All-native Grow Up! Toronto garden ordered cut as “tall grass & weeds”
Boulevard and front yard gardening is increasingly popular around the world as residents seek alternatives to resource-depleting lawns.
Few of the following gardens are native, but all use less municipally-treated water and cause less harm to our environment than lawn.
Biodiversity is beautiful.
Grow lawnless. Grow UP!
Our yards, our boulevards, can act as stepping stones to allow pollinators, butterflies, and other wildlife to move safely between natural areas.
Portland, Oregon
Boulevards can be used to filter and absorb excess precipitataion rather than consigning it to costly and overburdened storm water sewers. Dirty and concentrated water flowing from sewer outfalls harm local waterways.
Toronto Region Conservation Authority “Healthy Yards” program website
Grow UP!
- encourages putting boulevards to more productive use;
- promotes ethically sourced native plants & organic vegetables;
- discourages alien invasive species
Sylvia Oliveira and kids with notice from Toronto forbidding her vegetable garden. Toronto Star, Oct 22, 2010
Native Plant Garden for All Seasons
Leave the stems and seeds heads to protect overwintering insects and seed heads…both provide needed nourishment for birds through the winter and into the spring breeding season.
Boulevards can provide nourishment for people too! Front yard vegetable gardens offer a welcome resurgence of WWII-era Victory Gardens … narrowing the range of the 100 mile diet to mere metres.
Apologies and thanks to the owners of some of the uncredited photographs on this page. As I re-discover their origins, proper credit will be added.