Who We Are:
Eleven gardening and environmental advocates from across the country, all promoting change in the American lawn. We're a loose coalition of writers and activists (including lawn-haters and lawn-improvers) pooling our knowledge of up-to-date solutions to the many problems caused by a lawn culture that demands perfection, conformity, and way too many inputs - especially water, fertilizer and pesticides. Not to mention millions of acres of lawn that could be something else.
Our Tools are:
With the help of our researcher friends* across the country, this website provides the best, up-to-date information about better lawn types, lawn care, and alternatives to lawn. Other tools include our Facebook group, photos on our Flickr group, printable educational materials, and graphics for use by media and supporters. Individual Coalition members also speak, write, and produce videos and even a feature-length film about the need for lawn reform - details in our bios below.
Our Audience is:
- Homeowners
- Landowners and managers in government, institutional and business
- The media - general-interest, environmental and gardening
- Legislators and homeowner associations
Our Members are:
Shirley Bovshow is a nationally recognized landscape designer, garden television host, gardening coach, syndicated blogger and new media broadcaster. She's the host and designer of the "Garden Police" show on Discovery Home, and regularly appears on HGTV, CBS "Early Show," NBC, USA and Fine Living. A dedicated and passionate "gardening evangelist," Shirley is an advocate of sustainable "water-wise" garden design, edible gardening, and the creative use of outdoor spaces to maximize a home's market value. Shirley also promotes gardening as a lifestyle and hobby as a national speaker and is creating new media platforms for gardening online.
Tom Christopher has been reporting on gardening and environmental issues for more than 25 years, writing for a wide range of publications including the New York Times and Britain's Daily Telegraph, while serving as a columnist for magazines such as Martha Stewart Living and House & Garden. He is also the author of Water-Wise Gardening, a guide to new styles of gardening emerging from the need to conserve. In the new media, Tom writes for HuffingtonPost and contributes to a blog about sustainable gardening, Green Perspectives. It's a product of the New York Botanical Garden, where Tom earned his degree in professional horticulture.
Tom Engelman started the Grass Roots Program – in his backyard - as a means to reconcile his needs as a xeriscape gardener, conservationist and Santa Monica homeowner with children and pets. To help people shrink their “Grass Footprint,” the GRP offers advice on climate appropriate grass species, subsurface turf irrigation, and organic lawn care products.
Billy Goodnick is a landscape architect based in Santa Barbara, CA, specializing in designing public and residential landscapes. His freelance writing and his Cool Green Gardens blog at Fine Gardening Magazine instruct and encourage readers to adopt a more sustainable approach in their landscapes. Billy also co-hosts an educational and humorous regional television show, Garden Wise Guys, that emphasizes water conservation and lawn alternatives.
Evelyn Hadden has been writing about nature-friendly, chemical-free, do-it-yourself, low-maintenance landscaping since 2001, when she founded the informational website LessLawn.com. She gardens in Minnesota and travels across the country speaking to other gardeners about ecological gardening, lawn alternatives, and ideas for shrinking your lawn. Her most recent book, Shrink Your Lawn: Design ideas for any landscape, won a silver medal in the Independent Publisher's 2009 Living Now Book Awards for promoting a healthy and balanced lifestyle. Evelyn works with the Permaculture Research Institute Cold Climate to find and share ways to build a restorative human culture.
Coalition instigator and head wrangler Susan Harris is a garden writer and blogger who promotes lawn alternatives and organic lawn care. Online she blogs for independent garden centers, publishes Sustainable-Gardening and its companion blog, and co-founded the national team blog GardenRant.com. Susan also co-founded the DC Urban Gardeners and Green the Grounds.org, a campaign encouraging First Families to landscape their official residences sustainably. Susan gardens and teaches gardening in the Washington, D.C. area.
Saxon Holt is a professional garden photographer whose images are well recognized in hundreds of magazine and book credits. In his work he seeks to change the aesthetic of what we expect to see in a garden photograph so that the media portrays authentic and sustainable gardens. "The American Meadow Garden" and his two most previous books, Hardy Succulents, and Plants and Landscapes for Summer-Dry Climates, were all awarded prizes by the Garden Writers of America as "outstanding books". He owns the stock photography library PhotoBotanic and blogs regularly at Gardening Gone Wild.
Susan Morrison is a Northern California Master Gardener, speaker, and landscape designer specializing in no-lawn gardens. She is the publisher of Blue Planet Gardening, a resource website for California sustainable gardeners, and is the co-author of the upcoming design book Lose the Lawn, Gain a Garden. As the Public Outreach Coordinator for APLD in California, an advisor to the Bay Friendly Coalition, and as a blogger via the popular category "We don't need no stinkin' lawn," Susan helps educate both the public and fellow designers on the value of sustainable garden design.
Ginny Stibolt is the "Transplanted Gardener" from Maryland, where she received her MS degree in botany, to NE Florida. Her column for Jacksonville's Florida Times Union is posted on her website and on Floridata.com, Many of her columns have been republished in Master Gardener newsletters and elsewhere, and she also writes for Vero Beach Magazine. She's the author of Sustainable Gardening for Florida, published by the University Press of Florida.
Paul Tukey, named Horticultural Communicator of the Year in 2006 by the American Horticultural Society, never stops traveling the country on behalf of his favorite topic - organic lawn care, especially why lawn chemicals should be avoided. He is founder of the non-profit SafeLawns Foundation, where his most recent project is executive-producing the upcoming documentary, A Chemical Reaction. The movie chronicles the origin of the anti-pesticide movement sweeping across Canada and into the United States. Paul is also editor and publisher of People, Places & Plants magazine, author of the best-selling book The Organic Lawn Care Manual from Storey Publishing, and he co-hosted the HGTV show People, Places & Plants with Roger Swain. He lives in Maine with his wife, son and two young daughters.
Advisory (nonvoting) Member
Famed prairie ecologist Neil Diboll received his degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1978. He has since worked for the National Park Service in Virginia, the U.S. Forest Service in Colorado, and the University of Wisconsin. In 1982, Neil began his involvement with Prairie Nursery, producing native plants and seeds and designing native landscapes. He has since devoted his efforts to championing the use of prairie plants, as well as native trees, shrubs and wetland plants, in contemporary American landscapes. Neil's work includes designs for residential, commercial and public spaces throughout the Midwest and Northeast United States.
Contact
To contact the Coalition, email Susan@Sustainable-Gardening.com. To reach other members, visit our Media page.
Credits
Text by members of the Lawn Reform Coalition. Graphics by Roni Mocan. Website hosted by GardenRant and managed by Susan Harris.
*Researchers we're in contact with include Steve Windhager at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center (for mixes of native grasses for all regions); some in-the-know garden professors like Jeff Gillman at the U. of Minnesota, Linda Chalker-Scott at Washington State U., and Frank Rossi at Cornell; researcher-suppliers like John Greenlee, Neil Diboll, Miriam Goldberger, and Ed Snodgrass; and public-garden horticulturists Bill Thomas and Doug Croft at Chanticleer, Andrew Bunting at the Scott Arboretum, and Scott Aker at the National Arboretum. More as we find them.
