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closeAfter studying satellite imagery, a NASA researcher estimated that lawns cover about 49,000 square miles of the United States - an area the size of Mississippi. Some Bellingham residents are nibbling away at that total, one yard at a time.
"We started pulling out our lawn four or five years ago," said Clare Fogelsong, environmental resources manager with the city. "Now we're converting it to food."
At first, he said, he and wife Jana and daughter Spring used the lawn space for flowers and ornamentals in their Walnut Street yard, but they eventually agreed they wanted to eat the fruits of their labors.
Now they harvest raspberries, blueberries and gooseberries. They also grow corn, herbs, kiwi and figs.
"We're about half and half now, I suppose, and moving toward more food," he said. "It's fun. Part of it is self-sufficiency. Part of it is just enjoying having food in the yard."
Having the freshest possible food also was a motivator for Leslie Williams and husband Orion Polinsky.
"We're really into cooking good food," Williams said. "We feel like it's a lot fresher."
They bought their Utter Street home in December and soon became modern-day sodbusters.
"It was a lot of work," Williams said.
Getting a good lawn to grow can be hard. Getting rid of one may be harder. Williams said she and her husband rototilled some of their lawn. In other places they simply stripped back the sod and got rid of it, even though that meant some loss of soil. They found that the stripping method was most effective, since the bits of root left behind in a rototilled lawn may quickly sprout again.
They also removed a rock garden and a strange tropical plant that covered much of the yard. Williams wasn't even sure what it was.
Clearing the land was only part of the process. Once the sod, the shrubbery and the rocks were gone, they went to work on the soil, adding composted manure from a local dairy, plus sand and perlite.
This summer, they are getting their first harvest: green beans, tomatoes, potatoes, onions, leaks, peas, broccoli, chard, corn, zucchini and pumpkins. A little ground can do a lot when gardeners are willing to fuss over it.
"It's just fun," Williams said. "We can watch it grow. It's good exercise. It's good therapy ... If you're stressed out, just go in the garden."
In the Birchwood neighborhood, Brian Hindman is taking a different approach. He's managing his yard as what he calls a "wild garden." He has planted native shrubs like serviceberries, but he also has plum, apple and pear trees, and uses a fruit dryer to preserve some of his fruit.
He sees it as part of his environmentally friendly lifestyle, which includes riding his bike to his job as an engineering and surveying technician almost every day for the past eight years.
"It's all-encompassing," he said. "It's not purely a garden."
Gardening also seems to strengthen community ties. Urban gardeners share their harvest with neighbors. They also can pool their resources. Fogelsong and his next-door neighbor have shared a load of manure, which some local dairies will deliver if it is purchased in quantity. They also share a raspberry patch and a garlic bed, and join forces to haul their garden waste to disposal sites.
"It's a nice feeling," he said.
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