Backyard Habitat
 Reduce Your Lawn and Increase Habitat Quality
Lawns are a traditional part of most North American homes, but they don’t do much to provide wildlife with their basic needs of food, water, shelter, and places to raise young. You can convert some or all of your lawn into higher quality habitat while reducing the amount of maintenance a lawn requires, such as mowing, fertilizing, and applying chemicals.
Why Reduce Your Lawn and Increase Habitat Quality?
- Resource intensive: Most lawns require excessive water, chemicals, and frequent maintenance to stay lush and green year-round. Gas-powered lawnmowers produce greenhouse gases, air pollution, and noise pollution.
- Habitat quality: Replacing lawn with a diversity of ground covers, bushes, and trees provides the food and shelter that wildlife need. See Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s page on habitat quality for more information.
How to Reduce Your Lawn and Increase Habitat Quality
- Design a landscape for wildlife: Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife provides step by step instructions for designing your landscape for wildlife.
- It’s your yard too: You can provide habitat for wildlife while still keeping some lawn for kids, pets, entertaining, and recreation.
- Shrink that lawn: National Wildlife Federation has a tip sheet on lawn reduction that includes the process of turning grass into planting beds.
- Practice natural lawn care: The lawn you do keep can look beautiful while using less water and reducing chemical use by following these easy steps, as defined by King County Natural Yard and Lawn Care:
- Mowing: Mow high, mow often, and leave the clippings
- Fertilizing: Fertilize moderately with a “natural organic” or “slow-release” fertilizer
- Watering: Water deeply, but infrequently
- Improving poor lawns: Improve poor lawns with aeration and overseeding
- Reducing pesticides: Think twice before using weed and feed or other pesticides
- Grass alternatives: Consider grass alternatives for steep slopes, shady areas, or near streams and lakes
Next up: Build Healthy Soil and Reduce Chemical Use
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