Greening a Lawn--Or Hurting the Environment?

Many homeowners strive to green their lawn for aesthetic and perhaps recreational reasons.  After all, if a lawn is spic and span and as green as a putting green, it is nice to look at.  After all, who would want to look at a lawn with overgrown weeds since that would make an individual's yard very unappealing to look at?  How a lawn looks to others is important for a variety of reasons such as keeping one's property values up and maintaining it in good condition should they decide to sell their house in the future.  Yet, the lengths to which homeowners go to green their lawn may actually hurt environmental quality due to things like pesticide and fertilizer use.

In particular, the use of pesticides and fertilizers are detrimental because while they may cause a lawn "to look perfect but this perfection is achieved at the expense of soil vitality." Rather than helping the lawn, the "chemically dependent lawn is more prone to disease and less able to handle stresses from drought, heat and insects."  Clearly, therefore, the fertilizers and pesticides do not green a lawn especially when there are periods of drought where insects and bugs can eat up the crops.  As such, pesticides and fertilizers may actually not help a lawn grow more or get rid of an insect problem and could have the opposite intended effect.  Consequently, it makes no sense to use fertilizers and pesticides especially if instead of greening the lawn, they can make it less aesthetically pleasing ironically.

Some ways to green a lawn include using organics and developing a sustainable system. For example, some of the methods for going green include "Adding compast to the lawn once per year (which) will greatly improve your soil quality. Planting native plants, especially those that use less water, will decrease the overall impact of your lawn related activities." If individuals develop a system such as compositing, then soil fertility improves and instead of harmful fertilizers, plants can grow like they naturally would without harming the environment in terms of contaminating the groundwater.  Furthermore, if plants are planted that use less water, then that is also good for the environment in terms of conserving a precious resource like water for which shortages can occur due to drought like conditions.

In essence, the problem with greening a lawn using pesticides and fertilizers, therefore, is the detrimental impact to the water supply that can occur from the excess runoff.  Also, both pesticides and fertilizers contain fossil fuels so they also contribute to the problem of manmade climate change in their production process.  The best way to green a lawn is to use natural, perhaps organic processes where soil fertility is improved without chemical fertilizers.

Photo Credit: agranite