Going Native

摘要

That swath of green outside the front door comes with a high environmental price. Lawn maintenance accounts for one-third of residential water use, the equivalent of seven billion gallons of water per day, and consumes 800 million gallons of gasoline annually and up to seven pounds of fertilizers and pesticides per acre. The latest landscaping trend involves swapping sod for native species. Natives, plants indigenous to a region and adapted to the growing conditions, improve soil fertility, reduce soil erosion, require less fertilizer and pesticides-reducing runoff-and provide food and shelter for wildlife.