The history of lawns and their alternatives

Dear reader,

Four years ago, on the cusp of the pandemic, I moved into my current home. One of the first things I tried to do was landscape the yard. For an entire week, my wheelbarrow and I delivered barrels of soil from the alleyway to cover the lawn. It was gruelling work, and to be frank, I had no clue what I was doing, but I knew that my house looked different and didn’t fit the aesthetic of all the perfectly manicured lawns on my street, and I didn’t want to be judged by my neighbours, so I worked from sun up to sundown for over a week. My neighbours constantly stopped by to ask me questions and tell me how proud they were of the work I was doing. Little did they know, the outcome of this project by a girl with yards and yards of soil and no know-how or help didn’t turn out that well.

After spreading the soil, I seeded the lawn but opted for the Bee Turf and Alternative Lawn Wildflower Mix seeds from West Coast Seeds. These alternative mixes are intended to replace lawns in urban settings, reduce maintenance costs, increase habitat and forage for pollinators, and take less water, fertilizer, and mowing than conventional grasses. If you're going to have a lawn, these feel like the obvious ideal choice.

Then, I waited. 

Eventually, the lawn grew and with it came Western yarrow, Baby blue eyes, Daisies, Chamomile, and White dutch cover. This blend of clovers and low-growing wildflowers looked lush, and, best of all, I started to see more pollinators than ever in my yard. 

Photo of Bee Turf from West Coast Seeds.

But then, on numerous occasions, I noticed my neighbour—with her perfectly manicured lawn—reaching into my yard to pick out all the flowers she deemed weeds. In our society, there is this peer pressure to have a perfectly uniform green lawn, mown to an inch and a half, neatly edged. But not all of us have the time or resources to keep up with these resource-sucking lawns. I felt frustrated and decided to fuel that frustration by studying the benefits of alternative lawns. 

Photo by Transcendental Graphics/Getty Images

THE HISTORY OF LAWNS AND WHAT THEY SYMBOLIZE 

Lawns were created in the 18th century by some rich European dudes who wanted to show the people they didn’t need their land to grow crops and could do absolutely nothing with it if they wanted to. A rather juvenile game of “mine is bigger than yours,” if you ask me.  

Before lawnmowers, only the rich could afford to hire the many hands needed to scythe and weed the grass, which meant that only those with the resources, skills, and materials could maintain said lands. 

Looking at lawns, you can see the link between the pastoral English landscapes. They’re beautiful, peaceful, and reliably remain the same over time (because of the upkeep). Instead of using this land to grow food or as a biodiversity haven, they essentially create an ornamental ecological dead zone, which has many devastating impacts.

Forests were cut down, marshes filled in, and irrigation projects began to turn desert areas green. They even filled in swamps, changed the course of rivers, and used countless chemicals to eradicate plants they didn’t like. A few weeks ago, I wrote a poem that asked, What is it about our fascination with trying to make things live outside of their original environment? The fact is, we’re already spending so much time and money to restore things to their natural habitat (look at how the city had to daylight Hastings Creek, for example). We should really consider that history before we move forward. 

A poem I wrote about grass. 

With the post-WWII era came "The American Dream," and with that came suburbia and the demand for lawn culture. Picture the white picket fence and the lawn comes with it. These omnipresent lawns soon became more popular, and the homogenization of this mono-crop now symbolized the affluent middle class. 

Before the war, there were very few lawns. In fact, in the book The Lawn: A History of American Obsession by Virginia Scott Jenkins, she writes about how, historically, houses were mostly built close to the street with a small fenced garden. The evolution of these suburbs was encouraged by the expansion of the railway and streetcar, along with the public park movement and the introduction of golf courses, which were also contributing factors to the expansion of the lawn. We now have an entire front lawn that is mostly left unused, and with a housing crisis and populations growing, it makes no sense to continue to sprawl in this way. 

If you want to learn more about lawns, I’d highly recommend this book. It covers more topics such as golf, advertising the lawn, the democratization of the lawn, the growth of the lawn-care industry, men and women and lawns, and the war between man and nature in more depth than I can here. 

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT
The irony of these colonized lawns is that they require a lot of maintenance and resources. As we deal with water restrictions in the summer months and watch salmon-bearing rivers run lower year after year, it is no surprise that lawns are responsible for up to a third of the city’s summer water use. 

In addition, nonpoint source (NPS) pollution comes from various sources, like rainfall or snowmelt, and can move pollutants into lakes, rivers, wetlands, and even our underground drinking water tables. That means that fertilizer, pesticide, and herbicide run-off as a part of lawn care can affect not only us but limit habitat potential. 

Add the C02 levels from weedwhackers and lawnmowers, and we’re inviting a deluge of chemicals into our local environment. An article by Canada’s National Observer reported that gasoline-powered lawn care equipment, including mowers and leaf blowers, released more than 68,000 tons of nitrous oxides into the atmosphere in the United States in 2020. That’s equivalent to the pollution from 30 million cars. 

There is also an entire history of how the chemicals from war rebranded themselves as pesticides, but I don’t have the space to divulge into that topic here, so if you’re interested, I would recommend reading The Chemical Age: How Chemists Fought Famine and Disease, Killed Millions, and Changed Our Relationship with the Earth by Frank von Hippel.

Though these lawns seem familiar and innocuous, unintentionally introduced by humans, they are North America's single largest irrigated ‘crop,’ according to a 2005 NASA-led study. 

As for the type of grass we see around here, Kentucky bluegrass is one of North America's most commonly grown and probably the one you currently see in your own yard. It was imported from Europe, and various studies, such as Kentucky Bluegrass Invasion in the Northern Great Plains and Prospective Management Approaches to Mitigate Its Spread, point to it as a cause of substantial native species losses.

These prairie grasslands are one of the most endangered ecosystems in North America, and the spread of these invasive plant species has led to approximately 70% of grasslands being lost, leaving only about 13% of the original tallgrass, 29% of mixed-grass, and 52% of shortgrass prairies according to the journal.

According to the Global Invasive Species Database, “Kentucky bluegrass has been found to disrupt ecosystem function by altering nitrogen cycling and carbon storage, lowering plant diversity and shifting seasonal forage production.”

If you want to learn more about the history of lawns and their implications, including their racist history, the USA’s fines for not mowing your lawn, and the fact that they influenced a multibillion-dollar advertising campaign, watch the video below. 

ALTERNATIVES

With the economy causing grocery prices to skyrocket, a lawn turned into a garden that produces food could help feed your family and be a fun way to teach your children about food cycles and seasons. Or, if you’re interested, the Canadian Wildlife Federation is helping homeowners certify their yard as a wildlife-friendly habitat.

Another of my favourites is alternatives that mimic lawns and are adaptable to a changing climate, such as clover or chamomile groundcover, moss, and native plant meadows. Some people are even creating food gardens, wild strawberry-patched yards, and rain gardens (which are becoming more commonplace in this city and helping to negate flooding). 

Let’s talk about moss. A moss lawn is incredible at retaining water. In her book Gathering Moss, Robin Wall Kimmerer discusses how “moss can lose up to 98% of its moisture and still survive to restore itself once the water supply is restored. Even after 40 years of dehydration in a musty specimen cabinet, mosses have been fully revived after a quick dunk in a Petri dish.”

That makes moss an incredible conservation option because it acts as a sponge, absorbing water and releasing it into the surrounding soil and air. Once moss is established, it’s quite easy to care for, too. I’ve placed some moss in my yard over the past few years and watched as it finds a way to establish itself through its rhizoids, which are a root-like structure anchoring it to the soil. After a rain, it’s so lush and green and reminds me of being in a forest. 

Plus, moss acts as a carbon sink! A study published in Nature Geoscience says that “mosses sequester around 6.43 billion metric tons more carbon in the soil than is stored in the bare patches of soil without any plants typically found nearby them in global semi-arid areas. To put it into perspective, this is six times the annual global carbon emissions caused by changes in land use (e.g., deforestation, urbanization, mining, etc.) worldwide.”

As for clover, who didn’t like hunting for four-leaf clovers in their youth? I remember my first love and I used to lie in the grass for hours, searching for one. Eventually, we found one, and he kept it in his wallet for years. However, beyond that, clover is also an incredible alternative to grass lawns because it is drought-resistant. 

This New York Times article highlights the growing trend of community members favouring a clover-filled lawn. It touches on the social pressure of having a conventional lawn, including fines, neighbours swarming houses, and even punching one another in the face. Just Google “America not mowing the lawn,” and you’ll see dozens of stories on the crazy lengths people have gone to make their neighbours mow their lawns. 

Clover is great for capturing nitrogen from the air and adding it to the soil, which means, in its own way, it can act as a fertilizer. In the clover article, Ted ​​Steinberg, a Case Western Reserve University historian and the author of ‘American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn,’ talks about how though clover is a good alternative for lawns, it’s pertinent we be careful not to create another monoculture. At the end of the day, it’s about variety.

This brings me to my last example, native plant meadows. 

Photo: Belkin Art Gallery 

LOCAL NATIVE PLANT MEADOWS

Even my friends at the Belkin Art Gallery have worked with The University of British Columbia’s Botanical Garden Horticulture Training Program to convert their front lawn into a fireweed meadow, encouraging increased biodiversity as a metaphor for the resurgence of life after a crisis with the help of artist Holly Schmidt.

In an article in SAD Magazine titled Fireweed Fields Resilience and Resurgence After Crisis, Marcus Prasad writes, “A sprawling meadow of tall grasses engulf the front lawn of the Belkin Art Gallery, a stark contrast to the meticulously curated shrubs and low-cut lawns characteristic to the rest of UBC’s campus. Laid upon the uncontrolled growths of fireweed are boardwalks of reclaimed timber, creating labyrinthine pathways that encourage viewers to enter this wild space and immerse themselves fully in the unpredictability of the natural world.” 

“When asked about this project, Holly tells me that fireweed is incredibly tenacious and has a range of uses–it’s one of the first signs of life after a major crisis like a forest fire and can be used for medicine, fibre, and shelter,” he continues. 

Photo by my darling pal, Joy Gyamfi

One of my favourite local gardeners is Twitter user @notthatkhalid, whose work with plants I’ve been admiring from afar for years. While writing this story, I spoke with Khalid to see if I could share some of their important work in creating native plant meadows. 

In response to a post asking, “What's your contribution to society?”

They wrote, “I’ve been restoring pollinator habitat, bringing back locally endangered species, and co-creating a native seed collective with the seeds of the things I grow.”

“Turn the golf courses into grassland habitats, pay people to get rid of their lawns, crack down on folks breaking water restrictions, teach folks how to make their watering more efficient. This water crisis will only get worse; it’s time to prepare for it,” he writes about Metro Vancouver's drought and water conservation measures. 

“This is a native grass stan account. Flowers naturally get a lot of the love, but it’s the grasses that do a lot of the ecological heavy lifting,” he shares in another post. 

As the semester wraps up, I await the start of April, when I plan to remove my existing lawn and replace it with more garden space, native plants, ground cover, and fruit trees. Because I covered the existing lawn last time I attempted this, I have to redo it, so know what you’re doing before you take on a project of this scale.

My yard already had plum trees, a wild cherry tree, and a fig tree, but I’m hoping to add an apple tree this year for good measure. As for the front lawn, perhaps a native plant meadow is in its future. 

Until next time,

Photo of me climbing my cherry tree to pick the goods.

I recently learned that the sweet alyssum that blankets my front lawn is invasive, which I am sad about because it is so fluffy like a carpet and has a honey-like fragrance that smells like a dream.

Bao Bei Chinese Brasserie Gets Real About Inflation

 If you’re finding it more and more expensive to eat out these days, there’s a good reason: Inflation is hitting restaurants hard, too.

According to Restaurants Canada, from 2021 to 2022, restaurants have seen an average 15 per cent increase in their food costs and a 12 per cent increase in their labour costs.

Bao Bei Chinese Brasserie, which means "precious" in Mandarin, opened its doors in Chinatown, Vancouver, in January 2010. Ten years later, during the global pandemic, the restaurant had to close its doors temporarily and has weathered many storms in the three years since, including staggering price increases.

Alain Chow, the operations manager of Bao Bei, says they have seen an increase of 30 to 40 per cent when ordering supplies for the restaurant. According to Chow, frier oil, which in 2019 cost $24 for a 16-litre jug, now costs anywhere between $53 to $68. Pea Tips, which used to cost between $30 and $50 a case, now cost $75 a case.

“The headwinds aren’t quite a gale force or anything like that, but they're quite strong,” said Chow.

Bao Bei has passed some of those costs on to its customers in the form of higher menu prices. But it’s also absorbed some of the difference in the form of tighter profit margins.

“Our profit margins are usually five to eight per cent. We’re not meeting that at the moment,” said Chow.

Some customers have complained about changes to the menu or price increases, said Chow, but many understand that the restaurant has no other option. “That’s how they have to turn on the lights, pay the rent, and pay their workers.” 

Bao Bei aims to provide a place where the guest experience is unique to Vancouver’s Chinatown, said Chow. They offer a dinner-only service with a focus on small sharing plates.

During the pandemic, Chow said Bao Bei had tried to find other ways to bring in revenue, such as selling its sauces and dumplings in the store and through Legends Haul, an online grocery delivery service. The restaurant also swapped out some vegetables on their menu for cheaper items, such as yu choy or broccoli, and continues to find creative ways to keep their doors open.

“We have hope. Otherwise, we would not continue to do what we're doing,” said Chow.

“The hope is that the economy recovers and people start spending again. The inflation rate is already coming down from 6.9%, so hopefully, with higher interest rates and less free-spending, there will be more capacity in the economy, and restaurants can start to recover.” 

Photos below. High-resolution photos can be found here. 

Bao Bei Chinese Brasserie is located in Vancouver's Chinatown. The neon sign, which was created by Glasfurd & Walker and Bao Bei's owner, Tannis Ling, is inspired by Chinese medicine, dumplings, and the neon signs that were nearly banned from Vancouver in the early 1970s.

Alain Chow, operations manager of Bao Bei Chinese Brasserie, goes over the costs of doing business in the morning as the restaurant prepares to open for dinner service. "I love restaurants. I love food. I love conviviality. I love people having a good time, and I can't think of a better, more accessible way for people to have a good time than to share a good moment with friends, family, strangers, or lovers over food," says Chow.

Tannis Ling, the owner of Bao Bei, also owns the building, which means there hasn’t been a significant rent increase, and because the restaurant is 13 years old, most of the equipment has already been paid for.

The cost of food in Canada rose by 10.4 per cent in January of 2023. According to British Columbia's Consumer Price Index, restaurants have seen a six per cent increase compared to the previous year, but restaurants say their numbers are higher.

Flour, which Bao Bei uses to make their flatbread, dumplings, and steamed bread used to cost $15 for a 20-kilo bag, now costs $28 for a 20-kilo bag.

The labour shortage has made it challenging for the restaurant to find and maintain staff. “The restaurant industry is a hard, labour-intensive, stress-induced, low-reward business,” says Chow.

A lineup forms outside the door ten minutes before opening at 5:30 p.m. Bao Bei is one of the most popular restaurants in the city, but the staff say they feel nervous because of the staff shortages. By the time 6:30 p.m. rolls around, the restaurant is packed, and the hostess is adding names to a waitlist.

The mantou buns are one of the most popular items on the menu, with more than half a dozen coming out on the pass simultaneously. This dish's two main ingredients, flour and pork, have continuously risen in price due to inflation.

This receipt showcases the cost of a meal for two at Bao Bei. Drinks cost nearly as much as one dinner item, but beverages have historically been where restaurants make money. "The alcohol in drinks is our profit center. It costs way less labour to open a bottle of wine and serve it than to make a dish. That $17 drink helps turn on the lights, pay the rent, pay the workers, and helps with cleaning, garbage, plumbing, and taxes," says Chow.

Despite the struggles, Bao Bei remains a favourite among many Vancouverites, and the restaurant has not lost hope.

Fraser Valley Current Practicum - Week 9

Tyler and I met this morning to go over editing on my Project A.I.M. story. Tyler permitted me to write this piece as I would for a magazine, which is how I prefer to write anyhow, and touched on how to write a compelling lede. Despite how confident I feel about my writing ability, it felt humbling to have my piece eviscerated by Tyler. I learned that I was playing it safe and afraid to take chances or add my personality for fear of losing my journalistic integrity. 

Tyler recommended I read A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders to help develop my writing skills, which I promptly ordered. One of the most humbling parts of this internship was that I thought I had all the skills to be successful, but it's a beautiful thing to be open to any possibilities and always be learning new skills and trying to better yourself. 

I'm lucky that I have a background in Communications and strong communications skills. Without those skills, I would have never made it to the finish line. Despite the ways I didn't show up for this practicum, I continue to acknowledge my faults and weaknesses and try to learn and do better with each step I take. 

The following is a quote by George Saunders that relates to this: 

“Don't be afraid to be confused. Try to remain permanently confused. Anything is possible. Stay open, forever, so open it hurts, and then open up some more, until the day you die, world without end, amen.” 

Fraser Valley Current Practicum - Week 8

During this week of November 07 to 13th, I had an opportunity to sit in on the morning meetings with the Fraser Valley Current. I liked how efficient the team was, and I loved seeing how they checked in on stories, divided the workload, offered resources or help to one another, and their dynamic. On Wednesday the 17th, after a week of playing email tag and trying to set up an in-person meet, I had quite a long phone interview with Janne (president) of the Streamkeepers. She invited me to Miami River on November 22 to watch a Chum release and meet the rest of the Streamkeepers. 

This past weekend, I spent four days in Squamish in the woods this past week doing my Wilderness First Responder course. The course came up last minute and was sponsored by Indigenous Women Outdoors and The North Face. The course was incredibly intensive, as a course that gives you skills on par with those of a paramedic should be. Even though I have no extra time to do a course like this, I couldn't say no to the opportunity. I brought my laptop in the evenings, thinking I could get a lot of my work done at the hotel, but by the time the evenings came, I was too tired. 

I feel like I let many people down this semester because so many career opportunities kept coming up, and I kept thinking I could do everything. I am especially sad that I didn't give the Fraser Valley Current my full attention because I had wanted to work with them for some time. I hope my writing skills will surprise them, but I wish I had shown up better and gained more skills to help propel my career as a writer forward. 

Currently, I have 22 out of 64 hours left, which I will have to fit into the next two weeks. I can knock off about ten writing this salmon story and about 5 or 6 with the other interviews I need to do and transcribing. I have reached out to Tyler Thibault at the Department of Fisheries to speak with him, and he's connected me with the DFO's media personnel to okay this interview. He will also connect me with the Chehalis River Hatchery to get a quote about their involvement in this project. I have also reached out to Mike Pearson at Pearson Ecological to discuss the recovery strategy plan he wrote for the Miami River that Janne from the Streamkeepers mentioned during our interview. 

Moving forward, I think it would be cool to learn how Tyler or his team prepare for interviews and prepare their stories and the process they go through when writing on as I go off my basic intuition and what I've learned in school, but I am curious what it's like for someone already working in this field. I would also love to learn tips on making interviews more efficient, as my interviews are always super long. This does work in my favour sometimes because I'm really good with people and they often love sharing details with me because I'm curious and ask a lot of questions BUT on the flip side, when I go to transcribe and write, it feels like I have a daunting amount of information. 

Here are some photos I took at the Chum release on Tuesday morning.

Fraser Valley Current Practicum - Week 7

Considerations on work/life balance: Sometimes, a moment can knock you so far off your axis that it presents an opportunity to reimagine your life. How many of us are considering burnout right now? What worth do those far-off successes really hold in the grand scheme of things? 

Sometimes, I spread my work on my floor like jeopardy tiles, and as for my shortcomings, they are nullified, maintaining my words, kneeling over them, marking x for rework, y for language, z for title.

When this morning came, I sank beneath my blankets and did some simple math totalling the week before: +80 hours work, +5 nature walks, +4 missed deadlines, +9 cups of coffee, +1 small epiphany—I am never sure, I realized, how much space it takes to live—the new week's todo list unfolding in front of me. I don’t want this life. I have my sights on something different. Something that ignites instead of burns.

Memory leaks through, a heavy sieve—it knows the moments when I couldn’t afford a meal, knows how easily ones worth is quantified by output. I let my fingers walk the letters of my words, examine their own pressure, re-learning language, infantile as ever. 

I can see outside of it right now (thank you, Jenny Odell), and it’s often through rectangles of sunlight on water, often scraps of paper picked up by wind caught in the roof corners, often the sound of someone laughing pitched upward, or tires turning out the gravel reminding of the road ahead, all the sounds of forward if forward made a noise. I invite you to reexamine the limitless possibilities in front of you. Life’s a flicker in the side-view mirror.

Fraser Valley Current Practicum - Week 6

After last week's interview for Project AIM, I transcribed my interview, edited the transcription and prepared notes for writing the story. I've been spending a lot of time thinking about what I was looking for with this internship, and the biggest thing I was hoping for was to feel a sense of community and have more of a shadowing aspect. This may be where expectations and communication on what I was looking for had a disconnect. I spend a lot of time writing stories on my own, which, of course, can be a great way to gain more experience, but I hoped to see how someone already working in journalism handles the story process.  

This coming week, Tyler has invited me to join morning meetings, I will be spending time finishing my first story, and he's sent two other potential stories my way. 

Moving forward, communicating the want to see the behind-the-scenes of already working professionals will be my priority. I've also been thinking about some questions in regard to my career choice:

• How can I become intentional about my life?
• How to best orientate my life?
• When I cultivate my focus, I am more centred. Returning to a meeting Robert and I had last week: "Direct your focus."
• When I split my focus in too many directions, I begin to lose all focus. 
  
  

What I want out of my life is a career that creates balance. I'm not sure what it is yet. All I know is the past few months, I have been working up until I sleep and through weekends. I continue to move closer to burnout. How can you balance your career? Why does it feel like if I am not constantly saying yes to things to push my career forward, then I am going to fall behind 

Fraser Valley Current Practicum - Week 5

October 24, 2022

Monday morning started with a meeting with Tyler Olsen to learn how he creates the daily newsletters. Tyler explained how the layout process goes, what information they include, the distribution process, and why these dailies are important. Following the meeting with Tyler, I sent a follow-up email to Lolehawk to see if they're still open to an interview for the Good Medicine Singers group, and I sent an email to Tiffany Francis at Project AIM to interview about their project that brings non-profit free menstrual and incontinence products to people in the Fraser Valley. Tiffany connected me with co-founder, Miel, and we spent some time corresponding to figure out a time I could come out for an interview. 

October 27, 2022

This morning I drove out to Agassiz to meet with Miel Bernstein, the co-founder of Project AIM. The drive from Vancouver to Agassiz typically takes me about 1.5 hours, but on this day (due to weather, shut down sections on the highway from fallen powerlines), it took just over 2 hours each way. When I arrived at the barn Miel and her team welcomed me, and we spent 1.5 hours discussing the project, followed by a photo shoot of Miel and the products. I felt pretty inspired by the work that Project AIM is doing and am looking forward to sitting down to write the piece. 

I saw that Project AIM posted this on their Facebook after my interview with them, and it felt pretty good to be seen in this way. I spent a lot of time developing my reporting/interviewing/people skills for this exact reason.

Here is the photo I took of Miel at the interview: