Bringing back nature, one lawn at a time.
Hello Westchester and Fairfield,
Ready to activate your yard? Let’s work together to restore and measure the biodiversity in our lawns and gardens! Learn more and sign up below.
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Step 1
Take the survey
First we need to know more about your property and the kind of actions you’re willing to take to improve biodiversity. The survey is also educational for those new to the rewilding experience.
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Step 2
Join the project on iNaturalist
The best measure of the ecological health of our yards is what lives there. Show us what you’ve found since reducing your lawn. We’re here to help get you set-up on our iNaturalist project page to take and submit observations of life on your lawn.
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Step 3
Get outside!
The more actions you take to bring back biodiversity in your lawn, the more life you will be able to observe. Plant trees, take photos, mow less. Get pro DIY tips from Healthy Yards or get more hands-on planting and design help with PlanitWild.
Our Community in Action!
Small changes we make in our own lawns can add up to big changes in biodiversity for our community. Join the fun!
The more species we observe, the more rare those species are to our region, the healthier our community and the more we are restoring the planet! One lawn at a time.
New Sightings in your neighborhood
Why does it matter?
We are participating in the first man-made warming of the climate and extinction crisis. Between 200 and 2,000 species go extinct each year. But we can address this global ecological crisis by converting some portion of our yards from an environmental liability (with chemicals, mowing, blowing and very limited number of species), to an environmental asset that sequesters carbon, retains water and process habitat for literally thousands of species.
The variety of life on the planet is called biodiversity – there are millions of species of animals, plants, fungi, and other types of living organisms. Without variety, nature is less stable and less functional in supporting the processes that support life on earth, including us humans. It’s time we use our piece of earth - our yards - to restore the planet.
Partners
This campaign and activation was born out of a partnership across multiple organizations with a shared mission, to help local communities unleash the power of the American lawn in combatting our climate and biodiversity crisis. Interested in becoming a partner? Contact us.
Participants are invited to the inaugural Bedford
The competition runs from May 7th 2023 - October 7th
Who says doing good, can’t also be fun! With such an uptick in awareness and engagement across our community, it’s time we came together to quantify the power of our collective efforts. Nothing like a little neighborly competition to accelerate the progress underway!
Rewilding Testimonial
Four years ago, after reading Douglas Tallamy’s “Bringing Nature Home” and E.O. Wilson’s “Half Earth”, I decided to turn 50% of our yard in Bedford into habitat for wildlife. We put in a wildflower meadow and planted hundreds of small native trees, and shrubs. But mostly what we have done is stopped mowing half our yard.
To measure what improvements we would find over time, I spent 30 minutes a day documenting the new species I would find in our yard on iNaturalist.
The result? A catalog of a backyard haven of an estimated 2,000 species (1,200 confirmed). The Less Lawn: More Life Campaign is our attempt to help others find the same joy in discovering nature in their backyards, and to offer help for those who need it.”
- Murray Fisher, Plan it Wild
