REPLACE YOUR LAWN WITH a Wildflower Meadow
Landscape designer Owen Wormser explains how to replace the deadscape we call lawn with wildflowers and native grasses. This is a how-to book on meadow-making that's also about sustainability, regeneration, and beauty.
LAWNS INTO MEADOWS
Written by Owen Wormser
Landscape designer Owen Wormser explains how to replace the deadscape we call lawn with low-maintenance, eco-friendly meadows. This is a how-to book on meadow-making that's also about sustainability, regeneration, and beauty.
In a world where lawns have wreaked havoc on our natural ecosystems, meadows offer a compelling solution. It is garden landscaping that is beautiful, all year round.
Meadows establish wildlife and pollinator habitats, are low-maintenance and low-cost, have a built-in resilience that helps them weather climate extremes, and can draw down and store far more carbon dioxide than any manicured lawn.
Wormser describes how to plant an organic meadow garden or traditional meadow, that’s right for your site. His book includes guidance on:
Preparing your plot
Designing your meadow
Planting without using synthetic chemicals
Growing 21 starter native grasses and wildflowers, including butterfly weed, smooth blue aster, purple coneflower, wild bergamot, and many more.
He also includes tips on building support in neighborhoods where a tidy lawn is the standard.
To illuminate the many joys of meadow-building, Wormser draws on his own stories, including how growing up off the grid in northern Maine, with no electricity or plumbing, prepared him for his work. See book excerpt.
ISBN: 9780998862378 (paperback) Pages: 168 (with illustrations) Size: 6 x 9
Winner of a 2020 Nautilus Award for “better books for a better world.”
I really like the straightforward, can-do approach of Lawns Into Meadows—whether for replacing a curbside stretch of grass, or an island bed in your backyard, or something bigger. This is a really accessible, how-to book that's also about sustainability, regeneration, and beauty. I'm so glad to get this book.
-Margaret Roach, A Way to Garden, NYT contributor, Turning Lawns Into Meadows with Owen Wormser
This wonderful book by Owen Wormser has a humble title, Lawns Into Meadows. But it is all about a very big idea, namely the conversion of lawns into meadows as a powerful way to help save the lands, protect the waters, and stabilize the climate. Lawns are a very destructive force in an ecological sense. They consume huge amounts of water and depend on toxic chemicals, fertilizers, and fossil fuels for their maintenance.
Meadows do just the opposite. They employ biodiversity and nature’s genius to heal landscapes, build soils, and sequester atmospheric carbon while supporting pollinators and other beneficial insects and plants. The author tells us how to grow a meadow, and become a positive force on behalf of the planet. I highly recommend this book.
-Dr. John Todd, Ecologist, author of Healing Earth
It’s time to rebuild meadows wherever we can, including the dead scape we call a lawn. Owen Wormser explains why, and how to do this, with oodles of highly readable, ecologically sound advice.
-Douglas W. Tallamy, Professor of Entomology, author of Bringing Nature Home and Nature's Best Hope
I love the voicing in this book. It brought meadows and flowers to life for me in many ways that I am going to continue to enjoy.
-Jon Kabat-Zinn, Scientist, writer, and founder of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction