As abnormally dry weather sweeps across much of the country (new window) this summer, you may have found yourself staring despondently at the brown, crispy patch of fried earth you once called your front lawn, felt your fingers twitch in the direction of the hose and wondered: Should I? Am I even allowed (new window)?
But environmental and horticultural experts, as well as proponents of the no-lawn movement (new window), say the question is actually whether it’s responsible to have a full grass lawn at all anymore (new window).
The David Suzuki Foundation has previously estimated (new window) there are about 6.2 million lawns across Canada, and calculated (new window) that anywhere from 8.2 to 22.7 per cent of several large Canadian municipalities are turf grass. In 2021, two-thirds of Canadian households reported they had a lawn, according to Statistics Canada (new window).
These lawns are biodiversity deserts, according to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (new window), supporting very few insects and wildlife. They’re also notorious for their water waste (new window) and contribute to water scarcity. Maintaining them often involves harmful pesticides and fertilizers, while frequent mowing emits greenhouse gases.
And with many Canadian cities experiencing prolonged dry conditions, many lawns are looking … parched.
Enter the no-lawn, anti-lawn (new window) or re-wilding movement (new window), a sustainable approach to landscaping and an attempt to shift our perspective on what yards can look like — and their purpose. This can include a naturalized yard (new window), a habitat garden, using yards to grow food, or even just converting a section of your lawn to dedicate to native plant species and pollinators.
There’s a crazy amount of lawn out there, like tens of millions of acres in Canada and the United States, dedicated to growing just turf grass, said Brendon Samuels, a postdoctoral fellow with the Ecological Design Lab (new window) at Toronto Metropolitan University.
Which is an imported, non-native group of species that has no real ecological value, that is very expensive to maintain and that doesn’t look so nice when you’re in the middle of a heat wave in the summer.
WATCH | People are rethinking lawns:
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Fin du widget . Retour au début du widget?’Lawns should be area rugs’
Naturalized yards have a range of benefits, Samuels said, like helping preserve the monarch butterfly species by growing milkweed, or making one’s area more resilient to climate change with more green coverage.
Native plants help keep areas cooler and damper during heat waves, because they have deeper root systems that can access groundwater, he said. They also help increase the resilience of landscapes during floods, he added. And yes, you don’t need to water them as often as a turf grass lawn to keep them healthy, he said, making them more drought-resistant.
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Brendon Samuels, a postdoctoral fellow with the Ecological Design Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University, has a naturalized yard, pictured here in London, Ont.
Photo: Brendon Samuels
Last year, a study by the National Wildlife Federation (new window) found that 12 per cent of the U.S. adults surveyed said they were converting parts of their lawn to a natural or wildflower landscape.
The movement is particularly popular with a younger generation seeking out alternatives to grass, and is prominent on social media, notes Home and Garden magazine (new window). And Garden Design magazine (new window) predicted that native plants and eco-friendly gardening will be the No. 1 gardening trend of 2025, followed by less tidy gardens.
On Pinterest (new window), there are some 23,000 searches for naturalistic garden. Some videos on TikTok (new window) about growing native gardens have millions of views.
Début du widget . Passer le widget? @gardeninggrant Many garden designers I’ve spoken to admit to having messy gardens. They design aesthetic gardens for clients but are usually quite content with a “messy” garden when they arrive home each day. Gardens are supposed to grow. The time I spend in the garden is usually hunting for invasive plants or insects that need to be removed. I don’t spend a tremendous amount of time moving things around for aesthetic purposes. My measure of success is how much food did we produce? How many pollinators visited our gardens? That’s about it. Take the pressure off to have things look like a movie set. It’s not always realistic. Redefining beautiful gardens is the goal. Messy is beautiful. BLESS THIS MESS! #messygarden #gardensoftiktok #gardens #gardening #gardeninspiration #gardentok ♬ original sound – GardeningGrant 🇨🇦 Fin du widget . Retour au début du widget?
We’re bringing messy back, said Grant Minkhorst of Toronto, known as Gardening Grant on TikTok, in a video last month (new window) with 25,000 views where he shows off his thick vegetable beds, lunging perennial border and droopy prairie coneflowers.
My measure of success is how much food did we produce? How many pollinators visited our gardens? That’s about it, he added in the description.
And on Reddit, there are some 283,000 members of the “no lawns” subreddit (new window), an online community devoted to alternatives to monoculture lawns. There, people there share photos of yards filled entirely with pink coneflowers and sprawling yellow coreopsis; leafy plants that climb over fences and fields of purple bee balm.
As nature intended, commented a Redditor on a video of someone’s sprawling, buzzing yard. (new window)
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Samuels included his family, pictured here, while planting a rainwater garden at his home in London, Ont.
Photo: Brendon Samuels
The more we can stop being tidy, the more wildness we can bring into our gardens and landscapes, the better habitat we provide, said New York-based ecological horticulturist Rebecca McMackin in a 2023 Ted Talk video (new window) played more than 1.3 million times.
Why not get rid of your lawn, or shrink it drastically? she said. Lawns should be area rugs, not wall-to-wall carpet.
Have you ditched your grass for a naturalized lawn? Send us photos at ask@cbc.ca.
The lawn as a status symbol
Lawns are a cultural import from 17th- and 18th-century Europe, where they were symbols of wealth and status, said Samuels — back then, you needed significant resources and labour to be able to maintain one.
People default to the lawn because it’s very normative in our culture, Samuels said.
What we’re seeing increasingly is people starting to question those norms and look for alternatives.
A man mows his lawn in this 1956 archive photo. Lawns are a cultural import from 17th- and 18th-century Europe, where they were symbols of wealth and status.
Photo: Getty Images / Three Lions
That said, some people who have ditched the grass have faced hurdles. Lawn naturalization has been recognized as a constitutional right (new window) for decades in Canada, but bylaws haven’t always caught up, and The Associated Press (new window) notes that many homeowners’ associations still have rules about keeping yards manicured.
Samuels himself came up against bylaw (new window) when he created his own naturalized backyard and rainwater garden in London, Ont.
CBC News has previously covered cases in several cities across the country where people have come up against bylaw complaints about their natural yards — but also others where those bylaws have shifted to allow people to keep their yards as is (new window).
Some cities, such as Toronto (new window), offer grants for community-led projects to create pollinator gardens or convert a lawn area into one. Others offer exemptions (new window) to mowing height bylaws for residents who create naturalized areas.
And while some may assume naturalized yards would attract more pests, such as rodents or ticks, the opposite has been found to be true, according to a 2024 report (new window)by the Ecological Design Lab. And the David Suzuki Foundation explains that simplified environments, like turfgrass lawns, favour white-footed mice, a key reservoir for Lyme disease in Canada.
A traditional lawn is one of the worst landscapes for wildlife — and one of the best for ticks.
There’s a balance to be had here, Samuels said.
We’re not going after anyone’s lawn, he said. But I think municipalities and individual property owners should be considering, ‘Do we need this much lawn?’
WATCH | The problem with lawns:
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Fin du widget . Retour au début du widget?CorrectionsAn earlier version of this story on the CBC News website included a photo caption that misidentified Brendon Samuels. In fact, the people in the photo are his family members. Aug 13, 2025 10:38 AM EDT
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Natalie Stechyson (new window) · CBC News · Senior Writer & Editor
Natalie Stechyson has been a writer and editor at CBC News since 2021. She covers stories on social trends, families, gender, human interest, as well as general news. She’s worked as a journalist since 2009, with stints at the Globe and Mail and Postmedia News, among others. Before joining CBC News, she was the parents editor at HuffPost Canada, where she won a silver Canadian Online Publishing Award for her work on pregnancy loss. You can reach her at natalie.stechyson@cbc.ca.
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