Plan Bee

It’s time for the lawn to start kicking grass

- By Tom Philpott

SINCE THE post–World War II rise of suburbia, the great American lawn has beckoned with the promise of a grassy, orderly Eden surrounding a single-family fortress. For just as long, lawns have been sending bees and other pollinating critters the opposite message: Buzz off.

That’s because the very essence of a lawn (closely shorn, uniform, weed-free) leaves little room for the sustenance that pollinators depend on—pollen and nectar from a variety of flowers. Residential landscaping is contributing to an alarming ecological crisis: a steep decline in the health of pollinating animals, whose services provide one-third of the food we eat. They don’t just power the supermarket produce aisle; pollinators keep forests, parks, and shrublands humming.