Lawns into Meadows: Growing a Regenerative Landscape

I bought this book because of a $249 water bill I got in June, for ONE month! I live in the suburbs of New York City, and having a green lawn is kind of a necessity, but I wondered if there was an alternative. A friend of mine who is convinced his dog died after eating pesticide-treated grass told me he was letting his lawn go natural. That intrigued me, and after doing a little research, I bought this book. It is eye opening! There are certainly environmental benefits to planting a meadow (not least of which is reduction in noise pollution from all the lawnmowers and leaf blowers I have been listening to during my pandemic wfh), but there is a dramatic cost savings from cutting water usage and eliminating lawn maintenance. The thing I couldn’t get my head around was how do I do this in the suburbs? Will the neighbors think I’ve gone nuts? And what about ticks! All my questions were answered in the chapter on “Community Building.” I don’t have to go all “meadow” right away, I can go a little bit at a time. In fact, I realize I’ve been doing something like this over the past few years, reducing the size of the lawn and adding new beds of flowers, including some of the flowers in this book like Purple Coneflowers and Black-eyed Susans. As for ticks, keep some mowed barriers around the meadow grasses, so people and animals don’t come in contact with them. This book is a step by step guide on how to prep the site, seed the ground and maintain the meadow going forward (mow it once a year...yeah, that’s it). Well written, a quick read and informative. I’m inspired to plant some grasses in a little section in the back yard this fall and see how it goes from there.

I've been spending most of lockdown reading books and articles on ecological growing, and this is truly the best book to purchase or give to someone wanting to convert any amount of lawn or land into prairie/meadow. My favorite part: his stories about learning experiences from various meadow installations. We get to benefit from the challenges he encountered!Everyone has a slightly different take on what is truly ecological, but the one part I probably won't follow is the "don't use herbicides ever" for establishing a prairie. I've tried solarization, occultation (depriving weeds of sunlight), and tilling in a small portion of my lawn. (Irish landscape design guru Mary Reynolds is against tilling and calls it "ripping the skin of mother earth," but then you've got tilthing which is very light tilling, probably what this author is recommending.) The bermuda grass is out of control in my Nashville yard, no matter what organic method I try, and the land I'm converting to prairie is a very awkward slope. Perennial weeds can live up to two years with no sunlight! I don't have the time or energy to cover half an acre with black plastic for two years and then wait three more years for the meadow to fill in. So I'm going to follow the lead of anti-neonicotinoids Prairie Moon Nursery and prairie ecologist Neil Diboll and still use a bit of glyphosate to prep my plot. Glyphosate remains in the soil up to 2/3 of a year and I would never use it near a water source, but a once-over to really kill the invasives that will threaten my future meadow feels okay even to my nature-loving instincts.Get this book! You will enjoy it.

Owen Wormser's new book, Lawns into Meadows, lays out a simple argument for turning away from the polluting effects of lawn maintenance to the regenerative experience of growing a meadow. Mention a meadow, and most of us envision a site of acres stretching out to a long view. My husband and I, however, wanted simply to convert our front lawn of approximately 20' x 40' into a low-maintenance but attractive approach to our home in an old New England town.Lawns into Meadows tells how to evaluate your site, design your meadow, prepare and plant the area, and move forward with meadow maintenance. Most enjoyable is a catalog of 21 meadow plants, with engaging descriptions of each, as well as specific bloom times, how to choose plants appropriate to a given site and growing conditions necessary to help plants thrive.Wormser's first hand experiences with meadow building and a practical Q&A section round out the book. He encourages readers to leave a bit--or a lot--of lawn behind in order to protect the planet and benefit the pollinators who share our world.

In California where I live, front meadows are popping up in the suburbs. From what I see, it happens most often when a house is built/renovated, or changes hands, and the owners decide to replace the lawn with native plants that require less water and definitely less mowing.When I came across this book, it immediately occurred to me to send one to a nephew who had just moved to Maine and bought a house there. He and his wife are first-time homeowners and have no idea how to take care of a lawn. With more than an acre of land, I thought they could do a lot of good if they convert the lawn to a meadow.In addition to the very practical instructions of how to plant a meadow, this book provides inspiration based on science and the desire to improve the local ecosystem. What I like the most, and I think the new meadow owners will appreciate, is the chapter on community building. It removes the worry that turning a lawn into a meadow might raise concerns from neighbors and the surrounding community, and further equips the owners with the confidence to decide to help the earth.With many city-dwellers moving to the suburbs because of the pandemic and the resulting shift in work life, I have a feeling that they can use some knowledge on the alternative to lawns. This is the perfect book for them!

This book doesn't take long to read, but the information is clear and well laid out. I have already referred to it several times, since this is my first year growing a wildflower meadow. I also appreciate the fact that he does not endorse the use of herbicides to eliminate weeds. As a Master Gardener, this is the book I would recommend.