Alrie Middlebrook, owner of Middlebrook Gardens in Northern California and co-author of the recently released book "Designing California Native Gardens" has started a Lose the Lawn campaign. In a recent phone conversation, she told me "If you choose to plant and maintain turf grass, you are essentially eliminating diversity in your home garden. Phosphate based fertilizers, garden pesticides and herbicides have been showing up increasingly in our streams and bays, carried there by over watering and storm run off."

If you're not feeling guilty about your lawn yet, she added "For me the lawn is a symbol of the oil culture because it's a symbol of waste, cheap energy and extravagance."

To read more about why she's fighting the lawn, go to
Lose the Lawn

Alrie has developed five alternatives to the lawn that we'll look at this week.