Natural prairie or ugly patch of weeds?
It’s farm meets city all over again.
First bees in backyards, then chickens. Now city hall must figure out how to deal with growing numbers of people who want to turn manicured lawns into something that, to their neighbours, looks a lot like weeds.
Craig Schlegelmilch spent roughly $10,000 fixing his front drainage by installing a bioswale with natural wetland plants and a rebuilt fescue prairie alongside.
Then a bylaw officer mistook a native plant for a noxious weed and mowed the whole thing down.
Schlegelmilch was at a recent city utility committee meeting, arguing for better training and city recognition for natural landscapes. His front yard efforts reduce the burden on Edmonton’s stormwater system and increase its ecological diversity, attracting pollinators, dragonflies and songbirds.
But Coun. Ed Gibbons’ reaction perfectly captured the other side of this debate. “Is that your yard? ... My God. I would be complaining if I lived anywhere near it, too,” Gibbons said after seeing a photograph of the front yard.
He then compared the landscaping effort to the kind of overgrown mess that often accompanies a drug house.
“I’m sorry, I come from a farm and we work on getting rid of weeds.”
Coun. Michael Walters was pushing for city lawn signs, advice and encouragement for other homeowners who want to do this responsibly.
During the committee meeting, things got so tense that Coun. Ben Henderson had to remind councillors to keep it professional. The committee sent the report to council to craft next steps with cooler heads around the table. It will be up for debate on Sept. 6.
Schlegelmilch’s front lawn doesn’t technically have weeds. They’re all native plants grown from seeds carefully collected around Edmonton by Michael Clark, who nurtures them in a greenhouse until they’re ready to transplant on projects like this or larger bioswales in new neighbourhoods.
Clark redid Schlegelmilch’s yard in 2013, creating stream beds to funnel the run-off from his roof to a low point in the yard. That space is designed to fill with water, then drain over 24 hours, which doesn’t allow mosquitoes to reproduce.
The yard’s looser, clay-based soils hold moisture so well, the wetland plants grow higher than his knees. As the native plants take hold, it becomes easier to keep the invasive weeds out. It still takes regular weeding, but “we’ve been getting tons of bees, even dragonflies, which we never had before. I even saw a hummingbird,” he said.
Schlegelmilch’s bioswale survived the mowing last year. And since they realized the error, city staff have been great to deal with, he said. They come by looking for invasive weeds and work together to identify them.
He wants to work with the city to set guidelines for these kinds of efforts. “It’s not a quote-unquote pretty yard. I’m even willing to admit we may have gone too far,” said Schlegelmilch, adding he’s working to make it look more structured. “But here’s the tricky part — this is a living ecosystem. It changes.”
Clark, who owns Clark Ecoscience and Sustainability, said he’s learned a lot as well. For future homeowners, he may suggest starting with half the project — for example, putting a natural bioswale beside a traditional lawn. City dwellers need to embrace natural solutions, he said.
“Using native species lets us get back in touch with our local ecosystems . ... ”