Your Carbon-Saving Garden

Killing your lawn and planting a native landscape not only add beauty to your life and eliminates a repetitive, useless task, it helps in the fight against climate change.    
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On one level, this is obvious  – you can see that there is more plant material (aka biomass) in the trees, shrubs, and perennial ground covers of a native garden than there is in the annual grasses that make up a lawn.  As native plants grow, they take CO2 from the air and store it into leaves, stems, and roots, not in grass blades that are then (repetitively, uselessly) mowed.  

Killing your lawn and planting a native landscape not only add beauty to your life and eliminates a repetitive, useless task, it helps in the fight against climate change. 
​   
On one level, this is obvious  – you can see that there is more plant material (aka biomass) in the trees, shrubs, and perennial groundcovers of a native garden than there is in the annual grasses that make up a lawn.  As native plants grow, they take CO2 from the air and store it into leaves, stems, and roots, not in grass blades that are then (repetitively, uselessly) mowed.  

But that’s only half the picture.  Zoom out from the individual plants and look at the garden as a system and the real carbon-saving benefits of native gardens become clearer. 

​First of all, consider the energy needed to pump water from the Colorado River to your front yard.  Add in the energy to make fertilizer, run the lawn mower, and transport green waste to the landfill.  Don’t forget that as the grass breaks down anaerobically, methane comes off, adding another greenhouse gas to the mix.  

Admittedly, the amounts of carbon saved are small – for a typical (2000 sq. ft.) yard, the root storage is about 60 pounds per year (based on carbon sequestration in mature chaparral) with another 100 pounds of carbon saved by reducing irrigation. 

​This doesn’t make much of a dent in the average (US) person’s 20 ton per year carbon footprint.  It’s kind of like turning the water on and off as you brush your teeth – it’s a small step that serves as a symbol and a reminder of your commitment to the larger goal.  

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As you enjoy your native garden, remember that you’re helping nature not only by feeding the birds and butterflies you can see, but by influencing processes you can’t see, below the ground and in the air.