Why lawns to meadows?

Denver sits on the Great Plains-Palouse Dry Steppe ecoregion. The majority of vegetation is a mixture of short-grass, wildflowers, and medicinal herbs. However, farming and agriculture have destroyed at least 85% of the northwestern Great Plains and around 90% of the Palouse Prairie area.

How and why should we restore Denver back to its Great Plains goodness? Well first, we need to understand more about lawns, as we’ve come to know them, and about mono crops in general.

So what is a lawn?

A plot of turf grass that is usually tended or mowed.

Over 40 million acres of land in the US have some form of lawn on it. 

THE STATS:

It’s the biggest irrigated crop grown in the US, requiring an enormous amount of fossil fuels, fertilizer, chemicals, and water.

It is estimated that Americans use 100 million tons of fertilizer on their lawns each year.

The EPA estimates that 17 million gallons of gasoline are spilled every year in the US just while filling lawnmowers - far more than the 11 million gallons spilled by the Exxon Valdez supertanker.

Lawn irrigation is estimated to account for 1/3 of all residential water use, equaling 9 billion gallons per day.

What then is a meadow?

A natural field with a diversity of native grasses and wildflowers.

Meadows are incredibly low-maintenance, water-wise, cost effective, and have amazing regenerative power!

They improve the environment by increasing biodiversity, enriching soil health, providing pollinator habit, and removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Meadows can perform as well or better than a forest when it comes to sequestering carbon underground.

An established meadow can store 70% more carbon than a lawn!