Eliminate Chemicals
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The EFSS Framework for A Better Yard
Listen to the EFSS Framework Podcast Episode Click play above to listen to go deeper on this post. Listen and subscribe to A Better Yard: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | iHeartRadio | Pandora May is not just another month in the yard. It’s the month. It is the month to dive deep in the EFSS Framework! This is when habits are set. When systems…
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How to Grow a Lawn Without Chemicals (That Still Looks Good)
Most homeowners don’t actually want a perfect lawn. They want a lawn where the kids can play barefoot. A lawn where the dog can roll around without them wondering what was sprayed on it yesterday. A lawn that looks good when friends come over for a backyard barbecue, but doesn’t require a complicated schedule of…
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Part III: Keystone Plants
Keystone plants are some of the most useful plants we can add to our yards. They’re the trees, shrubs, perennials and grasses that do an outsized amount of work supporting the insects, pollinators and birds that make up our local ecosystems. Here at A Better Yard, I generally use a broader term: helpful plants. Most of our…
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Environmentally Friendly Landscaping: Three Easy Changes
Environmentally friendly landscaping doesn’t have to mean completely redesigning your yard. A lot of it is simply changing how we take care of the landscapes we already have. We’ve been taught that a “well-maintained” yard should be neat and tidy. Leaves get hauled away. Dead plants get cut down. Weeds get sprayed. Everything gets cleaned up.…
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Sustainable Lawn Care: Three Ways to Build a Healthier Lawn
Sustainable lawn care doesn’t mean you have to get rid of your lawn. I crank on lawns plenty. They’re a massive use of water, fertilizer, chemicals, time and energy for something that doesn’t give much back to our local ecosystems. But lawns are also useful. We play on them. The dog runs around on them. They…
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Second Nature with Doug Tallamy
One of the biggest shifts Doug Tallamy says we can make in how we think about our yards is actually pretty simple: Your yard is part of nature. We can learn and grow from that. This perspective is central to Doug Tallamy’s philosophy as well. It isn’t something separate from the ecosystem around us. The…