Lawn Gone: The Environmental Disaster that is the American Lawn

When he first put this presentation together… Dallas County water use per day was 70 million gallons (2012). Now: 350 million gallons of water used every day (2022)… most of it for turfgrass.

This presentation discusses the origin and evolution of the maintained ‘lawn’. From it’s beginnings in Europe and England to it’s ‘import’ and promotion in the United States, exposing some of the environmental, financial and social consequences of the seemingly benign lawn.

Alternatives to the monstrosity will be offered.

Randy wants to offer this one first because it’s one of the few realms directly in control of the ‘average person’, implement immediate, positive management protocols without much hassle or expense. You can easily create both wildlife and human habitat by removing lawn and installing natives and food crops.

“I love teaching and helping folks, looking forward to sharing this with everyone, Thank you… RJ”

Part of a 3-series educational presentations.

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After that I’ll offer a presentation I do for The National Wildlife Federation discussing habitat design. I work with that entity installing school gardens for the Dallas and Ft. Worth ISD’s and it’s great for those who’ve not done anything like converting or creating native habitats. This one is just called ‘Habitat Design, Installation and Maintenance’.

The third is titled ‘Pollinators and Natives: An Ancient Marriage’. This one cements why we utilize native plants and largely avoid non-native plants species in our landscape designs.

I’m primarily an educator and I think these 3 presentations offer a nice overview of the philosophies and methods for restoring and/or creating native habitat… I don’t use the term ‘wildlife habitat’ because it’s human habitat as well… native plants serve us as intimately as they do Wildlife, after all, we’re critters too!