Official Press Release
HUGE NEWS!!! The Rethinking Lawns project of Chicago Botanic Garden, Chicago Park District, and University of Michigan-Flint just received the PACSP grant from the National Science Foundation & the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation to support our research into lawn enhancement & replacement with native plants.
PIs:
Rebecca Barak (Chicago Botanic Garden)
Rebecca Tonietto (University of Michigan-Flint)
Liz Anna Kozik (Chicago Botanic Garden)
Lauren Umek (Chicago Park District)
Turf lawns are omnipresent landscapes in urban settings. While they are more beneficial than impervious surfaces, our research project asks the question: what could our lawns become?
Coming from backgrounds in prairie restoration and urban native plants, we are proposing that incorporating short native plants into lawn greenspaces can produce concrete benefits for people and our more-than-human neighbors.
We are quantifying the benefits of our native plants in these settings, putting numbers to the theoretical benefits documented in the literature. We are measuring wildlife support, stormwater infiltration, cooling effect, and soil carbon storage.
For more information, check out:
Rethinking Lawns Official Press Release
Official NSF and PGA Family Foundation press release
UM-Flint’s Tonietto awarded $1.7M to study the impact of native plant lawns
Partnership to Advance Conservation Science and Practice (PACSP) Grant Description
Rethinking Lawns 