Real Florida

Telling the lawn goodbye

A bug lover would like us to consider the lives and water we would save if we kicked the grass habit, once and for all.

GAINESVILLE - Perhaps the best thing about a Florida fall is the end of mowing season. Fewer hours of daylight, less rain and cooler weather finally put our grass to sleep.

Mark Hostetler, the "no lawn" man, would be pleased if our grass fell into a deep, permanent coma.

When the University of Florida wildlife specialist looks at a nice, green lawn, he doesn't see neatness, order and status. He sees waste, pollution, conformity. Not to mention carnage.

Hostetler, 38, is a bug guy. Modern lawns, and what accompanies them - herbicides and pesticides and a thick carpet of grass - are murder on insects.

"A Florida lawn is a slab of concrete when it comes to bugs," he says. "Only thing that loves a Florida lawn is a chinch bug."

The original sin

If St. Augustine were to wing down from heaven, surely he would have two questions. The first would be, "Why does everybody in Florida mispronounce my name? It's "a-GUS-tin' not "August-teen.' " His second would be, "For heaven's sake, why did you name your grass after me?"

In Florida, St. Augustine - Stenotaphrum secundatum to Latin-spouting scientists - is the grass species of choice. According to turfgrass specialist Richard L. Duble, our favorite grass is a "coarse-textured, stoloniferous species that roots at the nodes." Basically, it's green and lush. When well cared for, a lawn of St. Augustine looks pretty nice.

But there are things about St. Augustine that stick in the craw of a no-lawn man. It's not a native. Unlike soft Northern grasses, St. Augustine is rough on bare feet. Don't try rolling around in it without a shirt. You'll itch like the dickens.

Even worse, St. Augustine is all about high maintenance. Although Florida leads the nation in rainfall, we still need to tap into our aquifer to keep our St. Augustine lawns happy. In Florida, half of our precious water is used for landscaping - at a time when developers in Miami are eager to mine water from elsewhere in the state.

"If we stopped watering our lawns, South Florida wouldn't need a pipe," says Hostetler, currently working on a PBS series about how Floridians can better live "green." A second project is an upcoming book he intends to title Why the Hell Should I Mow My Lawn?

Sign of the times

Early Floridians didn't care about growing grass. They worried more about growing something to eat.

A nice lawn was something for rich folks. In the 19th century the prosperous Henry Flagler moved to Florida and built fancy hotels up and down the east coast. Henry liked lawns. Of course, he could pay somebody to take care of his.

After World War II, lots of people began moving to Florida. Lawns accompanied the building boom; lawns, like Cadillacs, were a status symbol. Today, even the poor have lawns. They're big business here and everywhere else.

Americans buy 3-million tons of fertilizer for their lawns annually, according to a University of Connecticut study. In 1988 alone, we spent $700-million on pesticides to kill bugs that damage our lawns.

Mark Hostetler, the no lawn man, happens to love bugs a lot. An Indiana native, he grew up catching them in his back yard. Later, he got a doctorate at the University of Florida, where he wrote That Gunk on Your Car - a Unique Guide to Insects of North America. Published by Ten Speed Press ($9.95), it is still in print.

His book didn't have one bad thing to say about lawns. It was all about identifying bugs by the smears they make when they hit your windshield. Gunk was written with tongue firmly in cheek, but it also contained interesting scientific tidbits. "The idea was to make bugs interesting to ordinary people," he says. Among other things, the book landed him a spot on the couch next to Jay Leno and won Harvard's humorous "Ig Nobel Award" for improbable research.

Hostetler believes killing bugs willy-nilly is no laughing matter. That's only one reason he's against lawns. Pesticides may slay chinch bugs, but they also make life tough for honeybees and butterflies and other insects that pollinate plants. Insect-eating birds all the while go hungry.

Do you ever wonder what happened to the fireflies? Beetles, they live under the ground. If they happen to be dwelling under your pesticide-covered lawn, rest in peace.

Pushing for peace

Mark Hostetler actually owns a lawn mower. It's one of those old-fashioned models without a motor. He pushes to make the blades turn. "It's good exercise," he says.

It is also quiet. On most Saturdays, his lawn mower-infested neighborhood sounds like a giant hive of busy bees. In his yard, at least he can hear himself think - and he breathes no nasty exhaust. According to a California study, annual emissions from assorted lawn-care equipment is equal to 3.5-million vehicles driven 16,000 miles each. About 580-million gallons of gas are used for lawn mowers alone.

Hostetler doesn't mind pushing his mower. His lawn in Gainesville is actually more of a footpath between islands of native vegetation. "Whenever any of my lawn dies, I just plant something native, something that evolved to live here and use less water." He has oaks and palms and pines and cedars. His passion flower vines are a favorite of the state butterfly, the zebra longwing.

In some places in Florida - in certain gated communities - residents are forced to have lawns and to keep them perfect. But Hostetler believes that will change one day. Unlimited growth management coupled with drought and the dangers of pesticide might give birth to a no-lawn philosophy.

"Used to be that nobody recycled," he says. "Now most of us do. One day, people who maintain a lawn will be in the minority too."

The changes may be far in the future, of course. But at least we can dream, especially now that our grass and our lawn mowers are finally yielding to sleep.

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