Nationwide Survey on Lawns and Wildflowers
Carpenter bee on blanket flowers. Image: Alabama Extension / CC0 Public Domain
We conducted a nationwide survey to better understand thoughts and opinions about lawns and wildflowers. Specifically, we wanted to know what type of people are most likely to create pollinator-friendly wildflower plots, and what barriers might discourage people from converting their lawns to wildflowers. A previous survey about bees found that 99% of people consider pollinators to be of critical importance. But we also know that most lawns lack the native wildflowers that pollinators require. There must be several barriers holding people back from taking action to create pollinator habitat. So we set out to identify these barriers to help guide our outreach and education.
To accomplish this, we conducted an online survey of the American public. Specifically, we asked those surveyed to choose among 11 “barriers” that might prevent them from converting a 6 x 6 ft portion of a turf grass lawn to native wildflowers. Some examples of the barriers listed in the survey include: ‘Not knowing what to do,’ ‘Maintenance cost,’ and ‘Opinions of neighbors.’ Additionally, we collected data on a variety of demographic factors (age, gender, income, education, etc.) to see what types of people took the survey and if these factors influenced survey responses. The current version of the full paper is available here and a published peer-reviewed version will be available in an open-source journal later this year.
We are excited to announce that over 3,200 people across the US took the survey. We distributed the survey online and targeted people who were likely already interested in wildflowers and pollinator conservation, like members of native plant society chapters. The team at Lawn to Wildflowers has successfully analyzed the data collected and are now ready to share our findings with you!
Map showing location of all the people that took the survey
We found ‘Maintenance time’ and ‘Not knowing what to do’ to be the most common barriers, with over 25%of participants selecting them. These results are encouraging to us at Lawn to Wildflowers, as we can address these concerns through education and outreach. For example, we have provided simple and straightforward protocols on our website to guide anyone who wants to convert their Lawn to Wildflowers. By providing these resources and continuing to be active in online and offline community outreach, we hope to work with the public to overcome these barriers.
Survey results based on the question “Of the following items, select those that might prevent you from converting a portion of your lawn to wildflowers (you may select multiple items)”. Items were rearranged to be in descending order based on percentage of responses.
Concern about undesirable plants was pretty high as well, which makes a lot of sense because weeds are a big problem in all types of gardens. Other barriers were of little concern, like bee stings, undesirable wildlife, and surprisingly, appearances, which may be because we primarily surveyed fans of native plants, rather than the general public. We suspect that if we had, ‘Appearance’ would have been rated higher.
Age was the most important demographic factor impacting results, with young people significantly more likely to select the majority of barriers in the survey. For example, young people (18-34) were over four times more likely to indicate ‘Maintenance cost’ would prevent them from creating a wildflower plot than people over 65. Also, far fewer young people took the survey suggesting less interest overall in native plants and pollinators, which is reflected in our personal experiences with native plant society meetings here in Florida. Getting young people on board the native plant boat may be a challenge but keeping the process of converting their lawns simple and cheap may help.
Peoples’ past experiences planting wildflower gardens also affected their survey responses. Not surprisingly, those who have already created a wildflower plot, or those who were members in a native plant or pollinator organization, were less likely to select barriers across the board. However, this was not true for barriers associated with other people, such as homeowners’ associations, neighbors, and local governments. This shows that these external factors are persistent barriers even for those that are otherwise keen to convert their Lawn to Wildflowers. If you have ideas on ways we might be able to address these problems, please let us know.
This survey is just the first step in our mission to help and encourage people around the country to convert patches of turf grass to native wildflowers. We know that a much more beautiful and environmentally friendly world is possible, and you can help make that happen. We hope that our resources on pollinators, native plants, and lawn-to-wildflower methods will help make walking the path toward a flower-filled lawn a little bit easier. All these resources and more are included with the free Lawn to Wildflowers app available soon in the Google Play and Apple App stores.