Owen Wormser: Regenerating life and landscapes by turning lawns into meadows
Owen Wormser (@lawns_into_meadows) is the founder of Abound Design and his nonprofit Local Harmony, which is focused on encouraging community-driven regeneration. He has been building landscapes with a focus on sustainability and low-maintenance design since 1998, and his latest book is Lawns Into Meadows.
In this podcast episode, Owen sheds light on the environmental and economic costs of maintaining lawns; how meadows can be regenerative, low-maintenance, and wildlife-friendly alternatives to lawns; and more.
To start, get a glimpse below into the conversation between Owen and Green Dreamer Podcast's host, Kamea Chayne.
Musical feature: Trust The Sun by I Need Angels by Adrian Sutherland & Midnight Shine
“Lawns tend to have very little microbial life in the soil. Organic lawns are somewhat better; chemical lawns are awful—they basically destroy soil life. [In contrast,] meadows encourage soil life.”
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This is a conversation on Green Dreamer with Kamea Chayne, a podcast and multimedia journal illuminating our paths towards ecological regeneration, intersectional sustainability, and true abundance and wellness for all. This preview has been edited for clarity. Subscribe to Green Dreamer Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any podcast app, and support Green Dreamer on Patreon so we can keep the show going and accessible to a wider audience!
On the environmental harms of maintaining lawns:
"An area the size of Washington State is mowed turf in the United States, according to some mapping studies done using NASA maps. The resources that are consumed by lawns are massive—there are huge amounts of fertilizer, huge amounts of water, and huge amounts of carbon in the form of fossil fuels. The list is long, and it's not a minor impact that [lawns] have.
The way we ended up here is, like a lot of things historically, a bit happenstance and also a bit of people aspiring to have what they consider a ‘higher quality’ landscape."
On comparing lawns with meadows:
"With mowing, the ground that is below the grass is only covered by 2-3 inches of turf. So sun and heat can get in there [more easily], and the ground ends up being more prone to compaction.
Meadows have the opposite effect in that there's so much soil life in contrast to lawns, which tend to have very little microbial life in the soil. Organic lawns are somewhat better; chemical lawns are awful—they basically destroy soil life, which contributes to that compaction.
Meadows encourage soil life—including earthworms, larger invertebrates, small rodents, and a lot of different critters that get into the soil. Between of that, the really small microorganisms, and things like mycelium, meadows tend to have lofty soil. Therefore, they can absorb rainwater much better than most lawns, which are infamous for the [toxic] runoff they create because they're often laden with very strong chemical fertilizers and toxic chemicals like pesticides and herbicides."
Final words of wisdom:
"If you want to have an impact and make a difference in regard to how people live on this earth and how we treat the planet itself, just start with what's in front of you, and start where you can.
It's a learning process to do anything with regeneration and healing the planet, because we don't know a lot about it. So don't be intimidated, and just start where you can and keep learning!
Don't be limited by your lack of knowledge, but just jump in and see what you can make happen."
