“Some people who see my mostly prairie backyard ask, ‘But where does your son play?’ To which I’ll respond, ‘Wherever he wants!’” says Benjamin Vogt, a landscape designer and writer who designed a lush yard for his suburban tract home in Lincoln, Nebraska. “When kids have a wild landscape to explore, they become more creative, they’re better able to work in groups, they score higher in testing. It’s always frustrating when I hear people believe kids need a lawn to play.”

Vogt, who is slowly helping to re-prairie suburbia and establish native habitats through his activism and business, Monarch Gardens, first became leery of conventional lawns when he learned about the dwindling populations of insects, songbirds, and plant diversity that goes hand in hand with the multibillion-dollar turf-care industry. It was both a horticultural and professional epiphany.

He went on to rip out his lawn, compelled to revert his modest residential plot into a semblance of the diverse prairie-scape that once reigned across the state before the mowed green lawn shaped the suburban vernacular. (Since then, he has also published the book A New Garden Ethic: Cultivating Defiant Compassion for an Uncertain Future.)

Recognizing that not all of his neighbors would be receptive to the more natural aesthetic or the initial site preparation required for a prairie garden to establish, Vogt approached the conversion cautiously and with minimal site disturbance. He planted grass plugs, added an inch or two of mulch as weed suppression the first year, and chose species that would fill in quickly. He edited as the plants grew but mostly let them lead the way.

“Let’s face it, when you convert your front lawn in a traditional suburban landscape, it’s a confrontational act,” he says.

Today, his shortgrass prairie garden changes with the seasons, evolving as it fills in. It’s a stark contrast to the predictably stagnant lawn. “I see lawns as a landscaping tool akin to benches, sculpture, or gravel paths. They’re purely utilitarian, in that they can serve as paths or firebreaks or an area for a picnic table,” he says. “They allow the eye to rest,” he says. “But I mostly want to kill lawns.”

Dwell: What’s your go-to method of killing lawn?

Vogt: I prefer to use a product with the herbicide glyphosate in it. It’s a very polarizing subject. But Roundup, for example, isn’t that toxic when you use it one time to kill a lawn. It targets leaves and breaks down fast in the soil. The problem is when it’s used many times a year over the same area. The cumulative effect is soil death and stream death. You can read more about my reasoning on my website or in my forthcoming book, Prairie Up: An Introduction to Natural Garden Design.

The look of a prairie garden isn’t everyone’s thing. What if someone wants a neater version of it?

Native plants can be used in a variety of different aesthetic styles and even take on the appearance of a formal garden. It doesn’t have to look like a messy front yard like my designs tend to be.

How should we deal with the weeds that will appear when ditching herbicides and moving from turf to prairie plants and grasses?

I tell clients this, and it totally freaks them out, but for most of the weed species you’re going to get the first year or two, please don’t pull them out of the ground. When you do that, there’s more site disturbance. You’re bringing up weed seeds that are buried in the soil, and they’ll germinate and you’ll get more weeds. Just hand clip them or in some cases, just leave them. They’re not going to be there next year because by then—cross your fingers—the desirable plants we installed are going to fill in and be able to outcompete. But this process can take years. You don’t magically install a garden that looks good in six days.

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Kathy Plunkett

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