Learning about polyculture lawn benefits led my wife and me to let Mother Nature do her thing in our yard.
It may sound crazy to let native herbs, wildflowers, and many varieties of grass dominate our yard. But that’s exactly what we did. And our yard has never looked so healthy!
Letting our grass become a polyculture lawn has so many benefits. I’m going to share some of the amazing reasons we’re never going back to a monoculture yard. Hopefully you’ll see why it may be the Earth-friendly lawn choice you’ll want to make, too.
#1 – A Polyculture Lawn Benefits Pollinators
A short-shorn monoculture lawn, a yard consisting of just one variety of grass, is essentially a natural wasteland. Pollinators and other beneficial creatures cannot thrive without flowering perennials and other plants from which they can feed.
Why are so many people fixated on having a single species of grass in their yards? Well, it wasn’t always this way. In the 19th century, before the advent of widespread commercial herbicides, it was totally common to see a mixture of fine-leafed grasses and broad-leaf “weeds” coexisting in lawns — even the nicest ones in the best neighborhoods.
This mixture of turf plants helped support a variety of insects, including butterflies and bees. However, habitat loss caused the depletion of more than 165 million acres of prime breeding grounds for monarch butterflies. It’s also caused the monarch population to drop by more than 80% in the eastern U.S., where my wife and I live, since the 1990s. Much of this is due to the use of herbicides and development.
Since my wife and I stopped obsessing over plucking out “weeds” from our yard and began cutting our grass on the highest mower setting, we’ve seen a huge influx of butterflies, moths, bees, and other insects milling about our lawn. It goes to show that making relatively small changes can make a big difference.
#2 – Polyculture Turf Is More Resistant To Pests And Diseases
You’ve probably heard the phrase “strength in diversity.” It’s certainly true when it comes to an Earth-friendly polyculture lawn! When you have different kinds of plants and turfgrasses in your yard, you don’t have to worry as much about losing your green spread to a disease or pest.
A particular type of disease or pests may kill one kind of turf, others can be completely resistant against them. And this can come in handy when dealing with a variety of lawn problems — even drought.
#3 – You Can Save Time And Money If You’re Not Eliminating “Weeds”
I can’t even begin to count how many hours my wife and I spent combing our yard for anything that wasn’t Bahia or St. Augustine. We’ve probably spent many cumulative days doing this just looking for and pulling weeds from our lawn. I’ve got news for you… We aren’t getting those days back.
And that doesn’t even touch on the money factor. While we haven’t spent too much money on lawn weed killer, I see a lot of lawn care companies with chemical tank truck cruising our neighborhood. How much money are some of our neighbors spending spraying their yards for weeds?
Just think: if you’re growing a polyculture lawn, you don’t need to worry about pulling weeds from your lawn anymore. And do the math on and all the money you’ll save not buying herbicides or paying for professionals to spray them.
#4 – Polyculture Lawns Are More Earth Friendly
If this next point hasn’t hit you yet, you’re about to have a whole new perspective on why polyculture yards are better. Remember I mentioned a moment ago about those lawn-care companies spraying for weeds? What are all those chemicals they’re spraying? They surely can’t be healthy for our environment. Especially when you consider all the chemicals in those weed killers.
Consider what those chemicals are doing to our planet — and not just the patch of land you call yours. Polluted water runoff is a huge problem in many communities and affects rivers, lakes, and streams. What are chemicals sloughed from your yard doing to all the creatures that live in contaminated bodies of water?
And what about us, human beings? We have long known the dangers of many weed killers to people. Some of you may remember the concerns around the herbicide paraquat in the 1970s and ’80s. It was used mainly in commercial crops and linked to many diseases and deaths. And these days many of have heard about the dangers of glyphosate and its suspected links to cancer. Who’s to say other popular weed killers aren’t harmful to you?
It begs the question, is having a high-maintenance, monoculture yard worth the risk to our planet and ourselves?
When you have a polyculture yard, you don’t have to worry about spraying for lawn weeds. And that means you don’t need to dump chemicals into your lawn that harm Earth and all its creatures great and small — including you and me.
#5 – A Polyculture Lawn Benefits Year-Round Curb Appeal
Many grasses flourish in the late spring through early fall only to go dormant during the winter months. This is pretty common even in warmer climes like Central Florida, where my wife and I currently live. But when you have a polyculture lawn, benefits extend to the appearance of your yard even when you’re roasting chestnuts by an open fire.
A great many plants we commonly call “weeds” grow quite well or maintain their green appearance during the winter. And if you have a variety of these perennials in your lawn, it can help keep your landscape looking green even when your Bahia, St. Augustine, fescue, or whatever other grass you’re growing is brown and dormant.
A Polyculture Lawn Benefits Our Home Every Day
I told my wife just the other day that in the many years we’ve owned our home I’d never seen it look so green or teem with so much life. Yes, it isn’t perfect — certainly not in the way many of the most persnickety homeowners’ association would term it. And we haven’t yet won a Yard Of The Month award from any local community organization.
But we don’t need yard-sign accolades for horticultural validation.
We know we must be doing something right when we see many flying insects flitting about the yard, suckling on little flower heads sprouting from amid the grass. We relish looking at a yard covered in green, flowery plants that invite so many little pollinators and other beneficial creatures into our yard. It’s also nice to enjoy the extra time we have these days, no longer hunched over our grass worrying and toiling over lawn weeds. Sure, we still hand pull weeds from hedges and flower beds. But this takes a fraction of the time we spent pulling weeds from the lawn.
And we don’t smell any pungent odors reeking from herbicides sprayed on our yard — for a pretty penny to boot.
Polyculture lawn benefits are even more numerous than I’ve mentioned here. I’m only going by the ones my wife and I have directly enjoyed since going for polyculture yard a while back. I’ll bet we may realize even more benefits with our polyculture lawn in the years ahead.
I know a polyculture lawn isn’t for everyone. And it might not even be permitted by your homeowners’ association, if you live in a community governed by one. But I urge you to rethink the conventional monoculture yard — the one that so many of us are told we should strive to have.
Polyculture lawns will save you time, money, and stress. They help our environment in multitudes of ways. You may even find yourself healthier in the end for it, too.