Replace lawns with flower gardens to attract bees

Dan Rodricks’ praiseworthy declaration against gas-guzzling, climate-changing lawns accorded with a recommendation I recently made to the board of my condominium development, except for the suggestion of turning over all of those grassed areas to trees (“America’s gift to the world: giving up sprawling lawns for trees,” Aug. 27) Trees are vital in cleaning the air and providing shade and safe places for birds to nest. We need multitudes more.

But the spaces freed up by the removal of lawns would be best served by creating gardens designed for flowering plants that would attract threatened pollinators, such as bees and butterflies. Both are losing their food sources and dying because of applications of chemicals and territory depletion, caused by ever increasing building and the paving-over of habitat.

Lose the pollinators and we lose the irreplaceable pollination of all the crops providing our life sustaining food. Every acre reclaimed for a garden of flowering pollinator plants will not only beautify the environment but will also help save our irreplaceable armies of pollinators and the food crops they make possible.

Barbara Holdridge, Baltimore