How Environmentally Damaging is the Average Lawn?

When you admire your lawn, you probably do not think about how environmentally damaging it can be. The average yard can do some serious damage to the earth. Choosing the wrong seed or sod can result in an overuse of water, the need for chemical fertilizers or pesticides, and wastewater. Here are some tips that can help you to avoid wreaking environmental havoc with your yard maintenance.

Maintaining Lawns

Turfgrasses help to reduce erosion, a natural form of environmental degradation. Depending on the grass you choose, though, your lawn can require environmentally damaging maintenance. Some grasses need copious amounts of water, while others require chemical treatments.

About half of all lawns get maintained by mowing only. These lawns produce a lower average carbon sequestration rate. Mowing your grass too short can cause problems, too. This creates opportunities for weeds to grow more easily, and weeds spawn the need for pesticides.

Patchy lawns do not do a good job of prohibiting soil erosion. Lawns require regular weeding, natural fertilizing, and proper irrigation.

Water Damage

Spraying your lawn with pesticides can cause a multitude of problems. Your lawn may grow fewer weeds, but the pesticides can enter the local water supply or generate carbon. Fertilizers can help your landscaping to grow lush and green, but these chemicals can also enter the local water supply. Artificial green, like those in putting fields, tends to be much less wasteful of water and do not require pesticides. When you water a chemically fertilized lawn or one sprayed with pesticides, you create wastewater. If you choose a turfgrass that requires lots of moisture to grow, you will end up wasting water irrigating it.

Conserve Water with Drought-Hearty Choices

You can have a gorgeous lawn without using much water. Choose a drought-tolerant fescue seed mix. It grows without much water, allowing you to conserve the precious resource. Consider xeriscaping areas of the lawn you rarely use and planting drought-hearty trees or shrubs, such as varieties of cactus. You can also create decorative areas of rock and stone and use mulch.

You can easily create a lovely landscape that requires no chemicals and little water. You can still have areas of drought-hearty grasses that require little moisture. This lets you keep your green lawn. Rather than create pockets of water-intensive gardens, create xeriscaped areas that add color and texture to the yard with mulch, stone, and rock of various colors.