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?
The “lawn chair gardeners” can change the world one yard at a time by limiting grass to 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 wasting and polluting water, burning fossil fuels, and do not provide habitat for beneficial insects (like bees that pollinate about every third bite people eat).
Dawn hopes that when her 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 she said was common practice when she was a kid.
About the Owner of the Company
Dawn Pape started planting gardens in third grade when she was awarded a packet of seeds by her teacher and hasn’t stopped planting since. She may have been the only college student at the University of Wisconsin – Madison to plant flowers at the places she rented. There, she earned undergraduate degrees in Education, German Literature and Environmental Studies. She later earned her Masters degree in Environmental Education the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point.
For the past couple of decades, she has worked as a high school teacher, at a non-profit helping schools develop nature areas on their school grounds and as an environmental education coordinator at a watershed district where she started the Blue Thumb – Planting for Clean Water program®. Pape is the author of “A Lawn Chair Gardener’s Guide to a Balanced Life and a More Balanced World,” “Mason Meets a Mason Bee,” “Mason Meets a Mason Bee with K-5 Educator’s Guide,” and “Thank You, Bugs!”
Currently, Dawn enjoys teaching people of any age through educational puppet shows or seminars. She also does communications for area watershed organizations. But her favorite job is being a mom to her boys. She has been a Ramsey County Master Gardener since 2000. When asked about her free time, Dawn replied she doesn’t really have free time right now. But if she did, it would be spent doing yoga and reading books.
Proceeds from all book sales are shared with like-minded organizations. Contact Dawn to sell her book at your next event!
Press and Video Presentations
August 2012 – State Fair YouTube video (35 min. 15 sec.)
April 2012 http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/homegarden/148729255.html
