Lawn Conversion
Populations of bees, flies, beetles, and butterflies are declining fast. The fragility of the ecosystem is caused by disease, pesticides, and habitat loss. What can you do to help? Convert your lawn, meadow, or prairie into a safe haven for pollinators!
We are proud to be a Chesapeake Bay Landscape Professional
The Dark Side of a Rich, Green Lawn
The standard lawn contains no biodiversity or habitat or wildlife and pollinators. In Pennsylvania alone, there are 2 million acres of mowed lawn.
Maintaining a lawn takes work. Grass needs to be treated with fertilizer because the soil is not compatible with it. Turf wants water when the weather doesn’t provide it. Mowing requires time and takes energy; and pollinators disappear because they no longer have food to eat.
Can you take a positive step to protect and nurture your environment?
Benefits of Converting Your Lawn or Meadow
Improved Shade & Habitat
Converting a lawn or meadow into tree/shrub areas (also known as upland forest planting) creates shade and habitat for local wildlife. Many native trees and shrubs bear fruit and nuts, which are a great food source for wildlife.
Deeper Roots
By converting a lawn to a native plant meadow, the root system will be deeper. This helps the soil to become less compacted than a lawn, allowing more water to infiltrate the ground, rather than running off. Deep roots also help filter the water and nutrients that could end up in a water source.
Beneficial to Pollinators
Meadows are also a haven for pollinators. During the growing and flowering season, these will provide a food source and shelter for pollinators. At the end of the growing season, many will lay their eggs in the stalks of the dormant/dead plants.
What Can You Do?
Meadow Conversion
Lawns offer little to no erosion control and biodiversity. Converting your lawn into meadow will provide a wonderful habitat for wildlife and pollinators. By reducing/eliminating mowing, this saves the land/homeowner time and money. Landowners may often keep a mowed border around the meadow; this frames it beautifully, and highlights the meadow as an intentional feature of the landscape.
Prairie Conversion
Urban sprawl, agricultural intensification, and runoff from excessively manicured lawns have contributed to the increased degradation of wetlands on privately owned lands.
Prairie conversion can help reverse this process by improving overall water quality of streams, creeks, lakes, and wetlands–all while adding natural beautification with native plant species. These species are also pollinator-friendly, which is equally beneficial.
Tree/Shrub Conversion
By converting an area of lawn to trees/shrubs, the local streams, creeks, lakes, and wetlands reap the benefits, as well as aquatic species and wildlife. Trees and shrubs also contribute other functions and benefits; such as producing harvestable products (fruit, nuts, and flowers). The advantages to local wildlife and pollinators are numerous.
Infiltration Beds
Infiltration Beds are used as a means to temporarily store runoff water in a subsurface storage media, such as stone or gravel. They are ideally suited for large, flat spaces such as lawns, meadows, and playfields. Low sediment level water, such as roof runoff, is best for connection to an Infiltration Bed.
Some of the benefits associated with Infiltration Beds include (but are not limited to):
- Reduce stormwater runoff volume and rate
- Help to maintain aquifer recharge.
- Preserve or create valuable open natural space
Rain Gardens & Bioswales
Rain Gardens and Bioswale are very similar, but have two different functions. The function of a rain garden is to capture and temporarily store rainwater. Bioswales are designed to slow down rainwater by means of a curved or linear path.
- Rain Gardens are designed to temporarily hold and filter the water as it slowly infiltrates deeper into the soil. They are typically planted with tougher, deep-rooted plants that enhance the soil’s ability to soak up water.
- Bioswales are a more narrow version of a rain garden, which allows the water to move more swiftly to another part of the garden (typically a rain garden), or to move the water to an existing drainage and/or storm water system.
Upland Tree Planting / Reforestation
Many native trees and shrubs bear fruit and nuts, which are a great food source to wildlife. Add more text here. Add more text here. Add more text here.
Start Your Landscape Transformation
In Three Simple Steps:
Schedule Your Consultation
Tell us about your commercial, residential, or conservation project.
Get a Custom Conservation
Landscape-Based Plan
We assess your property, identify opportunities, and design a plan built around your goals and your site’s natural systems.
Transform
Your Landscape
Our team installs high-quality native plants and systems that thrive long-term — giving you a beautiful, sustainable landscape with less maintenance.
If you live in Pennsylvania, you are eligible to certify your pollinator friendly garden with the Penn State Master Gardeners.
Tips & tricks for maintaining your Conservation Landscape:
- Use primarily native plant and tree species; they are better adapted to the local soil conditions and require less maintenance.
- Use rain garden and bioswale techniques to better manage water runoff. This allows rainwater to slow down, spread out, and soak in.
- Always be mindful of where the water on your land will eventually end up. Use of riparian buffers on land that abuts streams, creeks, lakes, and wetlands makes for a healthier biosystem.
Invasive Species Identification & Control Services
There are many tools and services available for identifying and mitigating invasive species.
Controlling invasive species is a vital step in conservation landscaping; it is necessary for maintaining healthy biodiversity in different landscapes. Invasive plant species often have no natural predator, thus allowing them to rapidly take over large areas of land. Being familiar with native and non-native species is important to be able to maintain conservation landscapes and ultimately, the environment.
Native Creations uses many years of plant and herbicide knowledge as well as training to effectively and strategically remove invasive species.
Client Examples:
