“It’s interesting that everyone’s talking about it (lawn alternatives) and no one is really measuring it in a controlled, quantified way,” said Lauren Umek, project manager for the Chicago Park District’s natural areas. “Not very many people are actually doing controlled, replicated experiments on the sort of suite of landscape choices that you have” — a suite that runs the gamut from turf to tallgrass prairie.
Barak and Umek, who met in grad school, have stepped in to fill the data gap with “Rethinking Lawns,” a research project that’s testing and analyzing the viability of various lawn alternatives. The collaboration brings together the Botanic Garden, Park District and University of Michigan-Flint, where a third grad school pal, Rebecca Tonietto, whose areas of study include native bees, also contributes to the work.
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