What Does “Lawn Chair” Gardener Mean?

Minimal effort for maximum yield and eco-friendliness.

“Lawn chair gardeners” have an interest in a balanced life and a more balanced world creating eco-friendly yards that create food and habitat for both people and wildlife. The term “lawn chair gardener” refers to gardeners who take a relaxed approach to gardening and have rounded lives – not hours a day to spend in the garden.

YouTube Introduction (1 min. 55 sec.)

How Does Lawn Chair Gardening Restore Balance to the Earth?

We, the lawn chair gardeners, can change the world one yard at a time by limiting grass to only what we use as play space and planting the rest as beneficial, functional plants such as native plants or edible plants in gardens, raingardens and shorelines. These plantings encourage water conservation and filtration, energy conservation (especially with fewer “food miles”), increased habitat and biodiversity, less air pollution and fewer chemicals needed.

Current common lawn care practices promote the opposite with wasting and polluting water, burning fossil fuels, do not provide habitat for beneficial insects (like bees that pollinate about every third bite people eat) just for starters.

My hope is that when my kids are grown-up, having a purely aesthetic yard with only grass and useless ornamental plants that provide no food or habitat will be as foreign to them as putting asphalt under playground equipment – which was common practice when I was a kid. What do you say? Are you in?

Press and Video Presentations

August 2012 – State Fair YouTube video (35 min. 15 sec.)

April 2012 http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/homegarden/148729255.html