The Grass is Not Always Greener

I washed ashore (again) on Nantucket during Covid, like many people in our community, and returned to the former farm where my parents, brother, and I first lived as we made the transition from summer folk to year rounders in 1983. 

By the time I returned, most of the planet had awakened to our impending climate crisis. Collaborative efforts like Keeping History Above Water, Envision Resilience, and the Coastal Resilience Plan were helping Nantucket adapt to the most profound dangers of climate change to the island, namely sea level rise and increased storm intensity. Meanwhile, island organizations were promoting localized mitigation strategies that each and every one of us could employ to reduce our carbon footprints and avoid the worst for future generations. I was amazed by the number and scope of lectures, conferences, public walks and workshops offered to the year-round community by the Nantucket Conservation Foundation, the Linda Loring Nature Foundation, Nantucket Land and Water Council, ReMain, Nantucket Preservation Trust, the Nantucket Land Bank, the Nantucket Historical Association, and others, and was inspired by their missions. For every doom and gloom climate disaster scenario in the worldwide press, these island organizations were providing information about preventative actions, adaptation, and lifestyle changes that every individual could embrace. 

Climate change demands actions on multiple fronts, and for me those included transforming our impoverished lawn into a grassland meadow.  This simple change to the way our land was managed could provide enormous opportunities to capture carbon, rather than release it, provide valuable wildlife ecosystems, eliminate the need for pesticides and fertilizers, and improve water quality. The economic savings can well be imagined by anyone with a lawn of their own, and I find the aesthetic beauty of tall grasses and their euphoric rustle to be magnificent.

With a little digging and family lore, I've found that our little slice of Nantucket has a storied history. Our property is located on the “Swain's Neck” peninsula, which divides Nantucket's inner and eastern Polpis Harbor. Polpis and its variations (Podpis, Palpus, Poatpes) all coming from the Wampanoag, meaning “divided or branch harbor.” Our peninsula was previously known as Watt's Neck, named after Wampanoag sachem Nickanoose’s son Watt Noose, who conveyed the peninsula to John Swain (one of Nantucket’s first English settlers) in 1677. Although, after the transfer, the peninsula became known as Swain’s Neck, there are still plenty of signs that the Wampanoag once thrived here.

The original Swain Farm House was dated to 1672 on the adjoining land to the south of Swain's Neck and was reputed to be the oldest house existing on the Island until it collapsed in 1902 after being struck by lightning. In 1662, John's mother, Mary Swain, was “the first Englishwoman to die on Nantucket,” while the birth of John Swain, Jr. in 1664 was described as “the first white male child born on the island.”

Shortly thereafter, the Swains were joined by other European settlers, the land was clear cut, and the soils began to degrade. (Yeshe Palmo notes in her Trees, Shrubs and Lianas of Nantucket that Nantucket farmers literally watched the top soil dry up and blow out to sea.) The farm changed hands and was divided a number of times over the decades, but by most accounts was used for farming root vegetables (onions being this particular farm's specialty), corn, and hay for feeding the livestock, as well as for making butter and raising poultry. For many years and during the height of the whaling industry, many Nantucket families obtained their food from the farming community in Polpis.

The abandonment of the farms began in the mid-1800s, when the combined effects of the Great Fires, the Gold Rush, the Civil War, and the advent of drilled oil wells had ravaged Nantucket’s once prosperous whaling and fishing economies. Nantucket's population decreased by 70% from a high of about 10,000 in 1859 and led to the consequent lack of market for farm produce. Polpis Farm, also known as Dunham Farm (our property on the upper right, below), ceased operations by 1932, around the time this photo was taken.

Conventional farming practices have eroded nearly half of the world's most productive soil in the last 150 years, leaving farmlands stripped of the nutrients, minerals and microbes that support healthy plant life. Here was no different. Even in the island’s farming heyday, the soil here was poor and called for persistent fertilizing (seaweed, eelgrass and/or fish carcasses). Almost 90 years later, the fields remained regularly mowed, but without these laborious additions of fertilizers, and because of the plants’ decreased capacity to photosynthesize, the above ground biomass was sparse, the exposed soil was prone to erosion, and what plants there were had a shallow root structure providing little for soil microbes to feast upon. Red sorrel dominated the landscape in the spring, and bare patches of dirt would turn into little dust bowls by August, with winds blowing away the sun-baked topsoil.

In contrast to the Herculean efforts required to maintain a lawn, turning our lawn into a meadow was relatively easy: First, do no harm. Leave it be. Once we stopped chopping off their heads by mowing, the meadow grasses and wildflowers blossomed. We were fortunate to have plentiful natives and a resilient seed bank in our meadows. (Elsewhere on the property, where the soil has been recently and significantly disturbed, the rewilding process has been far more difficult, and it’s still too soon to see the results. …This is part of a larger project, but that’s another story for another time!) Orchids, iris, vervain, wild geranium, bog violets, yarrow, St. John's Wort, wild roses, goldenrod, mullein, mountain mint, rabbit tobacco, a slew of asters and blue eyed grass (a type of iris, not actually grass) appeared in the very first growing season. The seed heads of the grasses, such as little and bushy bluestems, purple love grass, poverty and switchgrass, rye and various fescues and sedges, rivaled the beauty of any flower, and the wavelike sway and swish of the tall grasses in the breeze is magical. In addition to providing visual interest throughout the year, the uncut above ground plant mass provides valuable food and shelter to wildlife throughout the winter. 

Every bit as important to the meadow is what's happening below the surface. More than half of Earth's organisms live underground. There can be tens of thousands of species in a single teaspoon of soil and more microbes in that teaspoon than there are people on the earth. Soil is the most biodiverse habitat on the planet but is often neglected. Intensive lawn mowing compacts the physical soil structure, destroying air pockets and the ability to absorb and process nutrients, as well as diminishing water infiltration. 

Healthy meadows protect nearby bodies of water from pollutants and sedimentation by slowing surface runoff and providing opportunities for settling and infiltration, absorbing and filtering water to help remove nutrients, sediments and other pollutants. Healthy meadows also soak up and hold carbon in the soil, becoming natural “sinks” for carbon. Worldwide, there is more carbon stored in soil than in the atmosphere and vegetation combined. But meadows with more bare ground and drier soil actually release carbon from the soil into the atmosphere, similar to the carbon release that occurs during a forest fire. 

There's also a direct correlation between plant size and health above ground and the health of what’s happening below ground. Generally, the taller the grass, the deeper its roots (although shorter native grassland species will also have deeper roots than non-native grasses of comparable heights). The switchgrass that dominates our western field has roots five to six feet deep, while non-native Kentucky bluegrass (commonly used for golf courses and athletic fields) roots run about four to eight inches deep. Deep roots provide additional nutrients and habitat for soil microbes, which, in turn, further stimulate plant growth. 

Nantucket's open spaces, that fabric of grasses, heathlands, ponds and ocean, are as integral to Nantucket's “sense of place” as is its architecture. The extraordinary conditions that allowed for the creation of Nantucket's natural aesthetic character (thousands of years of glacial drift, a windy and salty environment, hundreds of years of controlled fires, agriculture and grazing animals) have been complemented by equally extraordinary efforts to preserve and protect over half of the island. Nantucket's grasslands and heathlands do require regular disturbances to prevent what would otherwise be a natural progression from grass to shrubs to trees. A pair of Felco clippers and a Schröckenfux garden scythe may work for me, but larger conservation organizations need to employ a variety of maintenance strategies, including harrowing, prescribed fires, mowing, brush cutting and/or selective species removal. There's no doubt that a lot goes into preserving Nantucket's sandplain grasslands, but the ecological benefits far outweigh the costs and repercussions of the alternatives. And of course there's the aesthetic value to consider.

Sandplain grasslands are among the rarest ecosystems in the world. In a culture that values rare things, these endangered grasslands present a great opportunity for property owners to steward ecosystems found only in a few places on the planet. Back in the 1700s, when lawns first came into vogue, anyone who owned land was considered extremely wealthy, and land used recreationally, rather than for farming, suggested even greater wealth. Lawns, in short, were a status symbol. Today, with over 40 million acres of turf grass cover in the United States, lawns have become more synonymous with suburban American housing tracts and environmental degradation. 

Now, across the country, there's a “turf war” between those who view lawns as symbols of patriotism and civilization, and those who see them as a step toward ecological destruction. When you turn your lawn into meadow, the grass may not always be greener, but I think the benefits speak for themselves.

A list of plants in and on the edges of the meadow

Grasses and Sedges

Bluestem, Bushy Andropogon glomeratus

Bluestem, Little Schizachyrium scoparium

Switchgrass Panicum virgatum

Sedge, Pennsylvania Carex pensylvanica

Cordgrass, Smooth Spartina alterniflora

Cordgrass, Saltmeadow Spartina patens

Lovegrass, Purple Eragrostis spectabilis

Beach Grass, American Ammophila breviligulata

Flowers

Strict Blue Eyed Grass, Sisrinchium montanum

Rose, Carolina Rosa carolina

Rose, Virginia Rosa virginiana

Geranium, Cranesbill Geranium maculatum

Milkweed, Purple Swamp Asclepias incarnata

Milkweed, Common Asclepias syriaca

Bayberry Morella caroliniensis

Rabbit-tobacco Pseudognaphalium obtusifolium

Aster, Heath Symphyotrichum ericoides

Nodding Lady's Tresses, Spiranthes cernua

Shrubs

Elderberry, Black Sambucus nigra

Azalea, Swamp Rhododendron viscosum

Groundsel Baccharis halimifolia

Pepperbush, Sweet Clethra alnifolia

Blueberry, Highbush Vaccinum corymbosum

Trees

Beach Plum Prunus maritima

Tupelo (Black Gum) Nyssa sylvatica

Sassafras Sassafras albidum