Yards make up roughly 17 percent of the continental United States: almost four times the land area taken up by national, state, and regional parks. And those yards are dominated by turf grass, because Americans love their lawns. Which is a shame since lawns tend to be pollinator wastelands and most terrestrial life on earth depends on the labor of pollinators. I’m talking birds and bees. Consider:
Close to a fifth of all land plant species are threatened with extinction.
Flowering plants represent 90% of all living land plants.
Most of terrestrial life depends, either directly or indirectly, on flowering plants.
Around 90% of flowering plants depend on animals (mostly insects and birds) for pollination.
Pollinators are in serious decline around the globe. For instance, one German study found that flying insects have declined 75% over the past 27 years.
Invasive pests and diseases, exposure to pesticides, habitat destruction, and loss of floral abundance and diversity have all been implicated in the decline of insect pollinators
About one in eight bird species is threatened with global extinction.
Nearly 3 billion birds have disappeared from the US and Canada since 1970
Lawns don’t offer enough food or shelter for many birds so the best way to help them is to downsize the lawn and plant native plants where the grass used to be. This can be an incremental labor of love, as it was for me a few years ago when I took out about a square foot of turf every day for three months. I can say from experience that baby steps with clear daily progress are a great motivator to just keep going. Eventually there will be the reward of a beautiful garden, pervasive birdsong and the satisfaction of having contributed to a worthy cause.
As for what to plant, go to Audubon’s Bring more birds to your home with native plants webpage, enter your 5-digit zip code to use Audubon’s native plants database and explore the best plants for birds in your area, as well as local resources such as nearby nurseries and online plant retailers.
Unless you live in a desert, don’t feel bad if you still keep a bit of lawn. Just make the lawn bee-friendly. The easiest way to do that is to mow less often, ideally around every two weeks (long enough for “floral resources” like clover and dandelions to bloom but not so long that the grass overtakes them in height). Here’s the conclusion of some researchers who actually studied the matter:
“Mowing less frequently is practical, economical, and a timesaving alternative to lawn replacement or even planting pollinator gardens. Given the pervasiveness of lawns coupled with habitat loss, our findings provide immediate solutions for individual households to contribute to urban conservation.” - Lerman, Contosta, et al. (2018). "To mow or to mow less: Lawn mowing frequency affects bee abundance and diversity in suburban yards"
Or you can plant a bee lawn, made of a tight mix of grasses and low-growing wildflowers that tolerate mowing and provide high-quality nutrients to pollinators. Blue Thumb’s Pollinator Lawns will take you through all the steps.
References:
“Cultivating Change”, National Wildlife Magazine, April-May 2020.
Lerman, S. B., A. R. Contosta, et al. (2018). "To mow or to mow less: Lawn mowing frequency affects bee abundance and diversity in suburban yards" Biological Conservation 221: 160-174.