a jar.

If we choose to continue a lifestyle disconnected from the natural world the consequences will continue to burgeon. We all need to re-establish our inextricable link to nature and jettison the hype promulgated by those who profit from destroying the only really valuable heritage we can bestow on our children and grandchildren.

Richard Jagels of Winterport is a professor of forest biology at the University of Maine.