Our shoreline neighbor Dr. Don Flora offers his comments regarding the value of lawns to Kitsap County’s shoreline residents. We offer a brief introduction and a link below…
Kitsap County’s charm flows partly from its lawns. Grassed lawns have played an admirable environmental role. Readers are reminded that, for other reasons too, lawns are and have ever been immensely important places.
These pages report research showing that replacing lawns with non-grass vegetation will not likely reduce alleged potential problems with excess nutrients nor ‘pollutants’. Certain heavy-duty chemicals, released steadily and copiously, are likely to sluice through vegetation, regardless of its kind. This because of our stormwater’s habits. However no kind of vegetation surpasses lawn grass in absorbing pollutants of all kinds.
Here’s a link to Dr. Flora’s commentary on the value of lawns or read the document below.
Why is this relevant? Because state and local planners want to outlaw your lawn and force you to replace it with “native vegetation.”
The paper was well-reasoned and a good personal plea for balance – yes, lawns ARE good to play on. The one aspect that I found missing however was any discussion about water usage, particularly in our summer drought climate. Given our responsibility to balance out water for personal use, water for agriculture, water for industry and water for wildlife, I’d be interested in Don’s thoughts on the reasonable use of a finite resource. Thanks!