Natural Landscaping
The EPA Natural Landscaping Source Book has some good quotes - I have been saying for ages that lawnmowers and corporate grounds maintenance companies are a horrible waste of resources - every time I see them doing something like sprinklers running in the rain, I cringe. I'd like to see more natural landscaping, and if we must cut lawns, we should be employing laid-off workers with reel (cylinder) mowers, saving the environment, and creating more jobs!

Our predominant landscaping material today, the green grass lawn, is borrowed from the heavily grazed, short grass pastures and formal gardens of Europe, particularly England. In that moist climate, the closely cropped grasses evolved with the grazing sheep, goats and cows. Understandably, pioneers from Europe, used to the short grasses, brought the grasses as well as medicinal and food plants to make the unfamiliar feel familiar and homelike. Unfortunately, the grasses they brought do not thrive as well-kept lawns without a great deal of effort to simulate the conditions under which they evolved in Europe.

Our area of the country, with its harsher climate of extremes of heat and deep freezes, drought and drenching rains, is an inhospitable atmosphere for short-cropped, short-rooted grass. Therefore, the contemporary weed-free lawn, is maintained at a high price, not only in terms of dollars but also degraded water and air quality, water consumption, and the peace and quiet of our neighborhoods.