Greener Acres

Vegetarian Times, March, 2001 by Susan Reifer

Maintaining a lush lawn and thriving flower beds without chemicals isn't as tough as you may think. All it requires is a slightly new mindset and a little determination

When spring arrives, with its promise of sweet-smelling blossoms and balmy days to come, more than two-thirds of American households turn their attention to cultivating their own little piece of the great outdoors. Millions of Americans make gardening our country's number one leisure activity. Whether the garden in question spans several acres or a mere window box hardly matters. Your carefully tended plot of earth--be it edibles or flowers, a maze of shrubbery, a cluster of cacti or a vast expanse of lawn--is no doubt a source of pleasure and pride, challenge and reward. But for most backyard enthusiasts, gardening is also a highly toxic endeavor. Common gardening habits are in fact truly dangerous--but turning to holistic gardening is easier and less time consuming than you may think. Here's the proof.

A recent survey by the National Coalition Against the Misuse of Pesticides surveyed the 36 bug killers most commonly used on residential lawns and found that 13 have been linked to cancer, 14 can cause birth defects, 11 can interfere with human reproduction and 21 can damage the nervous system. Few gardeners are immune: The average homeowner uses five to 10 pounds of pesticide per acre of grass each year. Squelching dandelions and other weeds can be hazardous to your health, too. About 13 million lawns in the United States are treated with weed killers (or herbicides) each year, and the National Cancer Institute has linked the leading herbicide with increased rates of lymphatic cancer in humans.

Part of the problem is that the toxic ingredients in these products don't just go away after you've applied them. Synthetic pesticides (which kill bugs, rodents, bacteria and other living organisms), synthetic herbicides (which kill weeds and fungi) and synthetic chemical fertilizers (which artificially stimulate growth) linger in the environment long after you've used them. They poison children (at the rate of 80,000 per year), pets and wildlife, seep into groundwater and unalterably disrupt nature's inherent balance--in your backyard and beyond. That's a high price to pay for picture-perfect roses or a lawn that looks like a putting green.

"Quick fixes have a consequence," says Joan Booke, a holistic, chemical-free horticulturist and licensed landscape contractor in Los Angeles. "A garden should be natural and it should evolve." One that develops over time based on holistic principles, Booke explains, will thrive without any of those toxic shortcuts. Although chemical-free gardening may mean replacing exotic plants with ones that are indigenous to your region or leaving your grass a bit longer than you're used to, this ancient approach preserves and renews the environment, keeps people and animals healthy, costs little to maintain--and is much easier than you think. All it takes to harmonize your little piece of paradise with Mother Nature is a slightly revised mindset, a thorough garden assessment (which you can easily do yourself), some mulch and a few natural products, readily available through mail order or at specialty nurseries. "The goal is to create a healthy environment," Booke explains. "What you need to think about is replicating what goes on in nature."

Down-to-Earth Gardening

When it comes to gardening or lawn care, the key is quality soil. And age-old gardening techniques focus on just that. Whether coarse or fine, pale or dark, unsullied soil is a miniature ecosystem that contains all the things--from minerals to microorganisms--that native plants need to be strong and to prosper. Adding mulch (a protective layer of organic matter such as leaves, straw or peat) and compost (a fertilizing mixture of decaying organic matter, such as leaves mixed with kitchen waste or manure), for example, are tried-and-true methods of replenishing soil and keeping it rich. Placing diverse plants near one another is also an ancient technique that prevents soil from becoming overly depleted of any single mineral and attracts beneficial birds, bees and lizards that keep pests like slugs and aphids at bay. Encouraging garden pests' natural enemies, in fact, is the second element to traditional gardening. The third element is to choose plants that naturally thrive in your garden environment and remove plants that don't. Strong, healthy plants can better resist both disease and pests and require less maintenance overall.

It used to be that when gardens were in trouble, humans sought help from nature rather than commercial products. The ancient Chinese, for example, established colonies of predatory ants in their citrus groves to protect against destructive beetles. Only in the past 150 years--and particularly since the adoption of chemical pesticides in the mid-1940s--has the modern notion of dominating nature led farmers and gardeners to abandon old-fashioned, eco-friendly methods and rely on chemical controls.