While being a relatively recent phenomenon, especially in the United States, lawn has come to dominate urban landscapes as being the default landscape mode. It's simple to maintain (fertilize, water, mow, repeat) but it's resource intensive, polluting, costly for businesses, and has few if any ecosystem services benefit to the human and wild communities.
In this massive lecture with designer and author Benjamin Vogt, we'll cover everything on the why and how to unlawn America. From the history of lawns to converting lawn to natural gardens, from how to design a space sustainably and artfully to strategies for working with HOAs and municipal code inspectors. The practical garden designing with the philosophical and scientific and legal -- yeah, it's going to be wild.
Are you ready to reprairie suburbia?
Monarch Gardens (https://monarchgard.com) is a prairie-inspired design firm. It is managed by Benjamin Vogt, author of A NEW GARDEN ETHIC: CULTIVATING DEFIANT COMPASSION FOR AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE, as well as PRAIRIE UP: AN INTRODUCTION TO NATURAL GARDEN DESIGN. Benjamin's work has been featured in The American Gardener, Dwell, Fine Gardening, The Guardian, Horticulture, Midwest Living, and the Wall Street Journal, as well as a variety of books including American Roots. He is a sought-after speaker on landscape ethics and natural design for wildlife, combining passionate activism and practical advice to rethink pretty and foster reconciliation ecology in a time of mass extinction.
