"Lose the lawn" has been the call of a campaign spearheaded by Alrie Middlebrook, a California landscape professional and native plants specialist calling on people to mitigate their carbon-footprint by replacing their lawns with native gardens.
Middlebrook is a founder and president of Middlebrook Gardens, the award-winning design and building firm located in San José. The company is an innovator and industry leader in the use of native plants and sustainable landscape technology.
"Lawns are high-maintenance, they waste water, they are expensive, and toxic," Middlebrook said at her Commonwealth Club presentation, called "Thirteen ways to stop global warming."
According to statistics, water-related activities are the number one use of electricity in California, and pumping water uses 40 percent of the power in the state. Electricity comes from coal and natural gas; sprinkling a lawn daily contributes to global warming, Middlebrook pointed out.
Middlebrook has built and designed more than 150 California native gardens and has been landscaping the Bay Area for decades. Among her public projects was the landscaping for the River Street Historic Garden project in San José.
- Plant a California native garden utilizing native plants; they can survive on annual rainfall.
- Protect your watershed. The less impervious surface you retain on your property, the more rainfall will stay on your property.
- Don't use new concrete in garden construction. After the burning of fossil fuels, the manufacture of cement is the number two contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.
- Do not use spray/sprinkler systems for irrigation! A sizable amount of the water is lost to evaporation. Use drip, soaker, or an underground irrigation system.
- Lose your Lawn and replace it with a native meadow! Up to 60 percent of household water is used on lawns.
- Don't use oil-derived pesticides, insecticides, herbicides or fertilizers. Compost and keep worm bins. Break the chemical dependence cycle.
- Register your garden as a certified national wildlife habitat. (Visit the National Wildlife Federation website).
- Use solar power to operate fountains, gates, lighting, and power in garden sheds and cottages.
- Grow some of your own food organically. Plant fruit trees and vegetables as landscaping plants.
- Use recycled material and products and certified sustainable products in garden construction.
- Stay local! Buy from local suppliers.
- Use tree trimmings for mulch, it keeps your soil moist, reducing the need for irrigation.
- Use weed cloth under mulch. Install it from the start and smile every time you walk by your weed-free garden beds.
Source: Middlebrook Gardens
"This is the most sustainable model for gardening in our time, because these plants grow here naturally," she said. "Once we plant them, we don't have to do anything particularly to them."
The idea of working with native to California plants as an artist and designer, according to Middlebrook, is that by making these gardens appealing, she can persuade people that this is really a model that people need to embrace.
"When you go out in suburbia, you see a landscape that is contrived, and an introduced landscape that has become familiar to our eyes," Middlebrook said. "But there's another world here, and that is the world of the native flora of California."
"We have 6,000 plants to choose from in this state and more than a third of them are garden-worthy."
She added that the prairies in the Midwest have been replaced by lawns and that people nowadays often go to nurseries to buy plants that aren't a part of the local ecology. But she said that when people put a native garden on their land that supports that land, they are also putting pollinators (birds, insects) back—it is returning the land to nature.
She has observed that we live in a complex system, and that the plant and soil communities are just as complex as our body is. She also says that she thinks of the soil as her skin, and that likewise the soil should always be covered to keep it healthy.
"If you plant a native garden, you make your footprint lighter and you get that direct connection with Mother Earth."
Middlebrook co-authored a new book "Designing California Native Gardens." Published by the University of California Press, the book contains color photographs of different California ecosystems such as chaparral, mixed evergreen forest, and oak woodlands. It provides guidance of how to garden with those plants to create a natural ecosystem.
And if you are a plant person, you can visit www.middlebrook-gardens.com for more information on how to create native gardens. A series of do-it-yourself classes will also be available on Sept. 8 & 9 at The California Native Garden Foundation, 76 Race St., San José, CA 95126.
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