Americans love lawns. Cultishly even. Four out of five Americans grew up in a house that has one. 

They’re a symbol of 20th century American middle class prosperity and safety, and they’re everywhere. Just look out your window. 

Freshly manicured, cut to exact specifications and tidied around the corners, lawns are ingrained into our shared identity as Americans — great for basking in the sun and people watching to our heart’s content.  

The Main Quad is a lawn. So too is the South Quad, Bardeen Quadrangle and the Ikenberry Quad. Grant Park in Chicago is one big lawn, nicknamed “Chicago’s Front Yard”. And nearly all properties in Champaign have lawns. 

But we have too many of them. Especially too many that serve no purpose other than aesthetics. 

Take Wright St. near Transit Plaza as an example. In between the street and Lincoln Hall, there’s a tiny patch of grass. What’s it there for? To throw a frisbee? It’s too small. To soak up the sun? It’s too awkward of a space, no one does that. Can we sit there? No, there are no benches or tables. What about the bees and pollinators? No — just grass, no flowers, nothing.

Compare that to another patch just around the corner with native plantings. Walk by it each month and different flowers will grow and bloom. They shine bright yellow and deep purple, then recede, with the heads of dried flowers providing birdseed in its natural form. This patch is peaceful to sit beside and watch the bees and butterflies. Here, you can soak up the sun and watch people walk down the sidewalk, all the while providing for the earth. 

These two spots on Wright St. represent the “what is” and the “what could be.”

One sits there to look pretty. The other (also looks pretty) but is useful to our urban ecosystem.

Yet, there’s a dilemma. Native plantings are sparse, but patches of grass exist everywhere on campus. In between apartment buildings and the street, in front of houses and behind them, everywhere you look there’s grass.

This phenomenon is a legally required byproduct of housing setbacks and single-family zoning that prohibits buildings from butting up against the street. The space has to be filled with something. Green grass it is. 

These areas are mostly unusable, existing just for looks. 

They don’t provide much in the way of ecosystem services, but they do reduce runoff, cool the air and reduce noise levels by dampening sound. Lawns, or rather green spaces in general, are beneficial to the wellbeing of urban spaces. 

But traditional lawns are a missed opportunity. Native plant habitats provide the same benefits and more. They provide shelter and food for pollinators — which are essential to our global economy and planet — and restore 20th century biodiversity loss.

A lawn may provide a soft carpet for your dog to poop on, but they’ll poop anywhere. Fill that patch with native plants. 

Our lawns are not natural. Let us turn them back into something that is.

A long time ago, Illinois was covered with native plants. The space our lawns take up today wasn’t a random segment of space that no one has any idea what to do with, they contributed to a vast ecosystem with bison and 700-pound elk.

“At its peak, (the prairie) sustained more than 300 species of plants, 60 species of mammals, 300 species of birds and well over 1000 kinds of insects,” according to the Grand Prairie Friends website, a Champaign-Urbana-based conservation organization. “Among swaying grasses grew wildflowers that bloomed from spring until fall in a succession of brilliant colors.”

But as European settlers moved westward, they forced the removal of the Indigenous people who sustained the prairie and plowed the 22 million acres into farmland. Today, only 2,000 acres of original prairie remain in Illinois, about the size of the University campus.  

In its wake, we grew crops and filled our cities with non-native grass lawns that spite the legacy of the great prairie. This land used to provide for the Earth. Now, it gives us something nice to look at when we carry our groceries inside.

Lawns should be used to their full potential. Lawns should be native prairie habitat.

If every American transformed their lawn into a native plant haven, it would become the largest national park. All the tiny national parks would comprise 40 million acres, 20 times larger than Yellowstone National Park.  

But if you don’t have a yard, there are some simple things that you could do to make a difference:

• Switch out non-native flowers from Home Depot with native wildflowers from a local nursery and plant them in a pot on your balcony
• Buy organic and locally produced food to support farms who refrain from using harmful pollinator-killing insecticides
• Create a bee hotel by forming tiny holes with sticks for bees and other insects to stay over the winter 
• Build a bee bath — a birdbath filled with pebbles — so bees can drink water without falling in

Each of these things help increase the population of pollinators, which are the silent makers of life. Pollinators — and thus the plants that sustain them — are needed for our food to grow and to provide over $20 billion in crop production value. They also accelerate the rate at which native plants can reproduce, which in turn creates more plants, which creates more bees, which creates higher crop yields and improves our economy and natural world.

Each pot, each plot, each native garden that you grow reinforces the idea that our cities should be full of nature. 

There’s so much unexpected joy and whimsy to gain from watching life return to your door. This summer, transform your yard.

*If you want to learn more about the destruction of the prairie, the replacement of indigenous people with settlers and the impact that that had on our natural world, read this blog post here (3-5 minute read).

Joe is a junior in FAA.

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