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How native planting is gaining ground on Martha’s Vineyard.
For decades, green lawns have been the default in American landscaping — neat, uniform, and for many, a symbol of success. But on Martha’s Vineyard, a movement is gaining momentum, pushing homeowners, landscapers, and local officials to question that standard and embrace a more sustainable, biodiverse alternative.
Native plants support biodiversity, require less water, and eliminate the need for chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Yet lawns remain ingrained in Vineyard culture and aesthetics. Conservation advocacy group BiodiversityWorks and Vineyard Vision Fellow Sakiko Isomichi, a landscape architect at Harvard University, are working to understand why — and what it would take to change that.
As part of her fellowship, Isomichi spent 2024 hosting focus groups with homeowners, landscapers, and designers to better understand the cultural and practical barriers to reducing lawn space. Many homeowners, she found, still view the lawn as a marker of status — a mindset deeply rooted in postwar suburban ideals.
“It’s a major process to move people away from that way of thinking,” Isomichi says.
Isomichi also spoke with nine landscape design firms and six landscaping companies, many of whom cited similar challenges. Some clients are open to change, but others just want to stick with what they know. Even when there’s interest, native plant meadows can take three to five years to establish — a timeline many clients find daunting.
For landscapers, economics is another hurdle. Lawn maintenance is predictable and profitable. Native plantings introduce more specialized care, and a risk to their profit margin.
“Trying to do anything different is a risky action for businesses, and it’s even more difficult when you consider that the summer season is when you make most of your income; the margin of error is very small,” Isomichi says.
The Plant Local Campaign
In response to these findings, the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, BiodiversityWorks, Polly Hill Arboretum, and the Vineyard Conservation Society launched the Plant Local campaign — a guide to nature-based landscaping aimed at helping Islanders make informed choices about what to plant.
Native plant availability remains a barrier. SBS and Mahoney’s once sold a “Vineyard Mix” seed blend, but it was discontinued during COVID. Native species now account for less than 10 percent of plant stock at local nurseries, though that number is slowly growing. Polly Hill Arboretum has a good resource guide.
Complicating matters further, definitions of “native” vary. Nurseries tend to use a broad regional definition, while local conservationists focus on species truly endemic to the Island.
Many homeowners, Sakiko Isomichi found, still view the lawn as a marker of status — a mindset deeply rooted in postwar suburban ideals.
“How do we define what a ‘native plant’ is that will benefit the local ecosystem best? Just choosing plants that are purely native to the Island is very restrictive,” Isomichi says.
The Natural Neighbors Program
Isomichi’s research is part of the Natural Neighbors Program, a partnership between BiodiversityWorks and the Village and Wilderness Project. The program helps property owners create stewardship plans tailored to their land, emphasizing native plantings, invasive species removal, and wildlife habitat restoration.
Program director Rich Couse conducted about 80 property visits in 2024. His goal is to connect individual yards to the Island’s larger ecological web.
“If you take this invasive honeysuckle bush out, you can put a native bush there. Not only is this good for the environment in your immediate area and on the Island, but native plants and yards with more biodiversity are usually a lot less costly to maintain,” he says.
Still, Couse emphasizes that change takes time. “Sometimes it takes a year just to get the native plantings and plant them, and then they need to grow and establish themselves,” he says. “Then it might take two or three years for us to go back and see what changes have occurred in those ecosystems.”
Listening to the Land
BiodiversityWorks founder Luanne Johnson urges Islanders to slow down and tune in to their surroundings. “Just go out and be quiet. Look around. Are there birds flying around and chirping? Are there pollinators landing in your flowerbed or in your yard?”
To Johnson, the lawn is more than an aesthetic issue — it’s symbolic of how disconnected we’ve become from the natural world. “This dominating aesthetic of the sterile green lawn with blue hydrangeas and a white picket fence — we want to change that paradigm.”
She also notes that replacing lawns with native meadows saves water, cuts costs, and eliminates the need for chemicals. “Seems like a huge win-win.”
A Regulatory Push
Carlos Montoya, founder of Native Plant Associates, believes real change will come only through a combination of regulation and education. While public interest is growing, Montoya says the vast majority of his native planting projects have been for municipalities or conservation groups — not individual homeowners. He says people “simply don’t know enough.”
For him, the issue isn’t that people want lawns. “It’s the issue of the collective impact of lawns on our environment,” he says. “Let’s back-engineer from the totality of these effects — what does it take to get us, a small community, to a more sustainable place?”
Montoya advocates for the Martha’s Vineyard Commission (MVC) to take a stronger regulatory role, particularly around land clearing and development projects.
Currently, if the MVC determines a project to have a regional impact (particularly an environmental one), it must adhere to a list of strict regulations. If the research and information gathering currently underway clearly shows that the collective impact of lawns should be a priority focus, Montoya says, that gives the issue a regional impact, and it could be governed by the MVC. “If it’s in their bailiwick, in the end, some towns might not get behind it, but the MVC needs to lead the way, from a regulatory standpoint,” he says.
Montoya believes that all new development approvals should include requirements for native plantings. “It should be a little bluestem or switchgrass or one of the core grasses on the Island,” he says.
Bylaws and the Path Forward
Sakiko Isomichi is now working with local partners on drafting bylaws for each Island town to protect existing native vegetation — especially on smaller parcels under three acres not subject to MVC regulations. MVC Climate Coordinator Liz Durkee says she hopes that all the towns will approve the regulations at next year’s town meetings.
“A lot of people have been sharing with us that they think that development could have been really different if there had been a little more framework of working with existing vegetation,” Isomichi says. “It does involve more planning and it’s not going to be the same kind of building practice, but we want to encourage more sensible building.”
Enforcement is another key issue. “There are regulations in place right now that could be really effective, but they’re not being enforced,” Isomichi says. She’s working with a committee that includes MVC staffer Dan Doyle, who is reviewing potential revisions to the Commission’s development review guidelines.
Over the next six months, Isomichi plans to share her findings at library presentations and host public tours of the sandplain grassland habitat exhibit at the Cooke House and Legacy Gardens in Edgartown.
“We have the data,” Isomichi says. Now it’s time to make it as accessible as possible and continue these community conversations.
