The benefits of a healthy, attractive lawn are many and diverse. Lawns prevent erosion, provide cooling, reduce dust and mud, remove pollutants from the environment, absorb CO₂ and produce 0₂ Lawns provide a safe, comfortable surface for many athletic and social activities. Areas of lawn, whether large or small, help bring green to the urban environment. Lawns provide the carpet upon which other plants are located and act as a unifying feature in the landscape.

In fact, lawn is such an important component of most landscapes, its location should be planned when designing the landscape. But people in the United States have a love affair with the lawn and use it everywhere. Instead, incorporate lawn to serve as play areas, pathways and gathering spaces. Once you have allocated useful spaces for lawn, manage everything else in the landscape as an alternative to lawn such as, forest or tree grove, meadow, or landscape bed. See Livable Ecosystems: A Model for Suburbia for ideas about how to incorporate forest groves, meadows and landscape beds into the home landscape.

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UD Cooperative Extension

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