We must wage war on the damn lawn. Part of the green revolution will involve the elimination of the traditional lawn, a central but ecologically questionable element of urban planning for more than a century here as in the rest of North America.
Watering lawn areas accounts for one-third of residential water consumption in the United States. These falsely natural spaces receive ten times more pesticides per acre than agricultural crops, while these harmful products wipe out pollinating bees. In addition, mowing grass encourages the increase of harmful species which require ever more pesticides in a ridiculous, very vicious circle.
In short, lawns consume a lot of resources to ultimately constitute a poor ecosystem. In Quebec, grass takes up between 8% and 20% of the space in certain large cities.
Based on these findings, the David Suzuki Foundation is launching the Share Your Lawn campaign on Thursday to raise awareness among homeowners, landscapers and municipalities of the need to modify grassy areas in order to create new biodiverse habitats. The media campaign summarizes its objective with this slogan: “Nature at home, one lawn at a time”.
The approach is based on a cartographic study produced to measure the size of grassy areas in Quebec cities (see box), but also on a historical reminder which helps us understand the evolution of this market several hundred times billions in size. worldwide. The first lawns (from a Latin word meaning “hair”) appeared in meadows grazed by domestic animals. The first landscaping using grass was designed by the architect Le Nôtre in Versailles in the 17th century.e century. The fashion then spread to the castles of the aristocracy, before becoming the norm for small bourgeois residences. The use of herbicides after World War II resulted in domestic lawns easily worthy of a golf green.
The Foundation calls for a global rethink of society’s symbolic relationship to chemically fertilized and mechanically maintained green grass. A free guide teaches how to take care of a lawn with fewer resources (especially water) and how to transform an old-fashioned grassy area to make it a more ecologically rich space.
The David Suzuki Foundation, created in 1990, has the mission of protecting the environment and quality of life. She counts on the support of 300,000 supporters across the country, a third of whom are in Quebec.
The Foundation recommends that cities adopt regulations beneficial to local biodiversity. A very simple idea would be to abolish the obligations to mow lawns from a certain height of vegetation to let them grow, by establishing a minimum height (20 cm).
According to the ecological organization, cities should also set a maximum grass area for each lot and require the planting of certain beneficial species. The sale and use of pesticides should be marked everywhere. This is already the case in 160 Quebec municipalities. The sale and use of small gasoline-powered equipment, such as lawn mowers or leaf blowers, should also be banned. California has imposed this measure since 1er January of this year.
Landscaping companies are called upon to be central players in promoting the implementation of the desired green revolution. The campaign is also launched with Nouveaux Voisins, a company in the sector, and the international organization Dark Matter Labs, which produces and distributes images linked to alternative options supported by the social economy.