The whole country seems to be afflicted. Everywhere you look, cropped green carpets sprawl across rural as well as urban and suburban yards and swards, across corporate and individual property, across government-maintained landscapes and the surroundings of private clubs. It's lawn mania, more rampant in America than anywhere else in the world, with its roots in the early English landscape garden movements.

Why do Americans care so much about their lawns? As far back as the 1830s the American horticulturist Andrew Jackson Downing "depicted Americans as a transient people who, through gardening and horticulture, formed an attachment to a place," says Robert Grese, an associate professor in the School of Natural Resources and Environment (SNRE).

But Grese (pronounced "GRAY-zee") says the seeding, mowing, spraying and fertilizing has to stop. Those early models for our lawns grew easily in the English climate without supplemental watering or chemical application. And they were generally used as pasture, eliminating the need for mowing, a mania in its own right according to Grese.

"It's relatively cheap to mow, but very expensive to the environment," Grese says. "Emissions from lawn equipment such as weed whips, lawn mowers and leaf blowers contribute about 5 percent of the total air pollution."

Add that costly environmental damage to the chemicals spread, sprayed or injected to keep the grass green and the "weeds" dead, and the price of what we have come to view as an aesthetic asset costs more than the dollars invested in the equipment and chemicals themselves. Furthermore, the chemicals are polluting streams, rivers and wetlands with too many nutrients, helping to promote an invasion of non-native plants and changes in the water's chemical structure, crowding out native plants and depriving native aquatic species of an agreeable habitat.

"Lawn care products are likely the largest group of chemicals being stored without regulation," Grese says. "Family garages are just full of pesticides and herbicides."

Grese proposes having just enough lawn to meet our needs. He doesn't mean the aesthetic need we have become accustomed to, but what we actually use for games or other activities. The remainder of a yard can then be planted in horticulture ground covers such as periwinkle, pachysandra, euonymus or ivy. Such plantings do not require supplemental watering once they have become established, nor do they need regular use of herbicides and pesticides or mowing.

But even at that, Grese says, these ground covers are not compatible with native wild flowers and should not be allowed to escape. Herbs could be used as ground covers, too, Grese advises thyme and creeping herbs will do the trick. And then there are the added benefits that come with a hillside of wild strawberries or creeping dewberries. But Grese's own preference is for using the plants native to an area.

The challenge to the property owner, Grese says, is to discover which native plants grew locally and will grow again without reseeding. In the prairie areas of the country one could consider butterfly weed, yellow coneflower, bee balm, prairie dock, asters and goldenrod, all of which provide habitat for native wildlife. No longer would we need to store and hoist heavy bags of birdseed. It would be growing in the backyard.

Grese recommends finding a local arboretum or botanical garden that can help identify an area's native plants. Some states have native-plant societies that conduct educational sessions or guided walks through local nature preserves. Conferences sponsored by arboreta or botanical gardens usually draw a mixture of homeowners, representatives from government agencies, landscapers and horticulturists, he says. Many books on the use of native plants in gardens are proliferating, and the lists found in these should be checked against local floras or other guidebooks.

"One of the stumbling blocks has often been local weed ordinances," Grese says. "They are successfully being challenged around the country. In fact, some property owners are registering their backyards as wildlife habitat with the National Wildlife Federation."

Usually such weed ordinances require that property within a defined municipal district be mowed to resemble what we have come to know as a lawn. But the natural garden that Grese promotes resembles the prairies or natural growth of a particular geographical area of the country, be it sea oats or cactus.

Through classes with strong environmental focus, Grese, his colleague Prof. Rachel Kaplan and other faculty at SNRE are educating a new generation of landscape designers ripe for changing attitudes in managing land. In areas where people are taking an active part in restoring the land through use of native plants, the young landscapers are developing a deeper sense of belonging and of ownership.

In our passion for immaculate green lawns, Grese concludes, "We have developed an aesthetic taste with no biological basis."