You're listening to Life Kit from NPR.

Hey, it's Mariel.

I grew up in a suburb of New York City, and our neighborhood was the definition of post-war

development. Lots of houses in the same style, evenly spaced with bright green, manicured

lawns. And the lawns were good to us. My brother and I, we played

barefoot in the sprinklers. We drove around in our little electric red Jeep. We tossed the ball to our

dog, who was big and blonde and full of energy. What I'm saying is grassy lawns, they have their

appeal. But the reality is that we do, let's be honest, have a lot more lawn than we actually use.

A lot of it is basically just kind of like for the look, right?

It's kind of like aesthetic.

This is Celia Yopi Scepson, a science reporter at Harvest Public Media and the host of their

environmental podcast Up from dust.

If you add up all this manicured grass turf that we've got in the U.S. at this point, it actually

adds up to an area that's bigger than the state of Georgia.

Yeah, it's a lot of lawn.

And it's a problem because the things we do to keep these lawns

tidy and green tax our environment. We put down fertilizer and weed killer. We use our drinking

water supplies to run sprinklers. We burn fossil fuels in our lawnmowers. What if we did things

differently? NPR is dedicating this week to stories and conversations

about how communities are moving forward on climate solutions despite the political roadblocks,

especially at the federal level. One way people are doing that is by replacing their lawns

with native plants. Because if you grow plants that are native to your area, you're not

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