One Redditor recently took some photos of a redesigned streetside space in their city of Fort Collins, Colorado, which shows how much an enterprising Parks Department can do to beautify a space and support local ecology.
"The city turned a park-adjacent streetside space into a pollinator garden," the poster wrote, sharing with the other diverse ecology-loving members of the r/f***lawns subreddit.
The accompanying photos show a small but vibrant public garden, planted with a huge variety of different species.
The poster went on to explain: "This particular area though is a great demonstration pollinator garden in a part of the city full of manicured lawns … I think green barriers like this are great urban design which should be replicated wherever possible. This is an area where you don't want pedestrians mixing with the bike lane/street/stream so the space is otherwise useless."
Plain grass lawns, which have dominated the outdoors for so long, are quickly losing popularity these days. As the r/f***lawns subreddit puts it, "Monoculture lawns must come to an end and bring forward the biodiverse lawns era!"
Grass lawns discourage biodiversity and require wasteful amounts of water and, often, toxic chemicals and polluting gas-powered yard equipment to maintain. Native plant lawns and gardens, on the other hand, help local wildlife and pollinators get the things they need to survive, all while being more visually interesting and less arduous to maintain.
As one commenter on the thread about the streetside space in Colorado pointed out, the native plant garden included milkweed, the sole food source of the now endangered monarch butterfly. "I love to see milkweed planted more places! Bring back the monarchs!" they wrote.
"How does this happen? Did you go to city hall?" another commenter asked.
"I think it's just the Parks Department choosing to do it. The city has that and a natural spaces department which are both good with this kind of pollinator support," the original poster replied.
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