Earthwatch - Thyme to Get Off the Grass

Organic Landscaping Can Help You Get Off the Chemicals and Re-introduce Native Plants

By Paul Henderson

With Toronto’s new pesticide bylaw in place there is an increasing amount of information out there to help homeowners deal with their turf in an organic and earth-friendly way. The Organic Landscape Alliance can help, so can the City of Toronto. Surely this is a good thing, and the children, pets, and wild animals will benefit from non-toxic lawns.

But as you gander at the green grass on your property; as you are mulling over mulching, wondering about your weeding, and contemplating your clippings, why not take a big step back and take a broader look. Why have grass at all?

Lawns Make Us Yawn

When we refer to grass here, we mean the lush (and not so lush) green stuff that many of us who grew up in the suburbs had covering our front and back yards, and that which covers parks and golf courses across the city. There are of course many different types of ornamental grasses — oat grass, woodland sedge — but by grass, we mean turf.

Living in the Greater Toronto Area one might consider that a ground cover choice for our personal properties and public spaces should be an indigenous species, and one that can deal with what the GTA climate has to offer: frequent droughts, occasional flooding, harsh winters, and often patchy sunlight because of ubiquitous tree cover. So how does the traditional grass that covers the yards of most Ontarians fare in the face of what Mother Nature has to offer? Very badly.

“We don’t do grass,” says Claire Suo-Cockerton, owner of Aesthetic Earthworks, an organic landscaping company in Toronto. “Green grass, a perfectly weed-free lawn, depends on herbicides and pesticides and a certain treatment that people have been used to. I’m probably going to get crap for saying that, because there are all kinds of organic ways to treat these things, but ultimately that’s not the problem. The problem is one step before; the right choices of plant material to put in the landscape in the first place.

“Grass needs sun and it needs rain, so it’s not drought tolerant and all those ‘weeds’ are just indigenous plant material that push the grass out. The majority of sod grass doesn’t come from Ontario.”

To be even more blunt, grass is an environmental nightmare. “Grass = green cement,” according to Gillian Deacon in her handbook Green Tips: How to Save Money and the Planet.

According to the grass-happy folks at the information website www.american-lawns.com: “Some lawns may also need supplemental waterings at various times throughout the year, but that can be greatly controlled by planting the right type of grass for specific geographic areas. Trying to put a lawn in locations that need to be watered daily is certainly not a good idea nor recommended.”

Good advice. So what’s the right type of grass for our geographic area in southern Ontario? There isn’t one, and therein lies the problem.

And also on www.american-lawns.com: “So, the answer to the question ‘why grow grass?’ is: because it’s the one plant that adapts best for the environment we’ve created for ourselves.”

Wrong. But then, that’s American Lawns. Down in Kentucky or even across the pond in Great Britain, grass is perfectly natural. Here in the GTA — despite what it feels like walking down Yonge Street or driving on the Don Valley Expressway — this area is one big woodland. We live in a forest, or at least what geographically once was a forest. Even with all this city’s concrete, take a look out an airplane window next time you are flying into the airport and you may be surprised at just how much tree cover there is in the largest city in Canada.

And turf lawn and forests do not mix. Planting turf grass in Toronto is about as logical as cacti and palm trees.

“We are in woodlands,” Suo-Cockerton says. “We realize that Toronto is a forested city so there ain’t going to be any English rose gardens; it’s difficult to have the pristine, French, formalist garden because of all the droppings and leaves. And we live on clay soil. Because our climate is so dramatic, our plant material and gardens have to be tolerant to drought, extremely harsh winters, flooding, almost everything.”

Suo-Cockerton’s company not only works primarily doing organic landscapes without using chemicals or pesticides, she also eschews the use of gas-powered tools like blowers and mowers. Given that she never does traditional grass, she doesn’t even own a lawn mower. She figures she is likely the only landscaper in Toronto who doesn’t own a lawn mower.

Clean-up is another thing, but regarding the use of gas-powered or electric blowers, Claire says she thinks the use of such noisy and intrusive tools goes against the idea of creating an aesthetic outdoor environment.

“We rake, we believe in human labour,” she says. “I work in Rosedale and Forest Hill and the Annex, and my clients have spent copious amounts of money to live in places like this and raise their families in neighbourhoods like this, and you walk in, and it’s not peaceful at all. It’s noisy, it’s polluted and all you hear is blowers and loud noisy construction.”

Suo-Cockerton is far from alone in her criticism of gas-powered lawn maintenance tools in what should be peaceful neighbourhoods. At a World Wildlife Fund press conference back in January, none other than Annex resident Margaret Atwood took the media opportunity to suggest to Mayor David Miller, also in attendance, that he should work to ban all gas-powered leaf blowers and lawn mowers in Toronto.

“We will all thank you for it,” she told the mayor.

Suo-Cockerton goes further: “The big thing for me is participation in the landscape. If you can’t go outside and sit on the lawn, feel that it is quiet and a safe place to be, and it actually be an environment that is appropriate for your country, then what’s the point?”

Addicted to the Mow, Blow, and Spray

Another problem with grass is that because of the addiction created to the chemicals and fertilizers needed to maintain them, it also needs to be mowed weekly.

At the grocery store, the reason organic produce costs more is because organic farming is more labour intensive. The opposite is true with organic landscaping provided you are starting from scratch without grass, and with indigenous plant species.

“The problem is that we have created landscapes that depend on synthetic fertilizers, and pesticides and herbicides,” Claire says. “Pesticides and chemicals are band-aid solutions. And you know what? You can drive up to a property and mow it and blow it and spray a bunch of crap on it and leave it in 10 minutes, and boom you’re done. $100. When you approach landscaping like that it’s like when you approach eating like that. You eat fast food. It’s not healthy.”

When a landscaper is hired to design a property and then maintain it, they can get you hooked on long-term and expensive maintenance, just by laying sod. They may charge a reasonable rate for the initial design and construction, and then they’ve got you hooked on weekly spraying, mowing, blowing and so on. When Suo-Cockerton and her  Aesthetic Earthworks design and build a new landscape they charge more than the conventional guys, but in the long run it will be cheaper for the clients who pay for maintenance, or simply less work for the clients who do it themselves.

Instead of weekly or even monthly, Suo-Cockerton visits her clients three or four times a year maximum. Clean-up in spring after the snow has melted, maybe a visit during the summer, then a fall clean-up visit. She specializes in low or even no maintenance gardens.

But what if you like that feel of green grass between your toes? There is no getting around that nice feeling of a thick carpet of green grass. What’s the organic replacement for that feelnig? Well there are many different ground covers such as periwinkle or clover, but when asked, one thing comes to Suo-Cockerton’s mind.

“Thyme! Thyme is fantastic; no watering, no cutting, no aerating, no fertilizing, no nothing, and it spreads into this big thick carpet and it smells great.”

For Suo-Cockerton, spraying pesticides is a violent interference with the ecosystem that cuts off the natural cycle of plants and animals. It is also like an addiction and creates more and more pesticide usage. Spray herbicide on your lawn and birds won’t come and eat the grubs, then you’ll have to spray for grubs, and so on.

Go Ahead, Rat On Your Neighbour

Now that the warmer weather has arrived gardeners everywhere will be pulling on their gloves, grabbing their trowels, and hitting the dirt. The more informed among the green thumb set will eschew all synthetic pesticides whenever possible. Given the obvious reasons to garden organically there is now a legal one in Toronto; the pesticide bylaw means that spraying Round-Up or 2,4-D to kill your dandelions and crabgrass is no longer just insensitive to the community, stupid for the health of yourself and your family and pets, but it’s also illegal.

Unfortunately, ratting out your chem-happy neighbours this year will only get them a warning. Fines for residential law-breakers will kick in in 2007, but spraying pesticides is still illegal. There’s an interim period so the stubborn and dimwitted can figure it out.

As of September 1 last year, enforcement of the bylaw began, but fines are only levied to lawn care companies and commercial properties. As of September 1, 2007 homeowners who don’t comply will also be fined. Public health inspectors can issue a fine of $255, or a summons may be issued for non-compliance and this may result in a fine of up to $5,000 to be determined in court.

Until September, 2007 homeowners caught spraying pesticides will be issued warnings and given educational materials.

To those who care about the environment and the community, a bylaw to ban pesticides is pretty obvious (although should be unnecessary since selling the products should be illegal, according to some). But there are people who refuse to accept the carcinogenicity of these products, and these people are simply closing their eyes or are being deceived by the hilarious-if-it-wasn’t-scary propaganda from the pesticide industry.

CropLife Canada is the largest perpetuator of this toxic-sludge-is-good-for-you public relations machinery. CropLife Canada is the Canadian branch of the international biotech and pesticide industry association. These are the people who want you to spray pesticides everywhere, and they have such deep pockets they will go to incredible lengths to convince the media that pesticides aren’t harmful and that the world is a better place because of them.

An example of CropLife’s creative rhetoric comes from a 2002 paper entitled “Putting Risk Into Perspective.” Using a list of “tested hazards” from a 1982 Scientific American article, CropLife Canada argues that, among other things, bicycles, home appliances, high school football, and skiing are all more dangerous than pesticides. What is slightly unclear about this list of comparisons is if CropLife Canada is trying to make the point that the next time you want to use your toaster or hit the slopes, you should consider having a bath in DDT instead?

On another table CropLife Canada also suggests that wine, orange juice, apples, and lettuce are all more carcinogenic than DDT, lindane, or chlorobenzilate. This is creative logic to be generous; but circular and cynical in reality. Daily dietary intake of DDT is so low that it ranks below things like the caffeic acid present in apples on the Human Exposure/Rotent Potency Index. Meaning, we don’t ingest that much DDT so it isn’t as harmful to us as the naturally occurring bad things in other products. Therefore, let’s spray DDT?

Pesticides are designed to end life, so common sense suggests they can’t be healthy or even benign to humans. But science isn’t about common sense, in fact many scientific discoveries go against what seems clear at first blush. So what does objective (i.e. non-industry funded) science say about pesticides?

Well last year a landmark report ffrom the Ontario College of Family Physcians (OCFP) found a clear association between pesticides such as the commonly used 2,4-D and serious illnesses such as non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

The OCFP report looked at 27 studies on non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and 23 of these studies showed associations between this cancer and pesticide exposure. But, CropLife Canada argues, pesticides are regulated and approved for sale by the Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) so that should be good enough for consumers, so, the argument goes, municipalities shouldn’t be able to institute a ban on their use. The problem with this line of argument to some is that it sounds an awful lot like what the cigarette companies said for years.

“They [cigarettes] are certainly approved for sale, but used as directed they cause lung cancer,” said Dr. Kapil Khatter, the president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environnment.

We can only laugh at CropLife’s logic so much, because this organization holds great sway. They lost the battle against the City of Toronto’s pesticide bylaw despite appealing it all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. But CropLife’s PR campaign to push pesticides everywhere around the world is relentless.

As is Greenpeace co-founder turned nuclear industry consultant Patrick Moore’s pro-pesticide campaign. In an op-ed piece that appeared in various publications around Earth Day including the National Post and the Washington Times, Moore regurgitated the industry line that pesticides are good for you because they create larger yields of crops on less acreage and, golly, they probably won’t make you sick. Like a good PR flack Moore conveniently ignores the studies proving the carcinogenicity of pesitides. He also ignores the fact that increased yields do not help to feed the rest of the world: that’s a political problem involving food distribution.

As University of Guelph agriculture professor Ann Clark says, “People are dying of hunger and suffering from malnutirtion for reasons that have nothing to do with crop genetics or yield levels in Canada.”

People are dying of hunger for political reasons, and because they don’t have the money to pay for food. Yields do not need to increase to feed the world. And yields may indeed be larger in conventionally grown crops, but this simply means the fruits and veggies are larger and brighter and more shiny; they taste much worse, and the nutrition is destroyed.

This is, again, simple common sense and the conclusion of Thomas F. Pawlick in his new book The End of Food (see June Vitality next month for a review of this book). Pawlick explains how modern tomatoes have been engineered to withstand long distance travel at the expense of taste and nutrition.

“[C]omparing them to what the Romans eat, or what our garden used to produce every summer, was like comparing carbonated cat pee to a rich, foaming Guinness stout.”

Digging A Well Before You’re Thirsty

There are currently 73 municipalities that have banned residential pesticide use. Only three of those are in New Brunswick and so Canadian Cancer Society is urging municipalities in that province to create bans as well. And, predictably, CropLife Canada is on the attack in New Brunswick doing their best to ensure that no more bans will be put in place.

Given CropLife’s failure to stop Toronto at the Supreme Court, they likely will continue to fail and more and more communities will jump on the anti-pesticide bylaw bandwagon.

The Toronto landscape is likely to change dramatically in the next few years, according to Suo-Cockerton.

“I think people are going to have to rethink their ideas about landscaping. Some people are going to have to start from the ground up. Some people can convert their spaces.

“I liken what we do to preventive health. The thing with organic gardening is that you don’t wait until the problem happens to treat the problem. You set up a situation in which the problem is least likely to occur. We don’t wait until we get the heart attack, we try to maintain cardiovascular health and eat healthy, and eat well.”

So while it’s patently obvious to most, just remember that despite what the PR flacks say, toxic sludge is not good for you, depression is not a symptom of a dietary lack of anti-depressants like Prozac), and pesticides do kill, they do make people sick, and they do cause cancer.

Gut the grass and let’s do something truly green.

Resources

• Aesthetic Earthworks can be found on-line at www.aestheticearth.net, or call (416) 428-9995 or (416) 925-4932, or e-mail info@aestheticearth.net

• Contact the Organic Landscape Alliance for more information on local organic landscapers, at 1-866-824-7685, via e-mail info@organiclandscape.org, or visit www.organiclandscape.org

• Canada’s native shrubs and other plants can be found at www.sweetgrassgardens.com

• The City of Toronto’s web page for info on the pesticide bylaw and links to alternatives www.toronto.ca/pesticides

• Toronto Environmental Alliance on pesticides www.torontoenvironment.org/toxics/by-law

• Sierra Club of Canada's Pesticide Reduction site www.sierraclub.ca/national/programs/health-environment/pesticides/index.shtml 

• How to Get Your Lawn Off Grass, by Carole Rubin, Harbour Publishing 2002

•Acorus Restoration (519) 586-2603

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Seedlings of Hope and Toxic Sludge

Sludge to Stephen Harper for hypocritically censoring Environment Canada scientist Mark Tushingham. In April, Tushingham received  an e-mail from Minister of the Environment Rona Ambrose warning him not to show up for a speech he was to give in Ottawa about his fictional novel on climate change, Hotter than Hell. He was also then warned not to speak to reporters.  

Seedling to Caledon’s Town Council for making Caledon the first municipality in Ontario to become Bullfrog Powered. Bullfrog Power is an electricity retailer that sources "green" electricity exclusively from local wind and low-impact water power producers. Check them out at www.bullfrogpower.com

 

Sludge to the ultimate NIMBYs, the Kennedy clan, whose usual backing of environmental issues falls by the wayside when eco-issues come up against their views off of Nantucket Sound. The Cape Wind project off the coast of Massachusetts seems to be dead in the water thanks in part to the opposition of Senator Ted Kennedy’s support.