Daniel Jaffe Wilder still remembers the conversation he had maybe six years ago with a former colleague, when they were working at Garden in the Woods, the native-plant garden in Massachusetts.
The two ecologically focused horticulturists were looking for a way to talk to visitors about that massive monoculture of European turfgrass species that we grow and mow like mad. They wanted a catchy slogan, perhaps, to convince people that they could do better ecologically than the great American lawn — something encouraging, and not too intimidating.
Mr. Wilder, who is now the director of applied ecology at Norcross Wildlife Foundation, in Wales, Mass., and its 8,000-acre sanctuary. “Kill Your Lawn” took the form of a lecture that he and Mark Richardson, the director of horticulture at New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill, have each given many times since.
Douglas W. Tallamy calls “an ecologically dead status symbol.”