Switching to Organic Lawn Care in Chicago

Concerned about weeds, I hired a lawn service to chemically treat our grass several years ago. The chemicals did a good job of killing the ground ivy (Glechoma hederacea) in the back yard, which was beginning to invade my garden beds. The downside of the chemical lawn treatments was that those little "keep off the grass" signs after each spraying left me with nagging worries.

What exactly were they spraying on my yard? Was it safe for my kids? Was having a weed-free yard really worth the environmental damage it caused?

Two winters ago, I read Ted Steinberg's book on the history of lawn care, American Green. That left me searching for a way to take care of my lawn organically while remaining a good neighbor. In his book, Steinberg argues that the rise of the perfect golf-course-style lawn is one of the most important transformations in the history of the American landscape. The lawn spread with the suburbanization of America and the development of inexpensive lawn mowers. Lawns are now, according to Steinberg, one of America's leading "crops." Doug Tallamy, author of Bringing Nature Home, estimates that Americans have covered some 40 million acres with lawn.

The maintenance of such the perfect green lawn, described by some as an "industrial lawn," is big business, with more chemicals applied per acre to lawns than to agricultural fields. Nonetheless, I live in the suburbs, in a neighborhood where my neighbors power-wash their driveways and carefully groom their Kentucky bluegrass to perfection. A weedy, unkempt lawn would mark me as a "bad neighbor." And nobody wants that.

Not sure what to do, I called my friend the master gardener, who recommended the independently owned organic lawn-care service she uses, Fertilizer King Inc., on Chicago's northwest side. The per treatment cost was about the same as my (former) conventional chemical lawn service, but Fertilizer King required two fewer treatments each summer. With this cost saving as a bonus, I switched to the organic lawn care service.

Fertilizer King leaves signs in my back yard, but they now say that the lawn is safe for children and pets, not to keep off the grass. Fertilizer King is an authorized dealer of products from Bio Green Inc., a company that says it specializes in environmentally safe soil amendments.

Through last summer and this spring, the ground ivy, dandelions, and other weeds remained under control. The lawn is not entirely weed-free, but it never was so with the conventional chemical service. The grass remains thick and healthy. In fact, our lawn looks better now that we've switched to the organic service.